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      Lord George Bentinck, by Benjamin Disraeli
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lord George Bentinck, by Benjamin Disraeli

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org


Title: Lord George Bentinck
       A Political Biography

Author: Benjamin Disraeli

Release Date: December 3, 2006 [EBook #20007]
Last Updated: September 7, 2016

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LORD GEORGE BENTINCK ***




Produced by David Widger





</pre>

    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h1>
      LORD GEORGE BENTINCK
    </h1>
    <h2>
      A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
    </h2>
    <h2>
      By Benjamin Disraeli
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h4>
      &lsquo;He left us the legacy of heroes: <br /> the memory of his great name <br />
      and the inspiration of his great example.&rsquo; 
    </h4>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      Contents
    </h2>
    <table summary="">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <p>
            <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> <big><b>LORD GEORGE BENTINCK</b></big>
            </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. </a>
          </p>
          <p class="toc">
            <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. </a>
          </p>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </table>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      TO
    </h2>
    <h3>
      LORD HENRY BENTINCK,
    </h3>
    <p>
      IS INSCRIBED This Political Biography ONE FOR WHOM HE ENTERTAINED A DEEP
      AFFECTION, AND WHOSE TALENTS AND VIRTUES HE SHARES. <a name="link2H_4_0002"
       id="link2H_4_0002">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      LORD GEORGE BENTINCK
    </h2>
    <h3>
      A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
    </h3>
    <p>
      <a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001">
      <!-- IMG --></a>
    </p>
    <div class="fig" style="width:80%;">
      <img src="images/bentink_page009.jpg" alt="Bentink-page009" width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER I.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>The Man</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      THE political career of Lord George Bentinck was peculiar. He had, to use
      his own expression, &lsquo;sate in eight Parliaments without having taken part
      in any great debate,&rsquo; when remarkable events suddenly impelled him to
      advance and occupy not only a considerable but a leading position in our
      public affairs. During three years, under circumstances of great
      difficulty, he displayed some of the highest qualities of political life:
      courage and a lofty spirit; a mastery of details which experience usually
      alone confers; a quick apprehension and a clear intelligence; indomitable
      firmness; promptness, punctuality, and perseverance which never failed; an
      energy seldom surpassed; and a capacity for labour which was perhaps never
      equalled. At the very moment when he had overcome many contrarieties and
      prejudices; when he had been most successful in the House of Commons, and,
      sustained only by his own resources, had considerably modified the
      legislation of the government which he opposed on a measure of paramount
      importance; when the nation, which had long watched him with interest,
      began to congratulate itself on the devotion of such a man to the business
      of the country, he was in an instant taken from us. Then it was that, the
      memory of the past and the hope of the future blending together, all men
      seemed to mourn over this untimely end, and there was that pang in the
      public heart which accompanies the unexpected disappearance of a strong
      character.
    </p>
    <p>
      What manner of man this was, who thus on a sudden in the middle term of
      life relinquished all the ease and pleasure of a patrician existence to
      work often eighteen hours daily, not for a vain and brilliant notoriety,
      which was foreign alike both to his tastes and his turn of mind, but for
      the advancement of principles, the advocacy of which in the chief scene of
      his efforts was sure to obtain for him only contention and unkindly
      feelings; what were his motives, purposes and opinions; how and why did he
      labour; what were the whole scope and tendency of this original, vigorous,
      and self-schooled intelligence; these would appear to be subjects not
      unworthy of contemplation, and especially not uninteresting to a free and
      political community.
    </p>
    <p>
      The difficulty of treating cotemporary characters and events has been ever
      acknowledged; but it may be doubted whether the difficulty is diminished
      when we would commemorate the men and things that have preceded us. The
      cloud of passion in the first instance, or in the other the mist of time,
      may render it equally hard and perplexing to discriminate.
    </p>
    <p>
      It should not be forgotten that the most authentic and interesting
      histories are those which have been composed by actors in the transactions
      which they record. The cotemporary writer who is personally familiar with
      his theme has unquestionably a great advantage; but it is assumed that his
      pen can scarcely escape the bias of private friendship or political
      connection. Yet truth, after all, is the sovereign passion of mankind; nor
      is the writer of these pages prepared to relinquish his conviction that it
      is possible to combine the accuracy of the present with the impartiality
      of the future.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord George Bentinck had sat for eighteen years in Parliament, and, before
      he entered it, had been for three years private secretary to Mr. Canning,
      who had married the sister of the Duchess of Portland. Such a post would
      seem a happy commencement of a public career; but whether it were the
      untimely death of his distinguished relative, or a natural indisposition,
      Lord George&mdash;though he retained the seat for King&rsquo;s Lynn, in which he
      had succeeded his uncle, the late governor-general of India&mdash;directed
      his energies to other than parliamentary pursuits. For some time he had
      followed his profession, which was that of arms, but of late years he had
      become absorbed in the pastime and fortunes of the turf, in which his
      whole being seemed engrossed, and which he pursued on a scale that perhaps
      has never been equalled.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord George had withdrawn his support from the government of the Duke of
      Wellington, when the friends of Mr. Canning quitted that administration;
      and when in time they formed not the least considerable portion of the
      cabinet of Lord Grey, he resumed his seat on the ministerial benches. On
      that occasion an administrative post was offered him and declined; and on
      subsequent occasions similar requests to him to take office were equally
      in vain. Lord George, therefore, was an original and hearty supporter of
      the Reform Bill, and he continued to uphold the Whigs in all their policy
      until the secession of Lord Stanley, between whom and himself there
      subsisted warm personal as well as political sympathies. Although he was
      not only a friend to religious liberty, as we shall have occasion
      afterwards to remark, but always viewed with great sympathy the condition
      of the Roman Catholic portion of the Irish population, he shrank from the
      taint of the ultra-montane intrigue. Accompanying Lord Stanley, he became
      in due time a member of the great Conservative opposition, and, as he
      never did anything by halves, became one of the most earnest, as he
      certainly was one of the most enlightened, supporters of Sir Robert Peel.
      His trust in that minister was indeed absolute, and he has subsequently
      stated in conversation that when, towards the end of the session of &lsquo;45, a
      member of the Tory party ventured to predict and denounce the impending
      defection of the minister, there was no member of the Conservative party
      who more violently condemned the unfounded attack, or more readily
      impugned the motives of the assailant.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was not a very frequent attendant in the House. He might be counted on
      for a party division, and when, towards the termination of the Melbourne
      ministry, the forces were very nearly balanced, and the struggle became
      very close, he might have been observed, on more than one occasion,
      entering the House at a late hour, clad in a white great-coat, which
      softened, but did not conceal, the scarlet hunting-coat.
    </p>
    <p>
      Although he took no part in debate, and attended the House rather as a
      club than as a senate, he possessed a great and peculiar influence in it.
      He was viewed with interest, and often with extraordinary regard, by every
      sporting man in the House. With almost all of these he was acquainted;
      some of them, on either side, were his intimate companions and
      confederates.
    </p>
    <p>
      His eager and energetic disposition; his quick perception, clear judgment,
      and prompt decision; the tenacity with which he clung to his opinions; his
      frankness and love of truth; his daring and speculative spirit; his lofty
      bearing, blended as it was with a simplicity of manner very remarkable;
      the ardour of his friendships, even the fierceness of his hates and
      prejudices&mdash;all combined to form one of those strong characters who,
      whatever may be their pursuit, must always direct and lead.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nature had clothed this vehement spirit with a material form which was in
      perfect harmony with its noble and commanding character. He was tall and
      remarkable for his presence; his countenance almost a model of manly
      beauty; the face oval, the complexion clear and mantling; the forehead
      lofty and white; the nose aquiline and delicately moulded; the upper lip
      short. But it was in the dark-brown eye, which flashed with piercing
      scrutiny, that all the character of the man came forth: a brilliant
      glance, not soft, but ardent, acute, imperious, incapable of deception or
      of being deceived.
    </p>
    <p>
      Although he had not much sustained his literary culture, and of late
      years, at any rate, had not given his mind to political study, he had in
      the course of his life seen and heard a great deal, and with profit.
      Nothing escaped his observation; he forgot nothing and always thought. So
      it was that on all the great political questions of the day he had arrived
      at conclusions which guided him. He always took large views and had no
      prejudices about things, whatever he might indulge in as to persons. He
      was always singularly anxious to acquire the truth, and would spare no
      pains for that purpose; but when once his mind was made up, it was
      impossible to influence him.
    </p>
    <p>
      In politics, he was a Whig of 1688, which became him, modified, however,
      by all the experience of the present age. He wished to see our society
      founded on a broad basis of civil and religious liberty. He retained much
      of the old jealousy of the court, but had none of popular franchises. He
      was for the Established Church, but for nothing more, and was very
      repugnant to priestly domination. As for the industrial question, he was
      sincerely opposed to the Manchester scheme, because he thought that its
      full development would impair and might subvert our territorial
      constitution, which he held to be the real security of our freedom, and
      because he believed that it would greatly injure Ireland, and certainly
      dissolve our colonial empire.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had a great respect for merchants, though he looked with some degree of
      jealousy on the development of our merely foreign trade. His knowledge of
      character qualified him in a great degree to govern men. and if some
      drawbacks from this influence might be experienced in his too rigid
      tenacity of opinion, and in some quickness of temper, which, however,
      always sprang from a too sensitive heart, great compensation might be
      found in the fact that there probably never was a human being so entirely
      devoid of conceit and so completely exempt from selfishness. Nothing
      delighted him more than to assist and advance others. All the fruits of
      his laborious investigations were always at the service of his friends
      without reserve or self-consideration. He encouraged them by making
      occasions for their exertions, and would relinquish his own opportunity
      without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation, if he thought the abandonment might aid a
      better man.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER II.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>The Protection Problem</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      THERE was at this time a metropolitan society for the protection of
      agriculture, of which the Duke of Richmond was chairman, and which had
      been established to counteract the proceedings of the Manchester
      confederation. It was in communication with the local Protection societies
      throughout the country; and although the adhesion to its service by the
      parliamentary members of the old Conservative party had been more limited
      than might have been expected, nevertheless many county members were
      enrolled in its ranks, and a few of the most eminent were actively engaged
      in its management. In this they were assisted by an equal number of the
      most considerable tenant-farmers. In the present state of affairs, the
      council of the Protection Society afforded the earliest and readiest means
      to collect opinion and methodize action; and it was therefore resolved
      among its managers to invite all members of Parliament who sympathized
      with their purpose, though they might not be members of their society, to
      attend their meeting and aid them at the present crisis with their
      counsel.
    </p>
    <p>
      A compliance with this request occasioned the first public appearance of
      Lord George Bentinck, as one of the organizers of a political party,&mdash;for
      he aspired to no more. The question was, whether a third political party
      could be created and sustained,&mdash;a result at all times and under any
      circumstances difficult to achieve, and which had failed even under the
      auspices of accomplished and experienced statesmen. In the present
      emergency, was there that degree of outraged public feeling in the
      country, which would overcome all obstacles and submit to any
      inconveniences, in order to ensure its representation in the House of
      Commons? It was the opinion of Lord George Bentinck that such was the
      case; that if for the moment that feeling was inert and latent, it was an
      apathy which arose from the sudden shock of public confidence, and the
      despair which under such circumstances takes possession of men; that if it
      could be shown to the country, that the great bulk of the Conservative
      party were true to their faith, and were not afraid, even against the
      fearful odds which they would have to encounter, to proclaim it, the
      confidence and the courage of the country would rally, and the party in
      the House of Commons would find external sympathy and support.
    </p>
    <p>
      With these views it became of paramount importance that the discussion on
      the government measure should be sustained on the part of the
      Protectionists with their utmost powers. They must prove to the country,
      that they could represent their cause in debate, and to this end all their
      energies must be directed. It would be fatal to them if the discussion
      were confined to one or two nights, and they overborne by the leading and
      habitual speakers. They must bring forward new men; they must encourage
      the efforts of those now unrecognized and comparatively unknown; they must
      overcome all reserve and false shame, and act as became men called upon to
      a critical and leading part, not by their arrogance or ambition, but by
      the desertion and treachery of those to whose abilities they had bowed
      without impatience and reluctance. There was a probability of several
      vacancies immediately taking place in counties where the seats were filled
      by converts, but men of too scrupulous an honour to retain the charge
      which they had sought and accepted as the professors of opinions contrary
      to those which now received their mournful adhesion. The result of these
      elections would greatly depend upon the spirit and figure of the party in
      the House of Commons, in their first encounter with the enemy.
    </p>
    <p>
      These views, so just and so spirited, advanced with high-bred earnestness
      by one rarely met in political turmoils, and enforced with a freshness and
      an affable simplicity which were very winning, wonderfully encouraged
      those to whom they were addressed. All seemed touched by the flame which
      burned in the breast of that man, so lofty in his thoughts but so humble
      in his ambition, who counselled ever the highest deeds, and was himself
      ever prepared to undertake the humblest duties.
    </p>
    <p>
      The business of this day was notable. Calculations were made of those who
      might be fairly counted on to take a part in debate; some discussion even
      ensued as to who should venture to reply late at night to the minister; a
      committee was appointed to communicate with all members on either side
      supposed to be favourable to the principle of Protection to the labour of
      the country; a parliamentary staff was organized, not only to secure the
      attendance of members, but to guard over the elections; finally, the form
      of the amendment to the government measure was discussed and settled, and
      it was agreed that, if possible, it should be moved by Mr. Philip Miles,
      the member for the city of Bristol, and who had the ear of the House not
      merely from the importance of his constituency, and seconded by Sir
      William Heathcote, the member for the county of Hampshire, a country
      gentleman of great accomplishments, and so highly considered by both sides
      that he was very generally spoken of as a probable successor to the chair.
    </p>
    <p>
      All was furnished by this lately forlorn party except a leader, and even
      then many eyes were turned and some hopeful murmurs addressed towards Lord
      George Bentinck, who in the course of this morning had given such various
      proofs of his fitness and such evidence of his resource. But he shook his
      head with a sort of suppressed smile, a faint blush, and an air of proud
      humility that was natural to him: &lsquo;I think,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;we have had enough
      of leaders; it is not in my way; I shall remain the last of the rank and
      file.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      So little desirous, originally, was Lord George Bentinck to interfere
      actively in that great controversy in which ultimately he took so leading
      a part, that before the meeting of Parliament in 1846 he begged a
      gentleman whom he greatly esteemed, a member of the legal profession, and
      since raised to its highest honours, to call upon him at Harcourt House,
      when he said that he had taken great pains to master the case of the
      protective system; that he was convinced its abrogation would ultimately
      be very injurious to this country; but although, both in point of argument
      and materials, he feared no opponent, he felt constitutionally so
      incapable of ever making a speech, that he wished to induce some eminent
      lawyer to enter the House of Commons, and avail himself of his views and
      materials, which he had, with that object, reduced to writing. He begged,
      therefore, that his friend, although a free-trader, would assist him, by
      suggesting a fitting person for this office.
    </p>
    <p>
      Accordingly, the name of a distinguished member of the bar, who had
      already published a work of merit, impugning the principles of the new
      commercial system, was mentioned, and this learned gentleman was applied
      to, and was not indisposed to accept the task. A mere accident prevented
      this arrangement being accomplished. Lord George then requested his friend
      to make some other selection; but his adviser very sensibly replied, that
      although the House of Commons would have listened with respect to a
      gentleman who had given evidence of the sincerity of his convictions by
      the publication of a work which had no reference to Parliament, they would
      not endure the instance of a lawyer brought into the House merely to speak
      from his brief; and that the attempt would be utterly fruitless. He
      earnestly counselled Lord George himself to make the effort; but Lord
      George, with characteristic tenacity, clung for some time to his project,
      though his efforts to accomplish it were fortunately not successful.
    </p>
    <p>
      Some of the friends of Lord George Bentinck, remembering his inexperience
      in debate, aware of the great length at which he must necessarily treat
      the theme, and mindful that he was not physically well-qualified for
      controlling popular assemblies, not having a strong voice, or, naturally,
      a very fluent manner, were anxious that he should not postpone his speech
      until an hour so late; that an audience, jaded by twelve nights&rsquo; 
      discussion, would be ill-attuned to statistical arguments and economical
      details. But still clinging to the hope that some accident might yet again
      postpone the division, so that the Protectionists might gain the vote of
      Mr. Hildyard, who had been returned that day for South Notts, having
      defeated a cabinet minister, Lord George remained motionless until long
      past midnight. Mr. Cobden having spoken on the part of the confederation,
      the closing of the debate was felt to be inevitable. Even then, by
      inducing a Protectionist to solicit the Speaker&rsquo;s eye, Lord George
      attempted to avert the division; but no supporter of the government
      measure, of any colour, advancing to reply to this volunteer, Bentinck was
      obliged to rise. He came out like a lion forced from his lair. And so it
      happened, that after all his labours of body and mind, after all his
      research and unwearied application and singular vigilance, after having
      been at his post for a month, never leaving the House, even for
      refreshment, he had to undertake the most difficult enterprise in which a
      man can well embark, with a concurrence of every disadvantage which could
      ensure failure and defeat. It would seem that the audience, the subject,
      and the orator, must be equally exhausted; for the assembly had listened
      for twelve nights to the controversy, and he who was about to address them
      had, according to his strange habit, taken no sustenance the whole day; it
      being his custom to dine after the House was up, which was very often long
      after midnight, and this, with the exception of a slender breakfast,
      rigidly restricted to dry toast, was his only meal in the four-and-twenty
      hours.
    </p>
    <p>
      He had been forced to this regimen, from food exercising a lethargic
      influence over him; so that, in addition to some constitutional weakness
      in his organ, he usually laboured, when he addressed the House, under the
      disadvantage of general exhaustion. And this was, no doubt, a principal
      cause of that over-excitement and apparently unnecessary energy in his
      manner of speaking, of which he was himself perfectly, and even painfully,
      conscious. He was wont to say, that before he could speak he had to make a
      voice, and, as it were, to pump it from the very core of his frame. One
      who took a great interest in his success once impressed on him the
      expediency of trusting entirely to his natural voice and the interest and
      gravity of his matter, which, combined with his position as the recognized
      leader of a great party, would be adequate to command the attention of his
      audience; and he subsequently endeavoured very often to comply with this
      suggestion. He endeavoured also very much to control his redundancy of
      action and gesture, when that peculiarity was pointed out to him with the
      delicacy, but the sincerity, of friendship. He entirely freed himself from
      a very awkward feature of his first style of speaking, namely, the
      frequent repetition of a sentence, which seemed at first a habit
      inveterate with him; but such was his force of will, that when the
      necessity of ridding himself of this drawback was properly pointed out to
      him, he achieved the desired result. No one bore criticism more gently and
      kindly, so long as it was confined to his personal and intellectual
      characteristics, for he was a man absolutely without vanity or conceit,
      who thought very humbly of himself, in respect of abilities, and deemed no
      labour too great to achieve even a slight improvement. But though in these
      respects the very child of simplicity, he was a man of almost unexampled
      pride, and chafed under criticism, when his convictions or his conduct
      were questioned. He was very tenacious of his opinion, almost inexorable;
      and it required a courage nearly equal to his own, combined with a serene
      temper, successfully to impugn his conclusions.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not, therefore, excited by vanity, but sustained by self-respect, by an
      overpowering feeling that he owed it to himself and the opinions he held,
      to show to the world that they had not been lightly adopted and should not
      be lightly laid aside, Bentinck rose, long past the noon of night, at the
      end of this memorable debate, to undertake an office from which the most
      successful and most experienced rhetoricians of Parliament would have
      shrunk with intuitive discretion. But duty scorns prudence, and criticism
      has few terrors for a man with a great purpose. Unshaken by the adverse
      hour and circumstances, he proceeded to accomplish the object which he had
      long meditated, and for which he was fully prepared.
    </p>
    <p>
      Reminding the House, while he appealed to their indulgence, that, though
      he had had the honour of a seat for eight parliaments, he had never once
      ventured to trespass on its time on any subject of great debate, he at
      once took a clear and comprehensive ground of objection to the government
      scheme. He opposed it not only because he objected to the great change
      contemplated with respect to the agricultural interest, but, on principle,
      to the entire measure, &lsquo;a great commercial revolution, which we are of
      opinion that the circumstances of the country do not by any means
      require.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Noticing the observation of the Secretary at War, that the agricultural
      interest, in submitting to this great change, might now accept it with
      honour, instead of its being eventually extorted by force, he happily
      retorted, that vicious as he thought the measure, he should feel it
      deprived of half its vice if it could be carried without loss of honour,
      damage to reputation, and forfeiture of public character to a vast number
      of gentlemen now present. And he proceeded to show among other
      testimonies, by an appeal to the distinct language of the speech from the
      throne on the dissolution of 1841, that &lsquo;every member who occupied a seat
      in this House was returned pledged either to oppose or maintain the
      principle of protection to national industry.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Adverting to the new position, that the experience of the last three years
      justified the reversal of the system which the existing administration had
      been summoned to office to uphold, he wisely remarked, that &lsquo;the country
      will not be satisfied with three years&rsquo; experience of any system. Three
      years&rsquo; experience is not sufficiently extensive to afford a proper
      criterion by which we may decide the failure or success of any description
      of policy whatsoever.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Noticing that the minister had more especially founded &lsquo;his present belief
      in doctrines contrary to those which he had heretofore uniformly
      maintained,&rsquo; by the assumption that the price of corn would not be more
      reduced than the price of cattle and other commodities affected by the
      tariff of 1842, and also by the results of previous experiments in the
      instances of silk and wool, Lord George &lsquo;accepted his challenge&rsquo; on these
      grounds, and proceeded in great detail to investigate these examples.
    </p>
    <p>
      The House listened with great attention for full two hours, during which
      he treated these subjects. This attention no doubt was generally accorded
      because it was felt due to the occasion, and, under the circumstances, to
      the speaker; but those who, however contrary might be the results at which
      they had arrived, had themselves deeply entered into these investigations,
      recognized very soon that Bentinck was master of his subject. Sir Robert
      Peel looked round very often with that expression of appreciation which it
      was impossible for his nature to refuse to parliamentary success, even
      when the ability displayed was hostile to his projects. The minister, with
      reference to the wool trade, had dwelt on the year 1842, when prices were
      much depressed, while they had greatly rallied in 1844, when the
      importation of foreign wool had risen from forty-five to sixty-five
      millions of pounds; and he had drawn a triumphant inference that the
      increase of importation and the increase of price were in consequence of
      the reduction of the duty. This instance had produced a great effect; but
      Lord George showed the House, by a reference to the tables of 1836, that
      the importation of foreign wool had then risen to sixty-five millions of
      pounds, and that large foreign importation was consistent with high prices
      to the domestic grower. Nor was he less successful about the foreign
      cattle. He reminded his friends on the Treasury bench how strenuously,
      previously to the introduction of the tariff of 1842, they had urged upon
      their agricultural friends that no foreign cattle could enter under their
      regulations, and that the whole object of the change was to strengthen the
      hands of the agricultural interest, as regarded more essential protection,
      by removing the odium of a nominal protection: &lsquo;Convinced by my right
      honourable friends, in 1842, that their tariff would be as inoperative as
      it has proved, I gave my cordial support to the measure.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Perceiving that the House began to be wearied with the details of the silk
      trade, which he had investigated with extraordinary zeal, he postponed
      until the specific vote in committee his objections to the reduction of
      the timber duties. The fact is, he had so thoroughly mastered all these
      topics, that his observations on each of them would have themselves formed
      a speech of sufficient length and interest. But he successfully checked
      any interruption by what may be fairly styled his dignified diffidence.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;I trust the House will recollect that I am fighting the battle of a party
      whose leaders have deserted them; and though I cannot wield my weapons
      with the skill of the right honourable gentleman on the Treasury bench, I
      trust the House will remember the emergency which has dragged me out to
      intrude upon their indulgence.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      And again, when he announced that he was now about to investigate the
      pretext of &lsquo;famine in the land,&rsquo; and some impatience was exhibited, he
      drew up and said, &lsquo;I think, having sat eighteen years in this house, and
      never once having trespassed on its time before in any one single great
      debate, I may appeal to the past as a proof that I duly weigh the measure
      of my abilities, and that I am painfully conscious of my proper place in
      this house.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      It was impossible to resist such appeals from such a person, even at three
      o&rsquo;clock in the morning; and diffident, but determined, he then entered
      into what was, perhaps, the most remarkable portion of his speech&mdash;an
      investigation of what was the real position of the country with respect to
      the supply of food in the past autumn and at the present moment. Having
      shown from the trade circulars that, far from there being at present &lsquo;a
      wheat famine,&rsquo; the stocks in the granaries in bond were more than double
      in amount to what they were in the year 1845, &lsquo;a year admitted by all to
      be a year of extraordinary abundance,&rsquo; he proceeded to the Irish part of
      the question: &lsquo;I beg leave to say, that though this debate has now
      continued for three weeks, I am the first gentleman who has at all entered
      into the real state of the case as regards the allegation of a potato
      famine in Ireland, upon which, be it remembered, is founded the sole case
      of her Majesty&rsquo;s ministers for a repeal of the corn laws.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      And this was very true. The fact is, though the Protectionist party had
      made a most unexpected and gallant defence, no one was really prepared for
      the contest except Bentinck. Between the end of November and the meeting
      of Parliament, he had thrown all the energies of his passionate mind into
      this question. He had sought information on all points and always at the
      fountain-head. He had placed himself in immediate communication with the
      ablest representatives of every considerable interest attacked, and being
      ardent and indefatigable, gifted with a tenacious memory and a very clear
      and searching spirit, there was scarcely a detail or an argument connected
      with his subject which was not immediately at his command. No speeches in
      favour of the protective system have ever been made in the House of
      Commons compared with his in depth and range of knowledge; and had there
      been any member not connected with the government, who had been able to
      vindicate the merits of British agriculture as he did when the final
      struggle occurred, the impression which was made by the too-often
      unanswered speeches of the Manchester confederation would never have been
      effected. But the great Conservative party, exhausted by the labours of
      ten years of opposition, thought that after the triumph of &lsquo;41 it might
      claim a furlough. The defence of their cause was left entirely to the
      ministers of their choice; and ministers, distracted with detail and
      wearied with official labour, are not always the most willing or the most
      efficient champions of the organic principles of a party.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sir Robert Peel, with respect to the disease in the Irish potato, had
      largely referred to the statements of the inspectors of police. Lord
      George wanted to know why the reports of the lieutenants of the Irish
      counties were not given. Being well-informed upon this head, he asked the
      government to produce the report of Lord Duncannon, the lord lieutenant of
      Carlow; especially that of his noble father, the earl of Bes-borough, lord
      lieutenant of Kilkenny. &lsquo;Is there any man in England or in Ireland whose
      opinion, from his business-like habits, his great practical knowledge, and
      the warm and affectionate interest which for a long period of years he has
      taken in everything which concerns the interests of Ireland, especially of
      the Irish peasantry&mdash;is there any man whose opinion would have
      greater weight? The opinion of Lord Bes-borough on an Irish subject, the
      lieutenant of an Irish county, and himself long a cabinet minister? Well,
      sir, I am assured that, having taken the utmost pains to investigate this
      matter, Lord Besborough has made an elaborate report to the Irish
      government. Well, then, I desire to know why Lord Besborough&rsquo;s report to
      the Irish government is suppressed? Is it because that report would not
      assist the present policy of her Majesty&rsquo;s government?&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      He alleged the names of many other individuals of high station who had
      officially reported on the subject to the government: of Lord Castlereagh,
      the lieutenant of Down, a member of the House; of Lord de Vesci, whose son
      was sitting for the Queen&rsquo;s County, over which his father presided in the
      name of the queen. A murmur ran round the House, that it would have been
      as well if these reports had been produced.
    </p>
    <p>
      The last portion of this argumentative harangue referred to the most
      important division of the subject. Bentinck met it boldly, without
      evasion; nor was there any portion of his address more interesting, more
      satisfactory, and more successful. &lsquo;I now come,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;to the great
      challenge, which is ever and anon put forth by the Anti-Corn Law League,
      and now by their disciples, her Majesty&rsquo;s ministers. How are we, they ask,
      with our limited extent of territory, to feed a population annually and
      rapidly increasing at the rate of three hundred thousand a-year, as
      generally stated by the member for Stockport&mdash;a rate increased by my
      noble friend, the member for the West Riding, to a thousand a day, or
      three hundred and sixty-five thousand a year?&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      He first proved in a complete manner that, from the year 1821 to the year
      1844, the population of the country had increased at the rate of less than
      thirty-two per cent., while the growth of wheat during the same period had
      increased no less than sixty-four per cent. He then proceeded to inquire
      why, with such an increased produce, we were still, as regards bread corn,
      to a certain extent, an importing nation? This he accounted for by the
      universally improved condition of the people, and the enlarged command of
      food by the working classes. He drew an animated picture, founded entirely
      on the representations of writers and public men adverse to the Protective
      System, of the superior condition of the people of &lsquo;England, happy
      England,&rsquo; to that of other countries: how they consumed much more of the
      best food, and lived much longer. This was under Protection, which Lord
      John Russell had stigmatized, in his letter, &lsquo;the bane of agriculture.&rsquo; 
      &lsquo;In the history of my noble friend&rsquo;s illustrious family,&rsquo; he continued, &lsquo;I
      should have thought that he would have found a remarkable refutation of
      such a notion.&rsquo; And then he drew a lively sketch of the colossal and
      patriotic works of the Earls and Dukes of Bedford, &lsquo;whereby they had
      drained and reclaimed three hundred thousand acres of land drowned in
      water, and brought them into cultivation, and thus converted into fertile
      fields a vast morass extending over seven counties in England.&rsquo; Could the
      system which had inspired such enterprise be justly denounced as baneful?
    </p>
    <p>
      To show the means of the country to sustain even a much-increasing
      population, and that those means were in operation, he entered into one of
      the most original and interesting calculations that was perhaps ever
      offered to the House of Commons. Reminding the House that in the preceding
      year (1845) the farmers of England, at a cost of two millions sterling,
      had imported two hundred and eighty thousand tons of guano, he proceeded
      to estimate what would be the effect on the productive powers of the land
      of that novel application. Two hundred thousand tons, or, in other words,
      four million hundred-weight, were expended on the land in 1845. Half of
      these, he assumed, would be applied to the growth of wheat, and the other
      half to the growth of turnips preparatory to the wheat crop of the ensuing
      year. According to the experiments tried and recorded in the Royal
      Agricultural Journal, it would seem that by the application of two
      hundred-weight of guano to an acre of wheat land, the produce would be
      increased by one quarter per acre. At this rate, one hundred thousand
      tons, or two million hundred-weight of guano would add one million
      quarters of wheat to the crop, or bread for one year for one million of
      people. But as he was very careful never to over-state a case, Lord George
      assumed, that it would require three hundred hundredweight of guano to an
      acre to produce an extra quarter of wheat. According to this estimate, one
      hundred thousand tons of guano, applied to the land in 1845, must have
      added six hundred and sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-six
      quarters of grain to the wheat crop, or, in other words, bread for six
      hundred and sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-six additional
      mouths. &lsquo;And now for turnips,&rsquo; he continued. The Norfolk authorities whom
      he quoted have in like manner proved that two hundred-weight of guano will
      add ten tons per acre to the turnip crop. But again, for fear of
      exaggeration, he supposed that three hundred-weight would be requisite to
      create such increased fertility. In this case, two million hundredweight
      of guano would add six million six hundred and sixty-six thousand six
      hundred and sixty tons to the natural unmanured produce of the crop. Now
      it is generally considered that one ton of Swedes would last twenty sheep
      three weeks, and that each sheep should gain half a pound of meat per
      week, or one pound and a half in three weeks; thus twenty sheep feeding on
      one ton of turnips in three weeks should in the aggregate make, as the
      graziers say, thirty pounds of mutton. But to be safe in his estimate, he
      would assume that one ton of turnips makes only half this quantity.
      &lsquo;Multiply, then,&rsquo; exclaimed Bentinck with the earnest air of a crusader,
      &lsquo;six million six hundred and sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty by
      fifteen, and you have no less than ninety-nine million nine hundred and
      ninety-nine thousand and nine hundred pounds of mutton as the fruits of
      one hundred thousand tons of guano; which, at ninety-two pounds per man&mdash;the
      average Englishman&rsquo;s allowance&mdash;affords meat for one million eight
      hundred and sixty thousand nine hundred and fifty-five&mdash;nearly two
      million of her Majesty&rsquo;s subjects.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      This is a specimen of those original and startling calculations to which
      the House was soon to become accustomed from his lips. They were received
      at first with astonishment and incredulity; but they were never impugned.
      The fact is, he was extremely cautious in his data, and no man was more
      accustomed ever to impress upon his friends the extreme expediency of not
      over-stating a case. It should also be remarked of Lord George Bentinck,
      that in his most complicated calculations he never sought aid from notes.
    </p>
    <p>
      We have necessarily only noticed a few of the traits of this remarkable
      performance. Its termination was impressive.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;We have heard in the course of these discussions a good deal about an
      ancient monarchy, a reformed House of Commons, and a proud aristocracy.
      Sir, with regard to our ancient monarchy, I have no observation to make;
      but, if so humble an individual as myself might be permitted to whisper, a
      word in the ear of that illustrious and royal personage who, as he stands
      nearest, so is he justly dearest, to her who sits upon the throne, I would
      take leave to say, that I cannot but think he listened to ill advice,
      when, on the first night of this great discussion, he allowed himself to
      be seduced by the first minister of the crown to come down to this House
      to usher in, to give <i>éclat</i>, and as it were by reflection from the
      queen, to give the semblance of the personal sanction of her Majesty to a
      measure which, be it for good or for evil, a great majority at least of
      the landed aristocracy of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland, imagine
      fraught with deep injury, if not ruin, to them
    </p>
    <p>
      &mdash;a measure which, not confined in its operation to this great class,
      is calculated to grind down countless smaller interests engaged in the
      domestic trades and, interests of the empire, transferring the profits of
      all these interests&mdash;English, Scotch, Irish, and Colonial
    </p>
    <p>
      &mdash;great and small alike, from Englishmen, from Scotchmen, and from
      Irishmen, to Americans, to Frenchmen, to Russians, to Poles, to Prussians,
      and to Germans. Sir, I come now to the reformed House of Commons; and as
      one who was a party to that great measure, I cannot but feel a deep
      interest in its success, and more especially in that portion of it which
      extended the franchise to the largest and the most respectable body in the
      kingdom&mdash;I mean the landed tenantry of England; and deeply should I
      regret should any large proportion of those members who have been sent to
      Parliament to represent them in this House, prove to be the men to bring
      lasting dishonour upon themselves, their constituencies, and this House,
      by an act of tergiversation so gross as to be altogether unprecedented in
      the annals of any reformed or unreformed House of Commons. Sir, lastly, I
      come to the &ldquo;proud aristocracy.&rdquo; We are a proud aristocracy, but if we are
      proud, it is that we are proud in the chastity of our honour. If we
      assisted in &lsquo;41 in turning the Whigs out of office, because we did not
      consider a fixed duty of eight shillings a quarter on foreign corn a
      sufficient protection, it was with honesty of purpose and in
      single-mindedness we did so; and as we were not before the fact, we will
      not be accomplices after the fact in the fraud by which the Whig ministers
      were expelled from power. If we are a proud aristocracy, we are proud of
      our honour, inasmuch as we never have been guilty, and never can be
      guilty, of double-dealing with the farmers of England&mdash;of swindling
      our opponents, deceiving our friends, or betraying our constituents.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      The division was called. The West-India interest, notwithstanding the
      amendment was moved by the member for Bristol, deserted the
      Protectionists. Deaf to the appeals, and the remonstrances, and the
      warnings of Lord George, one of their leading members replied, with a
      smile of triumphant content, that &lsquo;they had made a satisfactory
      arrangement for themselves.&rsquo; How satisfactory did the West-Indians find it
      four months subsequently? All the shipping interest deserted the land.
      They were for everything free, except navigation; there was no danger of
      that being interfered with; &lsquo;it rested on quite distinct grounds&mdash;national
      grounds.&rsquo; They were warned, but they smiled in derisive self-complacency.
      Lord George Bentinck lived to have the West-India interest and the
      shipping interest on their knees to him, to defend their perilled or to
      restore their ruined fortunes; and with characteristic generosity and
      proud consistency, he undertook the task, and sacrificed his life in the
      attempt.
    </p>
    <p>
      Notwithstanding these terrible defalcations, when the numbers were
      announced, at nearly four o&rsquo;clock in the morning, the majority had not
      reached those three magical figures supposed necessary, under the
      circumstances, to success. In a house of five hundred and eighty-one
      members present, the amendment of the Protectionists was defeated only by
      ninety-seven; and two hundred and forty-two gentlemen, in spite of
      desertion, difficulty, and defeat, still maintained the &lsquo;chastity of their
      honour.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER III.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>The Irish Question</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      IN THE meantime, besides the prolonged and unforeseen resistance of the
      Protectionists, there were other and unexpected causes at work which
      equally, or perhaps even more powerfully tended to the fulfilment of the
      scheme of delay, which Lord George Bentinck had recommended his friends to
      adopt and encourage.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the latter months of the year 1845, there broke out in some of the
      counties of Ireland one of those series of outrages which have hitherto
      periodically occurred in districts of that country. Assassination and
      crimes of violence were rife: men on the queen&rsquo;s highway were shot from
      behind hedges, or suddenly torn from their horses and beaten to death with
      clubs; houses were visited in the night by bodies of men, masked and armed&mdash;their
      owners dragged from their beds, and, in the presence of their wives and
      children, maimed and mutilated; the administration of unlawful oaths, with
      circumstances of terror, indicated the existence of secret confederations,
      whose fell intents, profusely and ostentatiously announced by threatening
      letters, were frequently and savagely perpetrated.
    </p>
    <p>
      These barbarous distempers had their origin in the tenure of land in
      Ireland, and in the modes of its occupation. A combination of causes,
      political, social, and economical, had for more than a century unduly
      stimulated the population of a country which had no considerable resources
      except in the soil. That soil had become divided into minute allotments,
      held by a pauper tenantry, at exorbitant rents, of a class of middlemen,
      themselves necessitous, and who were mere traders in land. A fierce
      competition raged amid the squalid multitude for these strips of earth
      which were their sole means of existence. To regulate this fatal rivalry,
      and restrain this emulation of despair, the peasantry, enrolled in secret
      societies, found refuge in an inexorable code. He who supplanted another
      in the occupation of the soil was doomed by an occult tribunal, from which
      there was no appeal, to a terrible retribution. His house was visited in
      the night by whitefeet and ribbonmen&mdash;his doom was communicated to
      him, by the post, in letters, signed by Terry Alt, or Molly M&rsquo;Guire, or he
      was suddenly shot, like a dog, by the orders of Captain Rock. Yet even
      these violent inflictions rather punished than prevented the conduct
      against which they were directed. The Irish peasant had to choose between
      starving and assassination. If, in deference to an anonymous mandate, he
      relinquished his holding, he and those who depended on him were outcasts
      and wanderers; if he retained or accepted it, his life might be the
      forfeit, but subsistence was secured; and in poor and lawless countries,
      the means of living are more valued than life. Those who have treated of
      the agrarian crimes of Ireland have remarked, that the facility with which
      these outrages have been committed has only been equalled by the
      difficulty of punishing them. A murder, perpetrated at noonday, in the
      sight of many persons, cannot be proved in a court of justice. The
      spectators are never witnesses; and it has been inferred from this, that
      the outrage is national, and that the heart of the populace is with the
      criminal. But though a chief landlord, or a stipendiary magistrate, may
      occasionally be sacrificed, the great majority of victims are furnished by
      the humblest class. Not sympathy, but terror, seals the lip and clouds the
      eye of the bystander. And this is proved by the fact that while those who
      have suffered have almost always publicly declared that they were unable
      to recognize their assailants, and believed them to be strangers, they
      have frequently, in confidence, furnished the police with the names of the
      guilty.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus, there is this remarkable characteristic of the agrarian anarchy of
      Ireland which marks it out from all similar conditions of other countries:
      it is a war of the poor against the poor.
    </p>
    <p>
      Before the rapid increase of population had forced governments to study
      political economy and to investigate the means of subsisting a people,
      statesmen had contented themselves by attributing to political causes
      these predial disturbances, and by recommending for them political
      remedies. The course of time, which had aggravated the condition of the
      Irish peasantry, had increased the numbers, the wealth, and the general
      importance of those of the middle classes of Ireland who professed the
      Roman Catholic faith. Shut out from the political privileges of the
      constitution, these formed a party of discontent that was a valuable ally
      to the modern Whigs, too long excluded from that periodical share of power
      which is the life-blood of a parliamentary government and the safeguard of
      a constitutional monarchy. The misgovernment of Ireland became therefore a
      stock topic of the earlier Opposition of the present century; and
      advocating the cause of their clients, who wished to become mayors, and
      magistrates, and members of the legislature, they argued that in the
      concession of those powers and dignities, and perhaps in the discreet
      confiscation of the property of the Church, the only cures could be found
      for threatening notices, robbery of arms, administering of unlawful oaths,
      burglary, murder, and arson.
    </p>
    <p>
      Yet if these acts of violence were attributable to defective political
      institutions, why, as was usually the case, were they partial in their
      occurrence? Why were they limited to particular districts? If political
      grievances were the cause, the injustice would be as sharp in tranquil
      Wexford as in turbulent Tipperary. Yet out of the thirty-two counties of
      Ireland, the outrages prevailed usually in less than a third. These
      outrages were never insurrectionary: they were not directed against
      existing authorities; they were stimulated by no public cause or clamour;
      it was the private individual who was attacked, and for a private reason.
      This was their characteristic.
    </p>
    <p>
      But as time elapsed, two considerable events occurred: the Roman Catholic
      restrictions were repealed, and the Whigs became ministers.
      Notwithstanding these great changes, the condition of the Irish peasantry
      remained the same; the tenure of land was unchanged, the modes of its
      occupation were unaltered, its possession was equally necessary and
      equally perilous. The same circumstances produced the same consequences.
      Notwithstanding even that the Irish Church had been remodelled, and its
      revenues not only commuted but curtailed; notwithstanding that Roman
      Catholics had not only become members of Parliament but even Parliament
      had been reformed; Irish outrage became more flagrant and more extensive
      than at any previous epoch&mdash;and the Whigs were ministers.
    </p>
    <p>
      Placed in this responsible position, forced to repress the evil, the
      causes of which they had so often explained, and which with their
      cooperation had apparently been so effectually removed, the Whig
      government were obliged to have recourse to the very means which they had
      so frequently denounced when recommended by their rivals, and that, too,
      on a scale of unusual magnitude and severity. They proposed for the
      adoption of Parliament one of those measures which would suspend the
      constitution of Ireland, and which are generally known by the name of
      Coercion Acts.
    </p>
    <p>
      The main and customary provisions of these Coercion Acts were of severe
      restraint, and scarcely less violent than the conduct they were
      constructed to repress. They invested the lord lieutenant with power to
      proclaim a district as disturbed, and then to place its inhabitants
      without the pale of the established law; persons out of their dwellings
      between sunset and sunrise were liable to transportation; and to secure
      the due execution of the law, prisoners were tried before military
      tribunals, and not by their peers, whose verdicts, from sympathy or
      terror, were usually found to baffle justice.
    </p>
    <p>
      These Coercion Acts were effectual; they invariably obtained their end,
      and the proclaimed districts became tranquil. But they were an affair of
      police, not of government; essentially temporary, their effect was almost
      as transient as their sway, and as they were never accompanied with any
      deep and sincere attempt to cope with the social circumstances which
      produced disorder, the recurrence of the chronic anarchy was merely an
      affair of time. Whether it were that they did not sufficiently apprehend
      the causes, or that they shrank from a solution which must bring them in
      contact with the millions of a surplus population, there seems always to
      have been an understanding between the public men of both parties, that
      the Irish difficulty should be deemed a purely political, or at the utmost
      a religious one. And even so late as 1846, no less a personage than the
      present chief secretary, put forward by his party to oppose an Irish
      Coercion Bill which themselves had loudly called for, declared that he
      could not sanction its penal enactments unless they were accompanied by
      the remedial measures that were necessary, to wit, an Irish Franchise
      Bill, and a Bill for the amendment of municipal corporations!
    </p>
    <p>
      When Sir Robert Peel, in 1841, after a memorable opposition of ten years,
      acceded to office, sustained by all the sympathies of the country, his
      Irish policy, not sufficiently noticed amid the vast and urgent questions
      with which he had immediately to deal, was, however, to the political
      observer significant and interesting. As a mere matter of party tactics,
      it was not for him too much to impute Irish disturbances to political and
      religious causes, even if the accumulated experience of the last ten years
      were not developing a conviction in his mind, that the methods hitherto
      adopted to ensure the tranquillity of that country were superficial and
      fallacious. His cabinet immediately recognized a distinction between
      political and predial sources of disorder. The first, they resolved into a
      mere system of agitation, no longer justifiable by the circumstances, and
      this they determined to put down. The second, they sought in the
      conditions under which land was occupied, and these they determined to
      investigate. Hence, on the one hand, the O&rsquo;Connell prosecution: on the
      other, the Devon commission.
    </p>
    <p>
      This was the bold and prudent policy of a minister who felt he had the
      confidence of the country and was sustained by great parliamentary
      majorities; and when the summoner of monster meetings was convicted, and
      the efficient though impartial manner in which the labours of the land
      commission were simultaneously conducted came to be bruited about, there
      seemed at last some prospect of the system of political quackery of which
      Ireland had been so long the victim being at last subverted. But there is
      nothing in which the power of circumstances is more evident than in
      politics. They baffle the forethought of statesmen, and control even the
      apparently inflexible laws of national development and decay.
    </p>
    <p>
      Had the government of 1841 succeeded in its justifiable expectation of
      terminating the trade of political agitation in Ireland, armed with all
      the authority and all the information with which the labours of the land
      commission would have furnished them, they would in all probability have
      successfully grappled with the real causes of Irish misery and misrule.
      They might have thoroughly reformed the modes by which land is holden and
      occupied; have anticipated the spontaneous emigration that now rages by an
      administrative enterprise scarcely more costly than the barren loan of
      &lsquo;47, and which would have wafted native energies to imperial shores; have
      limited under these circumstances the evil of the potato famine, even if
      the improved culture of the interval might not have altogether prevented
      that visitation; while the laws which regulated the competition between
      home and foreign industry in agricultural produce might have been modified
      with so much prudence, or, if necessary, ultimately repealed with so much
      precaution, that those rapid and startling vicissitudes that have so
      shattered the social fabric of Ireland might altogether have been avoided.
    </p>
    <p>
      But it was decreed that it should be otherwise. Having achieved the
      incredible conviction of O&rsquo;Connell, by an Irish jury, the great culprit
      baffled the vengeance of the law by a quirk which a lawyer only could have
      devised. As regards his Irish policy, Sir Robert Peel never recovered this
      blow, the severity of which was proportionably increased by its occurrence
      at a moment of unprecedented success. Resolute not to recur to his ancient
      Orangeism, yet desperate after his discomfiture of rallying a moderate
      party around his ministry, his practical mind, more clear-sighted than
      foreseeing, was alarmed at the absence of all influences for the
      government of Ireland. The tranquillity which might result from a reformed
      tenure of the soil, must, if attainable, be a distant blessing, and at
      present he saw only the obstacles to its fulfilment&mdash;prejudiced
      landlords, and the claims and necessities of pauper millions. He shrank
      from a theory which might be an illusion. He required a policy for the
      next post and the next division. There was in his view only one course to
      take, to outbid his predecessors as successfully in Irish politics as he
      was doing in taxes and tariffs. He resolved to appropriate the liberal
      party of Ireland, and merge it into the great Conservative confederation
      which was destined to destroy so many things. He acted with promptitude
      and energy, for Sir Robert Peel never hesitated when he had made up his
      mind. His real character was very different from his public reputation.
      Far from being timid and wary, he was audacious and even headstrong. It
      was his cold and constrained demeanour that misled the public. There never
      was a man who did such rash things in so circumspect a manner. He had been
      fortunate in early disembarrassing himself of the Orange counsellors who
      had conducted his Irish questions when in opposition; vacant judgeships
      had opportunely satisfied the recognized and respectable claims of Mr.
      Serjeant Jackson and Mr. Lefroy; and so Sir Robert Peel, without a qualm,
      suddenly began to govern Ireland by sending it &lsquo;messages of peace.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      They took various forms; sometimes a Charitable Bequests Act virtually
      placed the Roman Catholic hierarchy in friendly equality with the prelates
      of the Established Church; sometimes a &lsquo;godless college&rsquo; called forth a
      moan from alarmed and irritated Oxford; the endowment of Maynooth struck
      wider and deeper, and the middle-classes of England, roused from their
      religious lethargy, called in vain to the rescue of a Protestantism
      betrayed. But the minister was unshaken. Successful and self-sufficient,
      impressed with a conviction that his government in duration would rival
      that of a Walpole or a Pitt, and exceed both in lustre, he treated every
      remonstrance with imperious disdain. He had even accustomed his mind to
      contemplate an ecclesiastical adjustment of Ireland which would have
      allied in that country the Papacy with the State, and have terminated the
      constitutional supremacy of the Anglican Church, when suddenly, in the
      very heat of all this arrogant fortune, the mighty fabric of delusion
      shivered and fell to the ground.
    </p>
    <p>
      An abused and indignant soil repudiated the ungrateful race that had
      exhausted and degraded its once exuberant bosom. The land refused to hold
      those who would not hold the land on terms of justice and of science. All
      the economical palliatives and political pretences of long years seemed
      only to aggravate the suffering and confusion. The poor-rate was levied
      upon a community of paupers, and the &lsquo;godless colleges&rsquo; were denounced by
      Rome as well as Oxford.
    </p>
    <p>
      After a wild dream of famine and fever, imperial loans, rates in aid,
      jobbing public works, confiscated estates, constituencies
      self-disfranchised, and St. Peter&rsquo;s bearding St. James&rsquo;s in a spirit
      becoming Christendom rather than Europe, time topped the climax of Irish
      misgovernment; and by the publication of the census of 1851, proved that
      the millions with whose evils no statesmen would sincerely deal, but whose
      condition had been the pretext for so much empiricism, had disappeared,
      and nature, more powerful than politicians, had settled the &lsquo;great
      difficulty.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Ere the publication of that document, the mortal career of Sir Robert Peel
      had closed, and indeed several of the circumstances to which we have just
      alluded did not occur in his administration; but the contrast between his
      policy and its results was nevertheless scarcely less striking. It was in
      &lsquo;45 that he transmitted his most important &lsquo;message of peace&rsquo; to Ireland,
      to be followed by an autumnal visit of her Majesty to that kingdom,
      painted in complacent and prophetic colours by her prime minister. The
      visit was not made. In the course of that autumn, ten counties of Ireland
      were in a state of anarchy; and, mainly in that period, there were 136
      homicides committed, 138 houses burned, 483 houses attacked, and 138 fired
      into; there were 544 cases of aggravated assault, and 551 of robbery of
      arms; there were 89 cases of bands appearing in arms; there were more than
      200 cases of administering unlawful oaths; and there were 1,944 cases of
      sending threatening letters. By the end of the year, the general crime of
      Ireland had doubled in amount and enormity compared with the preceding
      year.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER IV.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>The Cure for Irish Ills</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      LORD GEORGE BENTINCK had large but defined views as to the policy which
      should be pursued with respect to Ireland. He was a firm supporter of the
      constitutional preponderance allotted to the land in our scheme of
      government, not from any jealousy or depreciation of the other great
      sources of public wealth, for his sympathy with the trading classes was
      genuine, but because he believed that constitutional preponderance, while
      not inconsistent with great commercial prosperity, to be the best security
      for public liberty and the surest foundation of enduring power. But as
      reality was the characteristic of his vigorous and sagacious nature, he
      felt that a merely formal preponderance, one not sustained and authorized
      by an equivalent material superiority, was a position not calculated to
      endure in the present age, and one especially difficult to maintain with
      our rapidly increasing population. For this reason he was always very
      anxious to identify the policy of Great Britain with that of Ireland, the
      latter being a country essentially agricultural; and he always shrank from
      any proposition which admitted a difference in the interests of the two
      kingdoms.
    </p>
    <p>
      Liberal politicians, who some years ago were very loud for justice to
      Ireland, and would maintain at all hazards the identity of the interests
      of the two countries, have of late frequently found it convenient to omit
      that kingdom from their statistical bulletins of national prosperity. Lord
      George Bentinck, on the contrary, would impress on his friends, that if
      they wished to maintain the territorial constitution of their country,
      they must allow no sectarian considerations to narrow the basis of
      sympathy on which it should rest; and in the acres and millions of
      Ireland, in its soil and its people, equally neglected, he would have
      sought the natural auxiliaries of our institutions. To secure for our
      Irish fellow-subjects a regular market for their produce; to develop the
      resources of their country by public works on a great scale; and to obtain
      a decent provision for the Roman Catholic priesthood from the land and not
      from the consolidated fund, were three measures which he looked upon as in
      the highest degree conservative.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the project of the cabinet of 1846 had transpired, Lord George at
      once declared, and was in the habit of reiterating his opinion, that &lsquo;it
      would ruin the 500,000 small farmers of Ireland,&rsquo; and he watched with
      great interest and anxiety the conduct of their representatives in the
      House of Commons. It was with great difficulty that he could bring himself
      to believe, that political liberalism would induce the members for the
      south and west of Ireland to support a policy in his opinion so fatal to
      their countrymen as the unconditional repeal of the corn laws; and,
      indeed, before they took that step, which almost all of them have since
      publicly regretted and attempted to compensate for by their subsequent
      votes in the House of Commons, the prospect of their conduct frequently
      and considerably varied.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Earl of St. Germans, the chief secretary of the Lord Lieutenant,
      introduced the Coercion Bill to the House of Lords on the 24th of
      February, and, considering the exigency, and the important reference to it
      in the speech from the throne, this step on the part of the government was
      certainly not precipitate. It was observed that the strongest supporters
      of the measure in the House of Lords on this occasion were the leaders of
      the Whig party. Lord Lansdowne, &lsquo;so far from complaining of the Government
      for bringing forward the measure at so early a period of the session, was
      ready to admit, that after the declaration of her Majesty, a declaration
      unhappily warranted by facts known to many of their lordships, every day
      was lost in which an effectual remedy was not at least attempted to put an
      end to a state of society so horrible.&rsquo; Lord Clanricarde &lsquo;gave his ready
      assent to the bill;&rsquo; and even Lord Grey, &lsquo;though he regretted the
      necessity for this measure, was of opinion that the chief secretary had
      established a sufficient case for arming the executive government with
      some additional powers.&rsquo; When, therefore, at the end of the month of
      March, Lord George Bentinck was invited to attend a meeting of his
      friends, held at the house of Mr. Bankes, to consider the course which
      should be adopted by the Protectionist party with respect to the Coercion
      Bill, it was assumed, as a matter of course, that the coalition of the
      government and the Whigs must secure the passing of the measure, even if
      the Protectionists were disposed, for the chance of embarrassing the
      ministry, to resist it; and of course there was no great tendency in that
      direction. Men are apt to believe that crime and coercion are inevitably
      associated. There was abundance of precedent for the course, which seemed
      also a natural one.
    </p>
    <p>
      In less than a century there had been seventeen coercive acts for Ireland,
      a circumstance which might make some ponder whether such legislation were
      as efficacious as it was violent. However, assassination rife, Captain
      Rock and Molly M&rsquo;Guire out at night, Whigs and Tories all agreed, it was
      easy to catch at a glance the foregone conclusion of the meeting. One
      advantage of having a recognized organ of a political party is, that its
      members do not decide too precipitately. They listen before they
      determine, and if they have a doubt, they will grant the benefit of it to
      him whose general ability they have acknowledged, and to whom they
      willingly give credit for having viewed the question at issue in a more
      laborious and painful manner than themselves. Without a leader, they
      commit themselves to opinions carelessly and hastily adopted. This is
      fatal to a party in debate; but it often entails very serious consequences
      when the mistakes have been committed in a less public and responsible
      scene than the House of Commons.
    </p>
    <p>
      In the present case, there was only one individual who took any
      considerable lead in the management of the party who ventured to suggest
      the expediency of pausing before they pledged themselves to support an
      unconstitutional measure, proposed by a government against which they were
      arrayed under circumstances of urgent and unusual opposition. The support
      of an unconstitutional measure may be expedient, but it cannot be denied
      that it is the most indubitable evidence of confidence. This suggestion,
      though received with kindness, elicited little sympathy, and Lord George
      Bentinck, who had not yet spoken, and who always refrained at these
      meetings from taking that directing part which he never wished to assume,
      marking the general feeling of those present, and wishing to guide it to a
      practical result advantageous to their policy, observed that the support
      of the Coercion Bill by the Protectionists, ought to be made conditional
      on the government proving the sincerity of their policy by immediately
      proceeding with their measure; that if life were in such danger in Ireland
      as was officially stated, and as he was bound to believe, no Corn or
      Customs&rsquo; Bill could compete in urgency with the necessity of pressing
      forward a bill, the object of which was to arrest wholesale assassination.
      He was, therefore, for giving the government a hearty support, provided
      they proved they were in earnest in their determination to put down murder
      and outrage in Ireland, by giving a priority in the conduct of public
      business to the measure in question.
    </p>
    <p>
      This view of the situation, which was certainly adroit, for it combined
      the vindication of order with an indefinite delay of the measures for the
      repeal of the protective system, seemed to please every one; there was a
      murmur of approbation, and when one of the most considerable of the
      country gentlemen expressed the prevalent feeling, and added that all that
      was now to be desired was that Lord George Bentinck would kindly consent
      to be the organ of the party on the occasion, and state their view to the
      House, the cheering was very hearty. It came from the hearts of more than
      two hundred gentlemen, scarcely one of whom had a personal object in this
      almost hopeless struggle beyond the maintenance of a system which he
      deemed advantageous to his country; but they wished to show their generous
      admiration of the man who, in the dark hour of difficulty and desertion,
      had proved his courage and resource, had saved them from public contempt,
      and taught them to have confidence in themselves. And after all, there are
      few rewards in life which equal such sympathy from such men. The favour of
      courts and the applause of senates may have their moments of excitement
      and delight, but the incident of deepest and most enduring gratification
      in public life is to possess the cordial confidence of a high-spirited
      party, for it touches the heart as well as the intellect, and combines all
      the softer feelings of private life with the ennobling consciousness of
      public duty.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord George Bentinck, deeply moved, consented to become the organ of the
      Protectionists in this matter; but he repeated in a marked manner his
      previous declaration, that his duty must be limited to the occasion: he
      would serve with them, but he could not pretend to be the leader of a
      party. In that capacity, however, the government chose to recognize him,
      and there occurred in consequence, very shortly after this meeting, a
      scene in the House of Commons, which occasioned at the time a great deal
      of surprise and scandal. The Secretary of the Treasury, in pursuance of
      one of his principal duties, which is to facilitate by mutual
      understanding the conduct of public business in the House of Commons,
      applied to Lord George Bentinck, confessedly at the request of Sir Robert
      Peel, to &lsquo;enter into some arrangement&rsquo; as to the conduct of public
      business before Easter. The arrangement suggested was, that if the
      Protectionists supported the Coercion Bill, which it was the wish of Sir
      Robert Peel should be read a first time before Easter, the third reading
      of the Bill for the Repeal of the Corn Laws should be postponed until
      after Easter. The interview by appointment took place in the Vote Office,
      where the Secretary of the Treasury &lsquo;called Lord George aside&rsquo; and made
      this proposition. Lord George stated in reply, &lsquo;what he believed to be the
      views of the party with whom he served,&rsquo; and they were those we have
      already intimated. The &lsquo;arrangement&rsquo; was concluded, and it was at the same
      time agreed that certain questions, of which notice had been given by Lord
      John Russell, relative to the progress of these very measures, should be
      allowed by the Protectionists to pass <i>sub silentio</i>. This &lsquo;pledge,&rsquo; 
      made by the noble lord for himself and his friends, was &lsquo;scrupulously
      observed.&rsquo; Nevertheless, after all this, a letter arrived from the
      Secretary of the Treasury, addressed to the noble lord, stating that the
      secretary &lsquo;had not been authorized in saying as much as he had said,&rsquo; and
      requesting that the conversation which had taken place might be considered
      private. Upon this, Lord George Bentinck drew up a statement, &lsquo;setting
      forth all that had passed,&rsquo; and forwarded it to the secretary as his
      reply. Subsequently, he met that gentleman, who admitted that &lsquo;every word
      in that statement, as respected the conversation which had passed, was
      perfectly correct.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      This being the state of the case, on the second night of the debate on Mr.
      Eliot Yorke&rsquo;s amendment, which we have noticed, and after the adjournment
      had been moved and carried, the government proceeded with some motions of
      form, which indicated their intention to secure, if possible, the third
      reading of the Corn Bill before Easter. Upon this, Lord George Bentinck,
      after a hurried and apparently agitated conversation with the Secretary of
      the Treasury and others connected with the government, rose to move the
      adjournment of the House. He then gave as his reason the circumstances
      which we have briefly conveyed. A scene of considerable confusion
      occurred; the Secretary of the Treasury admitted the correctness of the
      statement; the First Lord of the Treasury rejected the alleged authority
      of the secretary. Mr. Tuffnell, on the part of the Whigs, intimated that
      public business could not be carried on if the recognized organs were
      repudiated by their chief. The feeling of all parties coincided with Mr.
      Tuffnell; finally, an Irish repealer rose and announced that the
      government were bartering their Corn Bill to secure coercion to Ireland.
      Lord George Bentinck said the Coercion Bill was &lsquo;a second Curfew Act,&rsquo; 
      that nothing but necessity could justify it, and if it were necessary it
      must be immediate. Sir Robert remained irritated and obstinate. He would
      not give up a stage either of the Corn Bill or the Coercion Bill; he
      wanted to advance both before Easter. The mere division of the House
      between Free-traders and Protectionists had already ceased; there were
      breakers ahead, and it was not difficult from this night to perceive that
      the course of the government would not be so summary as they had once
      expected.
    </p>
    <p>
      This strange interlude occurred after midnight on the 26th of March. On
      Friday, the 27th, the House divided on the amendment of Mr. Eliot Yorke,
      and the Corn Bill was read for the second time. On the reassembling of the
      House on Monday, the 30th, an extraordinary scene took place.
    </p>
    <p>
      It appears that the cabinet, after painful deliberation, had arrived at
      the conclusion that, notwithstanding the importance of sending up the Corn
      Bill to the House of Lords before Easter, it was absolutely necessary to
      proceed at once with the Coercion Bill; and it was resolved that the
      Secretary of State should on this evening lay before the House the facts
      and reasons which &lsquo;induce the Government to believe in the necessity of
      the measure.&rsquo; Mr. O&rsquo;Connell and his followers had already announced their
      intention of opposing the first reading of the bill, an allowable but very
      unusual course. It is competent to the House of Commons to refuse a first
      reading to any bill sent down to it; but the journals afford few examples
      of the exercise of such a privilege. A member of the House of Lords may
      lay on the table, as a matter of pure right, any bill which he thinks
      proper to introduce, and it is read a first time as a matter of course;
      the orders of the House of Commons are different, and a member must obtain
      permission before he introduces a bill. This permission is occasionally
      refused; but when a bill comes from the House of Lords, the almost
      invariable custom is to read it for the first time without discussion.
      There are, however, as we have observed, instances to the contrary, and
      the Irish Coercion Bill of &lsquo;33 was one of them. So pregnant a precedent
      could not be forgotten on the present occasion. The government therefore
      were prepared for an opposition to the first reading of their bill; but
      trusting to the strength of their case and the assumed support of the Whig
      party, they believed that this opposition would not be stubborn, more
      especially as there were numerous stages of the measure on which the views
      of its opponents might be subsequently expressed, and as they themselves
      were prepared to engage that they would not proceed further than this
      first reading until the Corn Bill had passed the House of Commons. The
      consternation, therefore, of the government could scarcely be concealed,
      when they found on Monday night that they had to encounter a
      well-organized party opposition, headed by Sir William Somerville, and
      sanctioned and supported in debate by Lord John Russell and Sir George
      Grey.
    </p>
    <p>
      It would seem indeed a difficult and somewhat graceless office for the
      Whigs to oppose the first reading of a government bill, concerning, too,
      the highest duties of administration, which had received such unqualified
      approval from all the leading members of their party in the House of
      Lords, who had competed in declarations of its necessity and
      acknowledgments of its moderation, while they only regretted the too tardy
      progress of a measure so indispensable to the safety of the country and
      the security of her Majesty&rsquo;s subjects. A curious circumstance, however,
      saved them from this dilemma, which yet in the strange history of faction
      they had nevertheless in due time to encounter.
    </p>
    <p>
      As the Coercion Bill coming from the Lords appeared on the paper of the
      day in the form of a notice of motion, the Secretary of State, this being
      a day on which orders have precedence, had to move that such orders of the
      day should be postponed, so that he might proceed with the motion on the
      state of Ireland, of which notice had been given. The strict rule of the
      House is, that on Mondays and Fridays, orders of the day should have
      precedence of notices of motion, so that it was impossible for the
      Secretary of State to make his motion, that a certain bill (the Protection
      of Life&mdash;Ireland&mdash;Bill) should be read a first time without
      permission of the House, a permission always granted as a matter of course
      on such nights to the government, since the business which can be brought
      forward, whether in the shape of orders or motions, is purely government
      business, and thus the interests and privilege of no independent member of
      Parliament can be affected by a relaxation of the rules which the
      convenience of a ministry and the conduct of public business occasionally
      require. However, on this night, no sooner had the Secretary of State
      made, in a few formal words, this formal request, than up sprang Sir
      William Somerville to move an amendment, that the orders of the day should
      not be postponed, which he supported in a spirited address, mainly on the
      ground of the great inconvenience that must be suffered from the
      postponement of the Corn Bill. The motion of the Secretary of State would
      produce a long, exciting, and exasperating debate. Time would be lost&mdash;for
      what? To advance one stage of a measure which it was avowedly not the
      intention of the government to press at the present moment. Sir William
      concluded with a very earnest appeal to Lord George Bentinck and his
      friends, who might at no very distant period have the government of
      Ireland entrusted to them, not, for the sake of a momentary postponement
      of the Corn Bill, to place themselves, by voting for this measure of
      coercion, in collision with the Irish nation.&rsquo; He called upon Lord George
      Bentinck to weigh the position in which he was placed.
    </p>
    <p>
      This amendment was seconded by Mr. Smith O&rsquo;Brien, the member for the
      county of Limerick, who warned the government that they &lsquo;were entering on
      a contest which would continue for months.&rsquo; He taunted the minister with
      governing the country without a party. What chance was there of
      reconciliation with his estranged friends? After the treatment of that
      &lsquo;disavowed plenipotentiary,&rsquo; the Secretary of the Treasury, who would be
      again found willing to undertake the mission of patching up a truce? He
      was not present when the terms of the treaty were exposed: but he
      understood, that if the government introduced this Coercion Bill before
      Easter, then that Lord George Bentinck would deem it wise, proper, and
      expedient; but if after Easter, then the complexion and character of the
      bill were, in the noble lord&rsquo;s judgment, utterly transformed, and it was
      declared to be quite untenable and unconstitutional. Was that the kind of
      support on which the government calculated for passing this measure?
    </p>
    <p>
      The Secretary of State made a dexterous, conciliatory, almost humble
      address, in reply to the taunts of Mr. Smith O&rsquo;Brien. He said that he was
      well aware of the fact of which he had been just reminded, that, in the
      present state of parties, the declared adherents of the government were a
      small minority; he even, while excusing the delay in the progress of the
      Irish measure, reminded the House of the curious fact, that since the
      meeting of Parliament, two successive Irish secretaries had lost their
      seats in the House of Commons in consequence of supporting the
      administration of which they were members.
    </p>
    <p>
      The case of the government was really so good and clear, that for a moment
      it seemed the opposition could hardly persist in their unusual proceeding:
      but this was a night of misfortunes.
    </p>
    <p>
      There had been for some time a smouldering feud between the secretary and
      the Recorder of Dublin. The learned gentleman had seized the occasion
      which the present state of parties afforded, and in the course of the
      recent debate on the second reading of the Corn Bill, had declared that
      the asserted famine in Ireland was, on the part of the government, &lsquo;a
      great exaggeration.&rsquo; The secretary had addressed himself particularly to
      this observation in his speech on the 27th, the night of the division, and
      had noticed it in a tone of acerbity. He had even intimated that it might
      have been used by one who was a disappointed solicitor for high office,
      and whom the government had declined to assist in an unwarrantable
      arrangement of the duties and salary of the judicial post he at present
      occupied. The learned Recorder, justly indignant at this depreciating
      innuendo, resolved to make an opportunity on the following Monday for his
      vindication and retort. He rose, therefore, immediately after the skilful
      and winning appeal of the secretary, and pronounced an invective against
      the right honourable gentleman which was neither ill-conceived nor
      ill-delivered. It revived the passions that for a moment seemed inclined
      to lull, and the Protectionists, who on this occasion were going to
      support the government, forgot the common point of union, while the
      secretary was described as &lsquo;the evil genius of the cabinet.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      After this, it was impossible to arrest the course of debate. Mr.
      O&rsquo;Connell, who appeared to be in a state of great debility, made one of
      those acute points for which he was distinguished. He said the government
      complained of the threat held out by those who opposed the bill, that they
      would avail themselves of the forms of the House to give it every
      opposition in their power. But what did the government do themselves? Why,
      they were trying to trample upon one of the sessional orders and to
      abrogate the forms of the House in order to coerce the Irish people. Lord
      George Bentinck said, that &lsquo;the chief minister had told them, that this
      was a bill to put down murder and assassination; in that case, if this
      bill were delayed, the blood of every man murdered in Ireland was on the
      head of her Majesty&rsquo;s ministers.&rsquo; Sir George Grey followed, and avoiding
      any discussion of the state of Ireland, in which Lord George had entered,
      supported the amendment of Sir William Somerville, on the broad ground
      that the bill for the repeal of the corn laws ought not to be for a moment
      delayed. &lsquo;The debates on that measure had continued several weeks; and all
      who had any lengthened parliamentary experience must be convinced, that if
      the further progress of the Corn Bill was postponed until after Easter,
      they would have much longer and protracted debates in its future stages,
      than if the bill were pushed <i>de die in diem</i>. As he had understood,
      the government had intended that this bill should have gone up to the
      House of Lords before Easter, when it would have been printed, and the
      second reading could have taken place at an early day after the holidays;
      but if it were put off until after Easter, he would defy any man to show
      any reasonable expectation of its getting to a second reading in the other
      House before June, or July, or even August.&rsquo; This was encouraging, and the
      plot seemed to thicken. The Secretary at War was put up by the government
      to neutralize the effect of the speech of Sir George Grey, and he said, &lsquo;I
      speak not only as a cabinet minister, but also as a considerable Irish
      proprietor.&rsquo; He said, &lsquo;that anything so horrible as the state of
      demoralization and crime in which many parts of Ireland were plunged,
      anything so perfect as the suspension of the law in those parts of the
      country, anything, in short, so complete as the abrogation of liberty that
      obtained there, was, perhaps never known.&rsquo; He thought that, &lsquo;no man and no
      minister could, under these circumstances, decline to admit that every and
      any measure ought to be postponed until a division had been taken, at
      least upon the principle of a measure which had for its object the
      suppression of these horrors.&rsquo; After such a declaration it was clear the
      government were in a false position when by the same organ it had to
      state, &lsquo;that in asking to read this bill to-night, they only intended to
      postpone the Corn Bill for one night.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord John Russell following, admitted, that &lsquo;in voting for the motion of
      Sir William Somerville it was not to be supposed, that if the Secretary of
      State made out a case, he would not support the government bill;&rsquo; yet how
      the secretary was ever to find an opportunity of making out his case, if
      the amendment of Sir William Somerville was carried, was not very
      apparent. Sir Robert Peel, who was disquieted by the whole proceedings
      connected with the Coercion Bill, irritated by the episode of &lsquo;the
      disavowed plenipotentiary,&rsquo; from which he did not for some time recover,
      and really alarmed at the indefinite prospect of delay in passing his
      all-important measures which now began to open, could not conceal his
      vexation in the remarks which he offered, and speaking of the amendment as
      one &lsquo;of a frivolous character,&rsquo; indignant cries of &lsquo;No, no,&rsquo; from his
      usual admirers, obliged him to withdraw the expression. His feelings were
      not soothed when, later in the evening, even Mr. Cobden rose to deplore
      the conduct of that minister whom he otherwise so much admired. &lsquo;He
      certainly regarded it as a great calamity. Something had actuated the
      government which he could not understand. He had a perfect belief in the
      sincerity of the prime minister, but in all human probability the Corn
      Bill would not now enter the House of Lords before the beginning or middle
      of May; and when it would come out again, heaven only knew!&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      The House now divided, and being supported by all the Protectionists
      present, the government had a majority of thirty-nine, so the standing
      order was for that night rescinded; and, although the hour was late for
      such a statement, the secretary proceeded with the official exposition.
      Notwithstanding the depressing circumstances of the previous debate, the
      speech of Sir James Graham was distinguished by all that lucid arrangement
      of details and that comprehensive management of his subject which
      distinguished him. The statement made a great impression upon the House
      and the country; but, unfortunately for the government, the more necessary
      they made the measure appear, the more unjustifiable was their conduct in
      not immediately and vehemently pursuing it. They had, indeed, in the
      speech from the throne at the commencement of this memorable session,
      taken up a false position for their campaign; and we shall see, as we
      pursue this narrative of these interesting events, that the fall of Sir
      Robert Peel was perhaps occasioned not so much by his repeal of the corn
      laws as by the mistake in tactics which this adroit and experienced
      parliamentary commander so strangely committed.
    </p>
    <p>
      On this night of the 30th the government made no advance; immediately
      after the secretary had finished, the followers of Mr. O&rsquo;Connell moved the
      adjournment of the House, and persisted in this line notwithstanding the
      almost querulous appeal of the first minister.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER V.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>The Passing of O&rsquo;Connell.</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      LORD GEORGE wrote the next morning (Tuesday, March 31st) to a friend, who
      had not been able to attend the debate: &lsquo;I look upon last night as the
      most awkward night the government have had yet; I believe they would have
      given their ears to have been beaten. We have now fairly set them and the
      tail at loggerheads, and I cannot see how they are to get another stage of
      either the tariff or Corn Bill before next Tuesday at any rate. I doubt if
      they will do anything before Easter.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      It was understood that the House would adjourn for the Easter recess on
      the 8th instant. There were therefore only two nights remaining for
      government business before the holidays. On the first of these (Friday,
      April the 3rd), Mr. O&rsquo;Connell had announced that he should state his views
      at length on the condition of Ireland, and the causes of these agrarian
      outrages. Accordingly, when the order of the day for resuming the
      adjourned debate was read, he rose at once to propose an amendment to the
      motion. He sat in an unusual place&mdash;in that generally occupied by the
      leader of the opposition&mdash;and spoke from the red box, convenient to
      him from the number of documents to which he had to refer. His appearance
      was of great debility, and the tones of his voice were very still. His
      words, indeed, only reached those who were immediately around him and the
      ministers sitting on the other side of the green table, who listened with
      that interest and respectful attention which became the occasion.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a strange and touching spectacle to those who remembered the form
      of colossal energy and the clear and thrilling tones that had once
      startled, disturbed, and controlled senates. Mr. O&rsquo;Connell was on his legs
      for nearly two hours, assisted occasionally in the management of his
      documents by some devoted aide-de-camp. To the House generally it was a
      performance in dumb show, a feeble old man muttering before a table; but
      respect for the great parliamentary personage kept all as orderly as if
      the fortunes of a party hung upon his rhetoric; and though not an accent
      reached the gallery, means were taken that next morning the country should
      not lose the last and not the least interesting of the speeches of one who
      had so long occupied and agitated the mind of nations.
    </p>
    <p>
      This remarkable address was an abnegation of the whole policy of Mr.
      O&rsquo;Connell&rsquo;s career. It proved, by a mass of authentic evidence ranging
      over a long term of years, that Irish outrage was the consequence of
      physical misery, and that the social evils of that country could not be
      successfully encountered by political remedies. To complete the picture,
      it concluded with a panegyric of Ulster and a patriotic quotation from
      Lord Clare.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord John Russell, who, as an experienced parliamentary leader, had
      already made more than one effort to extricate the Whigs from the
      consequences of the hearty support given to the government measures in the
      other House by Lords Lansdowne and Clanricarde, and even by Lord Grey,
      ventured to-night even to say that if he should agree that the House would
      do well to assent to the first reading of this bill, he thought he was
      bound to state also that in the future stages of it, he should have
      &lsquo;objections to offer, going to the foundations of some of its principal
      provisions.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      His speech was curious, as perhaps the last considerable manifesto of Whig
      delusion respecting Ireland. Coercion Bills might be occasionally
      necessary; no doubt of it; Lord Grey had once a Coercion Bill, and Lord
      John Russell had voted for it; but then remedial measures ought to be
      introduced with coercive ones: the evil should be repressed, but also
      cured. Thus, Lord Althorp, when the government introduced their great
      Coercion Bill, introduced also a measure which, besides making a great
      reform in the Protestant Church of Ireland, exempted the whole Catholic
      community of Ireland from the payment of church cess, which had previously
      been felt as a very great grievance. On another day Lord Althorp declared
      his intention of pressing through Parliament a Jury Bill, which had been
      brought into the House the previous session, but which was allowed to drop
      in the House of Lords.
    </p>
    <p>
      Again, there was another declaration which Lord Althorp had made, which,
      somehow or other, seemed to have been forgotten; it was a declaration with
      respect to the municipal corporations of Ireland. Lord Althorp said it was
      exceedingly desirable that the institutions of the two countries should be
      assimilated as much as possible; and that, as a general rule, the
      corporate bodies of Ireland should be the same as England. Mr. O&rsquo;Connell
      had said on that occasion that there was no greater grievance in Ireland
      than the existence of corporations in their then shape. Lord John
      contrasted this language of Lord Althorp, &lsquo;simple, plain, emphatic, and
      decided,&rsquo; with the language of the government of Sir Robert Peel; and held
      up to admiration the Whig policy of 1833, certainly coercive, but with
      remedial measures&mdash;a measure for the abolition of church cess,
      introduced ten days before the Coercion Bill, and a promise of municipal
      reform made simultaneously with the proclamation of martial law. This was
      real statesmanship and touching the root of the evil. Whereas &lsquo;Sir Robert
      Peel had only consented to passing the Municipal Bill in a crippled state,
      and only now (in 1846) promised, that the corporations of Ireland should
      be placed on the same footing as the corporations of England.&rsquo; Who could
      be surprised that such a policy-should end in famine and pestilence?
    </p>
    <p>
      The followers of Mr. O&rsquo;Connell again succeeded in adjourning the debate
      until Monday the 6th. On that day Sir Robert Peel made &lsquo;an earnest appeal&rsquo; 
      to extricate himself from the almost perilous position in which he found
      his administration suddenly involved. In case the division on the first
      reading of the Irish Bill should not take place that night, he endeavoured
      to prevail on those members who had notices on the paper for the following
      night (Tuesday the 7th), the last night before the holidays, to relinquish
      their right and to permit the Irish debate to proceed and conclude. &lsquo;He
      had no wish to interfere with the due discussion of the measure; but he
      believed that the Irish members, if they permitted the House to proceed
      with the Corn Bill, by concluding the discussion on the Irish Bill, would
      be rendering an essential service to their country.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      But this earnest appeal only influenced still more the fiery resolves of
      Mr. Smith O&rsquo;Brien and his friends. They threw the responsibility for delay
      of the Corn Bill on the government. The inconvenience which the country
      suffered was occasioned by the minister, not by the Irish members. He
      ought, on Friday last, to have adjourned the discussion on the Coercion
      Bill until after Easter. He and other members who were on the paper for
      to-morrow would willingly relinquish their right of priority in favour of
      the Corn Bill, or of any measure of a remedial kind, but not in favour of
      a Coercion Bill. He did not wish to have any concealment with the minister
      as to the course which the Irish members would pursue. It was their
      bounden duty to take care that <i>pari passu</i> with the discussion of
      the Coercion Bill there should be discussions as to the misgovernment of
      Ireland; and that, in the absence of any remedial measures of the
      government, they should have an opportunity of suggesting such as they
      thought advisable for removing those evils which they utterly denied that
      the measure now before the House would remove.
    </p>
    <p>
      In vain Sir Robert, in his blandest tones and with that remarkable command
      of a temper not naturally serene which distinguished him, acknowledged to
      a certain degree the propriety of the course intimated by Mr. Smith
      O&rsquo;Brien; but suggested at the same time that it was compatible with
      allowing the Irish bill to be now read for a first time, since on its
      subsequent stages Mr. O&rsquo;Brien and his friends would have the full
      opportunity which they desired, of laying before the House the whole
      condition of the country. All was useless. No less a personage than Mr.
      John O&rsquo;Connell treated the appeal with contempt, and lectured the first
      minister on the &lsquo;great mistake&rsquo; which he had made. Little traits like
      these revealed the true parliamentary position of the once omnipotent
      leader of the great Conservative party. With the legions of the
      Protectionists watching their prey in grim silence, while the liberal
      sections were united in hostile manouvres against the government, it was
      recognised at once that the great minister had a staff without an army;
      not a reconnoitring could take place without the whole cabinet being under
      orders, and scarcely a sharpshooter sallied from the opposite ranks
      without the prime minister returning his fire in person.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sir Robert Peel mournfully observed that he &lsquo;did not wish to provoke a
      recriminatory discussion,&rsquo; and he resigned himself to his fate.
      Immediately the third night of the adjourned debate on the Irish bill
      commenced, and was sustained principally by the Irish members until a late
      hour. It had not been the intention of Lord George Bentinck to have spoken
      on this occasion, though he had never been absent for a moment from his
      seat, and watched all that occurred with that keen relish which was usual
      with him when he thought things were going right; but having been
      personally and not very courteously appealed to by the late Mr. Dillon
      Browne, and deeming also the occasion, just before the holidays, a not
      unhappy one, he rose and concluded the debate. His speech was not long, it
      was not prepared, and it was very animated.
    </p>
    <p>
      Recapitulating himself the main features of the disturbed district, he
      said: &lsquo;It is because of these things, sir, that I am prepared to support
      at least the first reading of a bill, which I freely admit to be most
      unconstitutional in itself.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Noticing a speech made in the course of the evening by Lord Morpeth, who
      had himself once been chief secretary of the Lord Lieutenant, Lord George
      thought it discreet to remind the House of the unequivocal support given
      to this bill by the Whig leaders in another place: &lsquo;Sir, I think when we
      see all the great leaders of the Whig party supporting the measure
      elsewhere, we cannot be justly impugned for doing as they do.&rsquo; Lord
      Morpeth had referred to &lsquo;remedial measures which he thinks should be
      introduced for Ireland: to measures for the extension of the municipal,
      and also of the parliamentary, franchise of that country; and he expressed
      his desire to see those franchises put on the same footing as the
      franchises of England.&rsquo; &lsquo;For the life of me,&rsquo; exclaimed Lord George, &lsquo;I
      confess, I cannot see in what way the extension of political franchises of
      any description in Ireland would afford a remedy for the evils which this
      measure aims to suppress. I think, sir, it is impossible not to perceive
      that there is a connection between agrarian outrage and the poverty of the
      people.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      After noticing the inadequate poor-law which then existed in Ireland, he
      added: &lsquo;There is also another point immediately connected with this
      subject to which I must refer. I allude, sir, to the system of
      absenteeism. I cannot disguise from myself the conviction, that many of
      the evils of Ireland arise from the system of receiving rents by absentee
      landlords who spend them in other countries. I am well aware that, in
      holding this doctrine, I am not subscribing to the creed of political
      economists. I am well aware that Messrs. Senior and M&rsquo;Culloch hold that it
      makes no difference whether the Irish landlord spends his rents in Dublin,
      on his Irish estates, in London, in Bath, or elsewhere. I profess, sir, I
      cannot understand that theory. I believe that the first ingredient in the
      happiness of a people is, that the gentry should reside on their native
      soil, and spend their rents among those from whom they receive them. I
      cannot help expressing a wish that some arrangement may be made connected
      with the levying of the poor-rate in Ireland, by which absentee landlords
      may be made to contribute in something like a fair proportion to the wants
      of the poor in the district in which they ought to reside. There is an
      arrangement in the hop-growing districts in England in respect to tithe,
      which might, I think, afford a very useful suggestion. There are two
      tithes: the one, the ordinary tithe; the other, extraordinary; which is
      levied only so long as the land is cultivated in hops. I think if there
      were two poor-rates introduced into Ireland, the one applying to all
      occupiers of land, and the other to all those who did not spend a certain
      portion of the year on some portion of their estates in Ireland, it would
      prove useful. I think, that by thus appealing to their interests, it might
      induce absentee landlords to reside much more in Ireland, than is now
      unfortunately the case.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;But, sir, I think there are other remedial measures. Some days ago, the
      Secretary of State told the member for Stroud (Mr. Poulett Scrope), when
      he suggested some such measure, that he was treading on dangerous ground,
      and that the doctrines he was advocating might be written in letters of
      blood in Ireland; but, notwithstanding all this, I still say that I think
      measures might be introduced for improving the relations between landlord
      and tenant in Ireland. I do not think that some guarantee might and ought
      to be given to the tenantry of Ireland for the improvements they make upon
      their farms.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;Sir, the Secretary of State, in introducing this measure, maintained a
      doctrine which, I think, much more likely to be written in letters of
      blood, for he bound up the question of the corn laws with the present one.
      He said, that unless he could, have prevailed on his colleagues to accede
      to his free-trade measures as regards corn, he would not have introduced
      this bill. Why, sir, far from giving food to the people of Ireland, in my
      opinion the measures of her Majesty&rsquo;s ministers will take away from the
      people of Ireland their food, by destroying the profits of their only
      manufacture&mdash;the manufacture of corn&mdash;and injuring their
      agriculture; depriving them of employment; in fact, by taking away from
      them the very means of procuring subsistence. Sir, I cannot see how the
      repeal of those laws affecting corn can be In any way connected with the
      suppression of outrage and the protection of life. What is this but to
      say, that unless we have a free trade in corn, we must be prepared to
      concede a free trade in agrarian outrage&mdash;a free trade in maiming and
      houghing cattle&mdash;a free trade in incendiarism&mdash;a free trade in
      the burning and sacking of houses&mdash;a free trade in midnight murder,
      and in noon-day assassination? What is this but telling the people of
      Ireland, that assassination, murder, incendiarism, are of such light
      consideration in the eyes of the Secretary of State, that their sanction
      or suppression by the minister of the crown hinges upon the condition of
      the corn market and the difference in the price of potatoes?
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;Sir, what has the potato disease to do with the outrages in Ireland? Some
      think a great deal. I have taken the trouble of looking into the matter. I
      have examined into the state of crime in at least five counties&mdash;Tipperary,
      Roscommon, Limerick, Leitrim, and Clare&mdash;and I find, that during the
      three months prior to the first appearance of the potato disease, and when
      in fact food was as cheap in Ireland as at almost any former period&mdash;when
      plenty abounded in all quarters of the empire, that the amount of crime
      exceeded that in the three months immediately following. Now, those who
      doubt this statement will have an opportunity of ascertaining the
      correctness of my figures, for I will not deal in general assertions. Well
      then, sir, I find in the three months, May, June, and July last, that the
      number of crimes committed in the five counties I have mentioned amounted
      to no less than 1,180, while in the three months immediately after the
      potato disease, or famine as it is called, the amount of crime committed
      in the same three months was not 1,180, but 870. I should like to know,
      therefore, what this agrarian outrage has to do with the potato famine;
      and where is the justification for a minister coming down to this House,
      and declaring that unless we pass a free-trade measure, we are not to obey
      her Majesty&rsquo;s commands by passing a measure for the protection of life in
      Ireland. Why, sir, I think when this language reaches the people of
      Ireland&mdash;coming, too, as it does from the Treasury, above all, from
      the Secretary of State for the Home Department&mdash;there is indeed
      danger to be apprehended that such a doctrine may be written in letters of
      blood in that country. Why, sir, if we are to hear such language as this
      from that minister of the crown charged with the peace of the country, we
      may just as well have Captain Rock established as lord lieutenant in the
      castle of Dublin, a Whitefoot for chief secretary, and Molly M&rsquo;Guire
      installed at Whitehall with the seals of the home department.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      And afterwards he remarked, &lsquo;I have been taunted that when I may be
      entrusted with the government of Ireland, I should perhaps then learn that
      Tyrone was an Orange county. Sir, in answer to that taunt, I must take
      leave to ask what expression of mine, either in this house or out of it,
      justifies any such remark? When or where can it be said that I have ever
      permitted myself to know any distinction between an Orangeman and a
      Catholic; when, in the whole course of my parliamentary career, have I
      ever given a vote or uttered a sentiment hostile or unfriendly to the
      Roman Catholics, either of England or Ireland?&rsquo; This speech, though
      delivered generally in favour of the Irish bill, attracted very much the
      attention, and, as it appeared afterwards, the approbation of those Irish
      members, who, although sitting on the Liberal benches, did not acknowledge
      the infallible authority of Mr. O&rsquo;Connell, and was the origin of a
      political connection between them and Lord George Bentinck, which, on more
      than one subsequent occasion, promised to bring important results.
    </p>
    <p>
      Two successive motions were now made for the adjournment of the debate,
      and Sir Robert Peel at length said, that he &lsquo;saw it was useless to
      persist.&rsquo; He agreed to the adjournment until the next day, with the
      understanding that if it did come on, he would name the time to which it
      should be postponed after the holidays.
    </p>
    <p>
      Upon this, Sir William Somerville made one more appeal to the minister to
      postpone the further discussion of the Irish bill altogether until the
      Corn Bill had passed the Commons. He intimated that unless the government
      at once adopted this resolution, they would find themselves after Easter
      in the same perplexity which now paralyzed them. They would not be
      permitted to bring on this measure except upon government nights, and the
      discussion might then last weeks.
    </p>
    <p>
      The minister, exceedingly embarrassed, would not, however, relent. On the
      following day, when he moved the adjournment of the House for the
      holidays, he reduced the vacation three days, in order to obtain Friday, a
      government night, which otherwise would have been absorbed in the
      holidays, and he announced the determination of the government again to
      proceed on that night with the Irish bill in preference to the Corn Bill.
      The Irish members glanced defiance, and the Protectionists could scarcely
      conceal their satisfaction. The reputation of Sir Robert Peel for
      parliamentary management seemed to be vanishing; never was a government in
      a more tottering state; and the Whigs especially began to renew their
      laments that the Edinburgh letter and its consequences had prevented the
      settlement of the corn question from devolving to the natural arbitrator
      in the great controversy, their somewhat rash but still unrivalled leader,
      Lord John Russell.
    </p>
    <p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER VI.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>A Third Party</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      THE members of the Protectionist opposition returned to their constituents
      with the sanguine feelings which success naturally inspires. Their efforts
      had surprised, not displeased, the country; the elections were in their
      favour; the government business halted; the delay in the calculated
      arrival of the famine had taken the edge off the necessity which it was
      supposed would have already carried the Corn Bill through the Commons;
      while the twin measure which the throes of Ireland had engendered had
      developed elements of opposition which even the calmest observer thought
      might possibly end in overthrow. Above all, that seemed to have happened
      which the most experienced in parliamentary life had always deemed to be
      impracticable; namely, the formation of a third party in the House of
      Commons.
    </p>
    <p>
      How completely this latter and difficult result was owing to the abilities
      and energies of one man, and how anomalous was the position which he chose
      to occupy in not taking the formal lead of a party which was entirely
      guided by his example, were convictions and considerations that at this
      juncture much occupied men&rsquo;s minds. And it was resolved among the most
      considerable of the country gentlemen to make some earnest and
      well-combined effort, during the recess, to induce Lord George Bentinck to
      waive the unwillingness he had so often expressed of becoming their avowed
      and responsible leader.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Lord George Bentinck first threw himself into the breach, he was
      influenced only by a feeling of indignation at the manner in which he
      thought the Conservative party had been trifled with by the government and
      Lord Stanley, his personal friend and political leader, deserted by a
      majority of the cabinet. As affairs developed, and it became evident that
      the bulk of the Conservative party throughout the country had rallied
      round his standard, Lord George could not conceal from himself the
      consequences of such an event, or believe that it was possible that the
      party in the House of Commons, although Lord Stanley might eventually think
      fit to guide it by his counsels, and become, if necessary, personally
      responsible for its policy, could be long held together unless it were
      conducted by a leader present in the same assembly, and competent under
      all circumstances to represent its opinions in debate. Lord George,
      although a very proud man, had no vanity or self-conceit. He took a very
      humble view of his own powers, and he had at the same time a very exalted
      one of those necessary to a leader of the House of Commons. His
      illustrious connection, Mr. Canning, was his standard. He had been the
      private secretary of that minister in his youth, and the dazzling
      qualities of that eminent personage had influenced the most susceptible
      time of life of one who was very tenacious of his impressions. What Lord
      George Bentinck appreciated most in a parliamentary speaker was
      brilliancy: quickness of perception, promptness of repartee, clear and
      concise argument, a fresh and felicitous quotation, wit and picture, and,
      if necessary, a passionate appeal that should never pass the line of
      high-bred sentiment. Believing himself not to be distinguished by these
      rhetorical qualities, he would listen with no complacency to those who
      would urge in private that the present period of parliamentary life was
      different from the days of Mr. Canning, and that accumulated facts and
      well-digested reasoning on their bearing, a command of all the materials
      of commercial controversy, and a mastery of the laws that regulate the
      production and distribution of public wealth, combined with habits of
      great diligence and application, would ensure the attention of a popular
      assembly, especially when united to a high character and great social
      position. This might be urged; but he would only shake his head, with a
      ray of humour twinkling in his piercing eyes, and say, in a half-drawling
      tone, &lsquo;If Mr. Canning were alive, he could do all this better than any of
      them, and be not a whit less brilliant.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      There was also another reason why Lord George Bentinck was unwilling to
      assume the post of leader of the Conservative party, and this very much
      influenced him. Sprung from a great Whig house, and inheriting all the
      principles and prejudices of that renowned political connection which had
      expelled the Stuarts, he had accepted, in an unqualified sense, the dogma
      of religious liberty. This principle was first introduced into active
      politics in order to preserve the possessions of that portion of the
      aristocracy which had established itself on the plunder of the Church. It
      was to form the basis of a party which should prevent reaction and
      restitution of church lands. Whether the principle be a true one, and
      whether its unqualified application by any party in the state be possible,
      are questions yet unsettled. It is not probable, for example, that the
      worship of Juggernaut, which Lord Dalhousie permits in Orissa, would be
      permitted even by Lord John Russell at Westminster. Even a papist
      procession is forbidden, and wisely. The application of the principle,
      however, in Lord George Bentinck&rsquo;s mind, was among other things associated
      with the public recognition of the Roman Catholic hierarchy by the state,
      and a provision for its maintenance in Ireland in accordance with the plan
      of Mr. Pitt. What had happened, with respect to the vote on the endowment
      of Maynooth in 1845, had convinced him that his opinions on this subject
      presented an insuperable barrier to his ever becoming the leader of a
      party which had contributed three-fourths of the memorable minority on
      that occasion. It was in vain that it was impressed upon him by those most
      renowned for their Protestant principles, and who were at the same time
      most anxious to see Lord George Bentinck in his right position, that the
      question of Maynooth was settled, and there was now no prospect of future
      measures of a similar character. This was not the opinion of Lord George
      Bentinck. He nursed in his secret soul a great scheme for the regeneration
      and settlement of Ireland, which he thought ought to be one of the
      mainstays of a Conservative party; and it was his opinion that the
      condition of the Roman Catholic priesthood must be considered.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was in vain, in order to assist in removing these scruples, that it was
      represented to him by others that endowment of a priesthood by the state
      was a notion somewhat old-fashioned, and opposed to the spirit of the age
      which associated true religious freedom with the full development of the
      voluntary principle. He listened to these suggestions with distrust, and
      even with a little contempt. Mr. Canning had been in favour of the
      endowment of the Irish priesthood&mdash;that was sufficient for that
      particular; and as for the voluntary principle, he looked upon it as
      priestcraft in disguise; his idea of religious liberty being that all
      religions should be controlled by the state.
    </p>
    <p>
      Besides these two prominent objections to accepting the offered post,
      namely, his unaffected distrust in his parliamentary abilities and his
      assumed want of concordance with his followers on a great principle of
      modern politics, we must also remember that his compliance with the
      request involved no ordinary sacrifice of much which renders life
      delightful. He was to relinquish pursuits of noble excitement to which he
      was passionately attached, and to withdraw in a great degree from a circle
      of high-spirited friends, many of them of different political connection
      from himself, by whom he was adored. With all his unrivalled powers of
      application when under the influence of a great impulse, he was
      constitutionally indolent and even lethargic. There was nothing,
      therefore, in his position or his temperature to prick him on in &lsquo;46; it
      was nothing but his strong will acting upon his indignation which
      sustained him. It is not, therefore, marvellous that he exhibited great
      reluctance to commit irretrievably his future life. At a subsequent
      period, indignation had become ambition, and circumstances of various
      kinds had made him resolve to succeed or die.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the adjournment, Lord George had gone down to Newmarket, which he
      greatly enjoyed after his exhausting campaign. Here some letters on the
      subject of the leadership passed, but nothing was definitely arranged till
      some time after the re-assembling of Parliament. For convenience we
      mention here the result. The wish of the party was repeatedly and
      personally urged by the popular and much-esteemed member for Dorsetshire,
      and at last Lord George consented to their wishes, on these conditions:
      that he should relinquish his post the moment the right man was
      discovered, who, according to his theory, would ultimately turn up; and
      secondly, that his responsible post was not to restrict or embarrass him
      on any questions in which a religious principle was involved.
    </p>
    <p>
      Before, however, this negotiation was concluded, and while yet at
      Newmarket, he wrote to a friend, the day before the House met (April
      16th).
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;I think there is no doubt, but that the Irish will take care of Friday
      (to-morrow) night. I have not much hope of their keeping up the debate
      beyond Friday.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;It is quite clear from O&rsquo;Connell&rsquo;s language at Dublin that we have no
      hope from the Irish tail.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;I still think myself, that delay affords a great chance of something
      turning up in our favour; already the rejection of any reciprocity by M.
      Guizot has provided us with a grand weapon, which, I trust, you drive well
      home into * * * *&lsquo;s vitals; a very short delay would probably bring over
      similar intelligence from the United States and their Congress. I trust we
      shall have an important deputation over from Canada, representing that the
      inevitable results of these free-trade measures in corn and timber will be
      to alienate the feelings of our Canadian colonists, and to induce them to
      follow their sordid interests, which will now, undoubtedly, be best
      consulted and most promoted by annexation to the United States.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;Lord&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&lsquo;s intended tergiversation has been, I believe,
      some time known; he admits that all farmers without capital, in short, all
      little men, must be sacrificed. What a barbarous and odious policy, that
      goes upon the principle that none but capitalists are henceforth to be
      allowed to live, as farmers at least. We must turn the tables upon Lord&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;and
      all such heartless doctrinaires!
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;I fear the majority in the Lords will be greater than was expected; I am
      told that we must endeavour to put ministers in a minority two or three
      times before the bill gets to its second reading in the Lords, no matter
      upon what question. I hear there are many peers whose votes depend
      entirely upon their notions, whether or not Peel can, by hook or by crook,
      carry on.&rsquo; 
    </p>
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      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER VII.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>Railroads for Ireland</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      IF WE take a general view of the career of Lord George Bentinck during the
      last year&mdash;from the time indeed when he was trying to find a lawyer
      to convey his convictions to the House of Commons until the moment when
      her Majesty prorogued her Parliament, the results will be found to be very
      remarkable. So much was never done so unexpectedly by any public man in
      the same space of time. He had rallied a great party which seemed
      hopelessly routed; he had established a parliamentary discipline, in their
      ranks which old political connections, led by experienced statesmen, have
      seldom surpassed; he had brought forward from those ranks, entirely
      through his discrimination and by his personal encouragement, considerable
      talents in debate; he had himself proved a master in detail and in
      argument of all the great questions arising out of the reconstruction of
      our commercial system; he had made a vindication of the results of the
      Protective principle as applied to agriculture, which certainly, so far as
      the materials are concerned, is the most efficient plea that ever was
      urged in the House of Commons in favour of the abrogated law; he had
      exhibited similar instances of investigation in considerable statements
      with respect to the silk trade and other branches of our industry; he had
      asserted the claims of the productive classes in Ireland, and in our
      timber and sugar producing colonies, with the effect which results from a
      thorough acquaintance with a subject; he had promulgated distinct
      principles with regard to our financial as well as to our commercial
      system; he had maintained the expediency cf relieving the consumer by the
      repeal of excise in preference to customs&rsquo; duties, and of establishing
      fiscal reciprocity as a condition of mercantile exchange. On subjects of a
      more occasional but analogous nature he had shown promptitude and
      knowledge, as in the instances of the urgent condition of Mexico and of
      our carrying trade with the Spanish colonies, both of which he brought
      forward in the last hours of the session, but the importance of which
      motions was recognized by all parties. Finally, he had attracted the
      notice, and in many instances obtained the confidence, of large bodies of
      men in the country, who recognized in him a great capacity of labour
      combined with firmness of character and honesty of purpose.
    </p>
    <p>
      At the close of the session (August 28), Cord George visited Norfolk,
      where he received an entertainment from his constituents at King&rsquo;s Lynn,
      proud of their member, and to whom he vindicated the course which he had
      taken, and offered his views generally as to the relations which should
      subsist between the legislation of the country and its industry. From
      Norfolk he repaired to Belvoir Castle, on a visit to the Duke of Rutland,
      and was present at a banquet given by the agriculturists of Leicestershire
      to his friend and supporter the Marquis of Granby. After this he returned
      to Welbeck, where he seems to have enjoyed a little repose. Thus he writes
      to a friend from that place on the 22nd September:
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;Thanks for your advice, which I am following, having got Lord
      Malmesbury&rsquo;s Diary; but I am relapsing into my natural dawdling, lazy, and
      somnolent habits, and can with difficulty get through the leaders even of
      the &ldquo;Times.&rdquo;
     </p>
    <p>
      * * * * &lsquo;The vehemence of the farmers is personal against Peel; it is
      quite clear that the rising price of wheat has cured their alarm. The
      railway expenditure must keep up prices and prosperity, both of which
      would have been far greater without free trade; but in face of high
      prices, railway prosperity, and potato famine, depend upon it we shall
      have an uphill game to fight.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;O&rsquo;Connell talks of Parliament meeting in November, to mend the Irish
      Labour-rate Act. Do you believe this?&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      The Labour-rate Act, passed at the end of the session (&lsquo;46), was one by
      which the Lord Lieutenant was enabled to require special barony sessions
      to meet in order to make presentments for public works for the employment
      of the people, the whole of the money requisite for their construction to
      be supplied by the imperial treasury, though to be afterwards repaid. The
      machinery of this act did not work satisfactorily, but the government
      ultimately made the necessary alterations on their own responsibility, and
      obtained an indemnity from Parliament when it met in &lsquo;47. The early
      session, therefore, talked of by Mr. O&rsquo;Connell, became unnecessary. As the
      only object of this Labour-rate Act was to employ the people, and as it
      was supposed there were no public works of a reproductive nature which
      could be undertaken on a sufficient scale to ensure that employment, the
      Irish people were occupied, towards the end of the autumn of &lsquo;46, mainly
      in making roads, which, as afterwards described by the first minister,
      &lsquo;were not wanted.&rsquo; In the month of September more than thirty thousand
      persons were thus employed; but when the harvest was over, and it was
      ascertained that its terrible deficiency had converted pauperism into
      famine, the numbers on the public works became greatly increased, so that
      at the end of November the amount of persons engaged was four hundred
      thousand, receiving wages at the rate of nearly five millions sterling per
      annum. These immense amounts went on increasing every week, and when
      Parliament met in February, 1847, five hundred thousand persons were
      employed on these public works, which could bring no possible public
      advantage, at an expense to the country of between £700,000 and £800,000
      per month. No Board of Works could efficiently superintend such a
      multitude, or prevent flagrant imposition, though the dimensions of that
      department appeared almost proportionably to have expanded. What with
      commissioners, chief clerks, check clerks, and pay clerks, the
      establishment of the Board of Works in Ireland, at the end of &lsquo;46,
      consisted of more than eleven thousand persons.
    </p>
    <p>
      Always intent upon Ireland, this condition of affairs early and earnestly
      attracted the attention of Lord George Bentinck. So vast an expenditure in
      unproductive labour dismayed him. He would not easily assent to the
      conclusion that profitable enterprise under the circumstances was
      impossible. Such a conclusion seemed to him unnatural, and that an
      occasion where we commenced with despair justified a bold and venturesome
      course. The field is legitimately open to speculation where all agree that
      all is hopeless. The construction of harbours, the development of
      fisheries, the redemption of waste lands, were resources which had been
      often canvassed, and whatever their recommendations, with the exception of
      the last, they were necessarily very limited; and the last, though it
      might afford prompt, could hardly secure profitable, employment. Prompt
      and profitable employment was the object which Lord George wished to
      accomplish. Where millions were to be expended by the state, something
      more advantageous to the community should accrue than the temporary
      subsistence of the multitude.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord George had always been a great supporter of railway enterprise in
      England, on the ground that, irrespective of all the peculiar advantages
      of those undertakings, the money was spent in the country; and that if our
      surplus capital were not directed to such channels, it would go, as it had
      gone before, to foreign mines and foreign loans, from which in a great
      degree no return would arrive. When millions were avowedly to be laid out
      in useless and unprofitable undertakings, it became a question whether it
      were not wiser even somewhat to anticipate the time when the necessities
      of Ireland would require railways on a considerable scale; and whether by
      embarking in such enterprises, we might not only find prompt and
      profitable employment for the people, but by giving a new character to the
      country and increasing its social relations and the combinations of its
      industry, might not greatly advance the period when such modes of
      communication would be absolutely requisite.
    </p>
    <p>
      Full of these views, Lord George, in the course of the autumn, consulted
      in confidence some gentlemen very competent to assist him in such an
      inquiry, and especially Mr. Robert Stephenson, Mr. Hudson, and Mr. Laing.
      With their advice and at their suggestion, two engineers of great ability,
      Mr. Bidder and Mr. Smith, were despatched to Ireland, personally to
      investigate the whole question of railroads in that country.
    </p>
    <p>
      Meditating over the condition of Ireland, a subject very frequently in his
      thoughts, and of the means to combat its vast and inveterate pauperism,
      Lord George was frequently in the habit of reverting to the years &lsquo;41-42
      in England, when there were fifteen hundred thousand persons on the parish
      rates; eighty-three thousand able-bodied men, actually confined within the
      walls of the workhouse, and more than four hundred thousand able-bodied
      men receiving out-door relief. What changed all this and restored England
      in a very brief space to a condition of affluence hardly before known in
      her annals? Not certainly the alterations in the tariff which were made by
      Sir Robert Peel at the commencement of his government, prudent and
      salutary as they were. No one would pretend that the abolition of the
      slight duty (five-sixteenths of a penny) on the raw material of the cotton
      manufacturer, or the free introduction of some twenty-seven thousand head
      of foreign cattle, or even the admission of foreign timber at reduced
      duties, could have effected this. Unquestionably it was the railway
      enterprise which then began to prevail that was the cause of this national
      renovation. Suddenly, and for several years, an additional sum of thirteen
      millions of pounds sterling a year was spent in the wages of our native
      industry; two hundred thousand able-bodied labourers received each upon an
      average twenty-two shillings a week, stimulating the revenue both in
      excise and customs by their enormous consumption of malt and spirits,
      tobacco and tea. This was the main cause of the contrast between the
      England of &lsquo;41 and the England of &lsquo;45.
    </p>
    <p>
      Was there any reason why a proportionate application of the same remedy to
      Ireland should not proportionately produce a similar result? Was there
      anything wild or unauthorized in the suggestion? On the contrary: ten
      years before (1836), the subject had engaged the attention of her
      Majesty&rsquo;s government, and a royal commission had been issued to inquire
      into the expediency of establishing railway communication in Ireland. The
      commissioners, men of great eminence, recommended that a system of
      railways should be established in Ireland, and by the pecuniary assistance
      of government. They rested their recommendation mainly on the abundant
      evidence existing of the vast benefits which easy communication had
      accomplished in Ireland, and of the complete success which had attended
      every Parliamentary grant for improving roads in that country.
    </p>
    <p>
      The weakness of the government, arising from the balanced state of
      parties, rendered it impossible at that time for them to prosecute the
      measures recommended by the royal commissioners, though they made an
      ineffectual attempt in that direction. Could it be suspected that the
      recommendation of the commissioners had been biassed by any political
      consideration? Was it a Whig commission attempting to fulfil a Whig
      object? Another commission, more memorable, at the head of which was the
      Earl of Devon, was appointed by a Tory government some years afterwards,
      virtually to consider the condition of the people of Ireland, and the best
      means for their amelioration. The report of the Devon commission confirmed
      all the recommendations of the railway commissioners of &lsquo;36, and pointed
      to these new methods of communication, by the assistance of loans from the
      government, as the best means of providing employment for the people.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Mr. Smith of Deanston was examined by a Parliamentary committee, and
      asked what measure of all others would be the one most calculated to
      improve the agriculture and condition of Ireland, he did not reply, as
      some might have anticipated, that the most efficient measure would be to
      drain the bogs; but his answer was, &lsquo;advance the construction of railways,
      and then agricultural improvement will speedily follow.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      To illustrate the value of railways to an agricultural population, Mr.
      Smith, of Deanston, said, &lsquo;that the improvement of the land for one mile
      only on each side of the railway so constructed would be so great, that it
      would pay the cost of the whole construction.&rsquo; He added, that there were
      few districts&rsquo; in Ireland, in which railway communication could be
      introduced, where the value of the country through which the railway
      passed would not be raised to an extent equal to the whole cost of the
      railway.
    </p>
    <p>
      Arguing on an area of six hundred and forty acres for every square mile,
      after deducting the land occupied by fences, roads, and buildings, Mr.
      Smith, of Deanston, entered into a calculation of the gain deliverable
      from the mere carriage of the produce of the land, and the back carriage
      of manure, coals, tiles, bricks, and other materials, and estimated the
      saving through those means on every square mile to more than £300, or
      something above £600 on 1,280 acres abutting each mile of railway, this
      being the difference of the cost of carriage under the old mode of
      conveyance as compared with the new. Following up this calculation, he
      showed that fifteen hundred miles of railway would improve the land
      through which it passed to the extent of nearly two million acres at the
      rate of a mile on each side; and, taken at twenty-five years&rsquo; purchase,
      would equal twenty-four millions sterling in the permanent improvement of
      the land.
    </p>
    <p>
      The ground, therefore, was sound on which Lord George cautiously, and
      after due reflection, ventured to place his foot.
    </p>
    <p>
      And now, after the reports of these two royal commissions, what was the
      state of railway enterprise in Ireland in the autumn of &lsquo;46, when a vast
      multitude could only subsist by being employed by the government, and when
      the government had avowedly no reproductive or even useful work whereon to
      place them; but allotted them to operations which were described by
      Colonel Douglas, the inspector of the government himself, &lsquo;as works which
      would answer no other purpose than that of obstructing the public
      conveyances?&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      In &lsquo;46, acts of Parliament were in existence authorizing the construction
      of more than fifteen hundred miles of railway in Ireland, and some of
      these acts had passed so long as eleven years previously, yet at the end
      of &lsquo;46 only one hundred and twenty-three miles of railway had been
      completed, and only one hundred and sixty-four were in the course of
      completion, though arrested in their progress from want of funds. Almost
      in the same period, two thousand six hundred miles of railway had been
      completed in England, and acts of Parliament had passed for constructing
      five thousand four hundred miles in addition: in the whole, eight thousand
      miles.
    </p>
    <p>
      What then was the reason of this debility in Ireland in prosecuting these
      undertakings? Were they really not required; were the elements of success
      wanting? The first element of success in railway enterprise, according to
      the highest authorities, is population; property is only the second
      consideration. Now, Ireland in &lsquo;46 was more densely inhabited than
      England. A want of population could not therefore be the cause. But a
      population so impoverished as the Irish could not perhaps avail themselves
      of the means of locomotion; and yet it appeared from research that the
      rate of passengers on the two Irish railways that were open greatly
      exceeded in number that of the passengers upon English and Scotch
      railways. The average number of passengers on English and Scotch railways
      was not twelve thousand per mile per annum, while on the Ulster railway
      the number was nearly twenty-two thousand, and on the Dublin and Drogheda
      line the number exceeded eighteen thousand.
    </p>
    <p>
      The cause of the weakness in Ireland to prosecute these undertakings was
      the total want of domestic capital for the purpose, and the unwillingness
      of English capitalists to embark their funds in a country whose social and
      political condition they viewed with distrust, however promising and even
      profitable the investment might otherwise appear. This was remarkably
      illustrated by the instance of the Great Southern and Western Railway of
      Ireland, one of the undertakings of which the completion was arrested by
      want of funds, yet partially open. Compared with a well-known railway in
      Great Britain, the Irish railway had cost in its construction £15,000 per
      mile, and the British upwards of £26,000 per mile; the weekly traffic on
      the two railways, allowing for some difference in their extent, was about
      the same on both, in amount varying from £1,000 to £1,300 per week; yet
      the unfinished British railway was at £40 premium in the market, and the
      incomplete Irish railway at £2 discount. It was clear, therefore, that the
      commercial principle, omnipotent in England, was not competent to cope
      with the peculiar circumstances of Ireland.
    </p>
    <p>
      Brooding over the suggestions afforded by the details which we have
      slightly indicated, Lord George Bentinck, taking into consideration not
      merely the advantage that would accrue to the country from the
      establishment of a system of railroads, but also remembering the peculiar
      circumstances of the times, the absolute necessity of employing the
      people, and the inevitable advance of public money for that purpose,
      framed a scheme with reference to all these considerations, and which he
      believed would meet all the conditions of the case. He spared no thought,
      or time, or labour, for his purpose. He availed himself of the advice of
      the most experienced, and prosecuted his researches ardently and
      thoroughly. When he had matured his scheme, he had it thrown into the form
      of a parliamentary bill by the ablest hands, and then submitted the whole
      to the judgment and criticism of those who shared his confidence and
      counsels. Towards the end of November he was at Knowsley, from whence he
      communicated with the writer of these pages. &lsquo;I am here hatching secret
      plans for the next session; and now, if you have not quite abjured
      politics, as you threatened for the next three months to do, devoting
      yourself to poetry and romance, I think I ought to have a quiet day with
      you, in order that we may hold council together and talk over all our
      policy. I shall be at Harcourt House on the 30th. I shall stay there till
      the 3rd of December, for a meeting on that day of the Norfolk Estuary
      Company, of which I am chairman. Would that evening suit you&mdash;or
      Friday&mdash;or Wednesday? I am not well acquainted with the geography of
      Buckinghamshire, but presume you are accessible either by rail or road in
      less than twelve hours.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;The activity in the dockyard must be in preparation to interfere in
      Portugal, to keep King Leopold upon the Portuguese throne: it cannot be
      for Mexico, for our friend the &ldquo;Times&rdquo; formally abandoned Mexico in his
      leader some days ago.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;* * * * has been entertaining Lord * * * * in Ireland, and writes: &ldquo;How
      Peel must chuckle at the Whig difficulties.&rdquo; I dare say he does, but in
      Ireland it seems to me Lord Besborough is putting the fate Irish
      government to shame, whilst the rupture of the <i>entente cordiale</i>,
      the conquest of California and New Mexico, and the complications in the
      river Plata,&mdash;are complete inheritances from Lord Aberdeen.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;Eaton has come to life again: else there was a prospect of George Manners
      quietly succeeding him in Cambridgeshire. I fear we shall do no good in
      Lincolnshire, notwithstanding the industry of our dear friend the &ldquo;Morning
      Post,&rdquo; in getting hold of Lord Ebrington&rsquo;s and Lord Rich&rsquo;s letters to Lord
      Yarborough. I suppose there is no mistake in Lord Dalhousie (&ldquo;the large
      trout&rdquo;) going out to Bombay with the reversion of Bengal.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;The duchy of Lancaster is to be put in commission, Lord * * * * to be one
      of the commissioners, <i>but unpaid</i>. He has begun, I presume, to
      overcome the false delicacy which prevented his acceptance of office under
      the Whigs in July. S * * * * thought G * * * * was to be another of the
      Board, but that turns out a mistake, but Lord H * * * * is to be.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;The manufacturers are working short time, and reducing wages in all
      directions, John Bright and Sons at Rochdale among the rest. The
      Zollverein increasing their import duties on cotton and linen yarn, and
      putting export duties of 25 per cent. (some of the states at least) on
      grain.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      We must not omit to record, that in the autumn of this year, at Goodwood
      races, the sporting world was astounded by hearing that Lord George
      Bentinck had parted with his racing stud at an almost nominal price. Lord
      George was present, as was his custom, at this meeting, held in the
      demesne of one who was among his dearest friends. Lord George was not only
      present but apparently absorbed in the sport, and his horses were very
      successful. The world has hardly done justice to the great sacrifice which
      he made on this occasion to a high sense of duty. He not only parted with
      the finest racing stud in England, but he parted with it at a moment when
      its prospects were never so brilliant; and he knew this well. We may have
      hereafter to notice on this head an interesting passage in his life.
    </p>
    <p>
      He could scarcely have quitted the turf that day without a pang. He had
      become the lord paramount of that strange world, so difficult to sway, and
      which requires for its government both a stern resolve and a courtly
      breeding. He had them both; and though the blackleg might quail before the
      awful scrutiny of his piercing eye, there never was a man so scrupulously
      polite to his inferiors as Lord George Bentinck. The turf, too, was not
      merely the scene of the triumphs of his stud and his betting-book. He had
      purified its practice and had elevated its character, and he was prouder
      of this achievement than of any other connected with his sporting life.
      Notwithstanding his mighty stakes and the keenness with which he backed
      his opinion, no one perhaps ever cared less for money. His habits were
      severely simple, and he was the most generous of men. He valued the
      acquisition of money on the turf, because there it was the test of
      success. He counted his thousands after a great race as a victorious
      general counts his cannon and his prisoners.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER VIII.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>The Versatility of Lord George Bentinck</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      THOSE who throw their eye over the debates of the session of &lsquo;47, cannot
      fail to be struck by the variety of important questions in the discussion
      of which Lord George Bentinck took a leading or prominent part. And it
      must be borne in mind that he never offered his opinion on any subject
      which he had not diligently investigated and attempted to comprehend in
      all its bearings. His opponents might object to his principles or
      challenge his conclusions, but no one could deny that his conclusions were
      drawn from extensive information and that his principles were clear and
      distinct. He spared no pains to acquire by reading, correspondence, and
      personal research, the most authentic intelligence on every subject in
      debate. He never chattered. He never uttered a sentence in the House of
      Commons which did not convey a conviction or a fact. He was too profuse
      indeed with his facts: he had not the art of condensation. But those who
      have occasion to refer to his speeches and calmly to examine them, will be
      struck by the amplitude and the freshness of his knowledge, the clearness
      of his views, the coherence in all his efforts, and often&mdash;a point
      for which he never had sufficient credit&mdash;by his graphic idiom.
    </p>
    <p>
      The best speech on the affairs of Cracow, for example, the most vigorous
      and the best informed, touching all the points with a thorough
      acquaintance, was that of Lord George Bentinck. The discussion on Cracow,
      which lasted several nights and followed very shortly after the defeat of
      his Irish bill, appeared to relate to a class of subjects which would not
      have engaged his attention; but on the contrary, he had given days and
      nights to this theme, had critically examined all the documents, and
      conferred with those qualified to supply him with any supplementary
      information requisite. He spoke several times this session on questions
      connected with our foreign affairs, and always impressed the House with a
      conviction that he was addressing it after a due study of his subject: as
      for example, his speech against our interference in Portugal, and the
      statement in which he brought forward the claims of the holders of Spanish
      bonds on the government of Spain before the House of Commons. In the
      instance of Portugal, a motion of censure on the conduct of ministers had
      been introduced by Mr. Hume, and the government were only saved from a
      minority by the friendly interposition of Mr. Duncombe, who proposed an
      amendment to the motion of Mr. Hume which broke the line of the liberal
      force. Lord George Bentinck in this case followed Mr. Macaulay, whose
      speech, as was his wont, had been rich in historical illustration. &lsquo;The
      right honourable and learned member for Edinburgh,&rsquo; Lord George replied,
      &lsquo;had entered into a very interesting history of various interferences
      which had taken place in the affairs of Portugal; but in making that
      statement he forgot to mention one circumstance which had occurred in that
      history, and it was this
    </p>
    <p>
      &mdash;that when Philip II. of Spain sought to conquer Portugal, the
      method he had recourse to for that purpose was one which he thought her
      Majesty&rsquo;s ministers had successfully practised on the present occasion
    </p>
    <p>
      &mdash;he persuaded the leaders in Portugal to mix sand with the powder of
      their troops. And so, on this occasion, her Majesty&rsquo;s ministers had
      prevailed on the member for Finsbury, and those other members who were so
      ready to profess a love of liberty, to mix sand with their powder.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      In a previous chapter we have treated at some length of the means proposed
      or adopted by the Parliament for the sustenance and relief of the people
      of Ireland. The new poor law for that country also much engaged the
      attention of both Houses this session. Lord George Bentinck took a very
      active part in these transactions, and moved the most important of all the
      amendments to the government measure, namely, an attempt to assimilate the
      poor law of Ireland as much as possible to that of England, and make the
      entire rates be paid by the occupying tenant. His object, he said, was to
      &lsquo;prevent lavish expenditure and encourage profitable employment to the
      people.&rsquo; This amendment was only lost by a majority of four.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the 26th of March, on the government bringing forward their bill on the
      rum duties, Lord George Bentinck brought before the House the case of the
      British and Irish distillers, not with any preference or partiality
      towards English, Scotch, or Irish distillers over the colonial producer.
      &lsquo;I am no advocate of any monopoly whatever. I desire only equal and exact
      justice between both parties; and the only way in which that end can, in
      my opinion, be properly attained, is in a select committee upstairs,
      consisting of impartial members of this house.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      He often used to say that no subject ever gave him more trouble thoroughly
      to master than the spirit duties; and he noticed the character of the
      theme at the beginning of his speech. He said he required, not only the
      most especial indulgence, but even the toleration of the House, &lsquo;for of
      all the dry and dull subjects which could possibly be introduced, the
      question which it is now my misfortune to bring under the consideration of
      the House is the driest and the dullest. If this question had been one
      merely of pounds, shillings, and pence, it would have been dull and
      complicated enough; but this is a question in which are concerned not
      pounds and shillings, but pence, and halfpence, and farthings.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      The Whitsuntide holidays occurred at the end of May. It had originally
      been the intention of Lord George Bentinck, at the request of leading
      merchants and manufacturers of all parties and opinions, to have brought
      forward the question of the Bank Act after these holidays, and to move a
      resolution that some discretionary power should be established as to the
      issue of notes. He thus alludes to this point in a letter to Mr. Wright,
      of the 24th of May:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;I return you No. 1019, of the &ldquo;Bankers&rsquo; Circular,&rdquo; with many thanks.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;This delightful and timely change in the weather will do wonders for the
      country, and by producing an abundant and seasonable harvest, will save
      the country, and <i>may save the Bank Charter Act</i>; but it is pretty
      well settled that I am to give notice immediately after the holidays, of a
      resolution very much in the spirit of the memorial contained in the paper
      I am returning to you.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;Things are better in the City and at Liverpool, and with this weather
      will continue to improve; but it seems to me any reverse in the weather,
      such as would occasion a late and deficient harvest, could not fail to
      bring the commerce of the country to a dead lock.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;The opinion is gaining ground, that in the present state not only of
      Ireland, but of many districts in England, the government will not venture
      upon a general election till after the harvest, and not then, unless the
      harvest should prove favourable.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;I am glad to read your opinion in opposition to Lord Ashburton&rsquo;s, that
      railways keep the gold in the country, and do not send it out. Glyn gave
      strong evidence last year to this effect before the railway committee.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Neither of the prospects in this letter was realised. The commercial and
      manufacturing interest, after the Whitsun recess, thought it advisable for
      reasons of great weight that Lord George Bentinck should postpone for a
      month or six weeks his intended motion on the Bank Charter, and the
      ministers resolved to dissolve Parliament before the harvest: thus it
      happened that the merchants and manufacturers lost their chance of relief
      from the yoke, and experienced the reign of terror in the autumn, the
      terrible events of which ultimately occasioned the assembling of the new
      Parliament in November.
    </p>
    <p>
      Anticipating the immediate dissolution of Parliament, Sir Robert Peel had
      issued an address to the electors of Tamworth, justifying his commercial
      policy. In the opinion of Lord George Bentinck it set forth a statement as
      to the effect and operation of those financial measures which had taken
      place in the course of the last six years, which, if left altogether
      unrefuted, might have a dangerous tendency at the coming elections. The
      general effect of that statement was, that by the reduction of duties to a
      large extent, it was possible to relieve the people of this country of
      burdens amounting to more than seven millions and a half sterling with
      little or no loss whatever to the revenue. But the truth was, Sir Robert
      Peel in his reductions had dealt only with little more than ten millions
      sterling of the revenue of the country, and had left the remaining
      thirty-seven millions untouched. Now on that portion of the revenue with
      which alone he had dealt, there was a deficiency, through his changes, to
      the amount of five millions sterling, which loss was compensated by the
      increase on those very articles which Sir Robert had left untouched. It
      was the opinion of Lord George Bentinck that the conclusion which Sir
      Robert Peel had drawn from the comparatively barren results of the
      increased duties on imports carried by the Whigs in 1840, viz., that
      indirect taxation had reached its limit, and which was indeed the basis of
      his new system, was a fallacy, and that the anticipated increase of import
      duties had not accrued in 1840 in consequence of our having had three
      successive bad harvests, &lsquo;and a bad cotton crop to boot,&rsquo; all of which had
      checked the consuming power of the community. Sir Robert Peel had been
      favoured by three successive good harvests and nearly £100,000,000
      invested in six years in domestic enterprise. &lsquo;The interposition of
      Providence,&rsquo; said Lord George, &lsquo;is never a part of our debates.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Under these circumstances, Lord George took occasion to review the
      commercial policy of Sir Robert Peel, on the 20th July, in the House of
      Commons, only three days before the prorogation, and in one of his most
      successful speeches. He was much assisted by the fact that the exports of
      all our staple manufactures had then greatly diminished, and of course he
      urged this point triumphantly. &lsquo;If we had been indemnified for the dead
      loss of £650,000 on cotton wool by any great impulse given to our
      manufacturers, it would be a consolation which unfortunately we could not
      enjoy.&rsquo; He traced all the consumption to railway enterprise, and showed
      that it alone had compensated for the fruitless loss of revenue which we
      had incurred in vainly stimulating the exports of our manufactures, which
      had actually diminished. He was so impressed with the importance that, &lsquo;on
      the eve of a dissolution, such a statement as that of Sir Robert Peel
      should not go forth to the country uncontroverted, as in that case the
      necessary result would be that the people would come to the opinion that
      they might abolish taxes altogether and yet maintain the revenue,&rsquo; that he
      sat up all night writing an address to his constituents, the electors of
      King&rsquo;s Lynn, which took up nearly two columns of the newspapers, in which
      he presented his refutation to the public of the commercial manifesto of
      Tamworth, illustrated by the necessary tables and documents.
    </p>
    <p>
      There is a sentence in this speech which, as a distinct expression of
      policy, should perhaps be quoted:
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;Sir, I am one of those who seek for the repeal of the malt tax and the
      hop duties. I am one of those who think that the excise duties ought to be
      taken off. But, sir, I do not pretend that you can repeal the malt tax or
      the hop duties, or remove the soap tax without commutation for other
      taxes. I will not delude the people by pretending that I could take off
      more than seven millions and a half of taxes without replacing them by
      others, and not leave the nation bankrupt. But I think these reforms of
      Sir Robert Peel have been in a mistaken direction; I think that revenue
      duties on all foreign imports ought to be maintained, and that a revenue
      equal to those excise duties which I have mentioned can be levied upon the
      produce of foreign countries and foreign industry, without imposing any
      greater tax than one which shall fall far short of Mr. Walker&rsquo;s &ldquo;perfect
      revenue standard of 20 per cent.&rdquo; I say that by imposing a tax far less
      than 20 per cent. upon all articles of foreign import, a revenue might be
      derived far less burdensome to this country than that of excise, a revenue
      of which the burden would be largely shared in by foreign countries, and
      in many cases paid altogether by foreign countries.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord George at this time watched with great interest a novel feature in
      our commercial transactions. He wrote on the 29th May (1847), to Mr. Burn,
      the editor of the &lsquo;Commercial Glance,&rsquo; and an individual of whose
      intelligence, accuracy, and zeal he had a high and just opinion, &lsquo;Can you
      inform me how the raw cotton purchased for exportation stands in the first
      three weeks of the present month of May, as compared with the
      corresponding periods of &lsquo;46&mdash;5&mdash;4&mdash;3?
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;I observe from a cotton circular sent to me the other day, that seven
      thousand five hundred bags of cotton had been purchased for exportation
      between the 1st and 21st of May. If with reduced stocks of raw cotton we
      are commencing a career of increased exportation, it appears to me to
      involve very serious consequences for our cotton manufactures as growing
      out of the existing monetary difficulties of the manufacturers.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;If you could answer me these queries within the next three or four days,
      I should feel greatly obliged to you.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Again, on the 22d of July, on the point of going down to his constituents,
      he was still pursuing his inquiries in the same quarter.&rsquo; I want
      particularly to compare,&rsquo; he says to Mr. Burn, &lsquo;the export of the last ten
      weeks of raw cotton with the corresponding ten weeks of &lsquo;46 and &lsquo;45, and
      at the same time to compare the importations and deliveries into the hands
      of the manufacturers during these same periods.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;Pray address me, Lynn, Norfolk, where I go on Saturday, and shall remain
      till after my election on Thursday.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      He writes again from Lynn, with great thanks for the information which had
      been accordingly forwarded to him there. &lsquo;Might I ask you to give me an
      account of the cotton wool imported weekly into Liverpool, and also the
      quantity sold to dealers, exporters, and speculators, in the three
      corresponding weeks of &lsquo;45-46.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;This information by return of post would greatly oblige me.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      On the 23d of July, 1847, the last day of the second Parliament of Queen
      Victoria, Lord George went down to the House of Commons early, and took
      the opportunity of making a statement respecting the condition of our
      sugar-producing colonies, which were now experiencing the consequences of
      the unjustifiable legislation of the preceding year. He said there were
      appearances in the political horizon which betokened that he should not be
      able to obtain a select committee in the present session, and therefore,
      if he had the honour of a seat in the next Parliament, he begged to
      announce that he would take the earliest occasion to move for a committee
      to inquire into the present power of our colonies to compete with those
      countries which have still the advantage of the enforced labour of slaves.
      The returns just laid upon the table of the House could leave no doubt, he
      thought, on any man&rsquo;s mind on that point. Since the emancipation, the
      produce of sugar by the colonies, from &lsquo;31 to &lsquo;46, had been reduced one
      half, and of rum and coffee had been reduced to one fourth. When the act
      of last year which admitted slave-grown sugar was introduced, the
      allegation of the English colonies, that they could not compete with the
      labour of slaves, was denied. The proof of that allegation was, that they
      were already overwhelmed.
    </p>
    <p>
      When one recalls all to which this speech led, the most memorable effort
      of that ardent, energetic life to which it was perhaps fatal, one can
      scarcely observe the origin of such vast exertions without emotion.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Under Secretary of State replied to Lord George, making a cry of cheap
      sugar for the hustings which were before everybody&rsquo;s eyes, but making also
      this remarkable declaration, that &lsquo;the Island of Mauritius was in a state
      of the greatest prosperity.&rsquo; While Lord George was speaking, the cannon
      were heard that announced the departure of her majesty from the palace.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then followed a motion of Mr. Bankes about the sale of bread, which led to
      some discussion. Mr. Bankes threatened a division. Lord Palmerston, who on
      this occasion was leading the House, said it would be acting like a set of
      schoolboys, if when Black Rod appeared they should be in the lobby instead
      of attending the Speaker to the other House. But as the members seemed
      very much inclined to act like schoolboys, the Secretary of State had to
      speak against time on the subject of baking. He analyzed the petition,
      which he said he would not read through, but the last paragraph was of
      great importance.
    </p>
    <p>
      At these words, Black Rod knocked at the door, and duly making his
      appearance, summoned the House to attend the Queen in the House of Lords,
      and Mr. Speaker, followed by a crowd of members, duly obeyed the summons.
    </p>
    <p>
      In about a quarter of an hour, Mr. Speaker returned without the mace, and
      standing at the table read her Majesty&rsquo;s speech to the members around,
      after which they retired, the Parliament being prorogued. In the course of
      the afternoon, the Parliament was dissolved by proclamation.
    </p>
    <p>
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      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
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      <br /><br /><br /><br />
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER IX.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>The Great Panic</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      THE general election of 1847 did not materially alter the position of
      parties in the House of Commons. The high prices of agricultural produce
      which then prevailed naturally rendered the agricultural interest
      apathetic, and although the rural constituencies, from a feeling of
      esteem, again returned those members who had been faithful to the
      protective principle, the farmers did not exert themselves to increase the
      number of their supporters. The necessity of doing so was earnestly
      impressed upon them by Lord George Bentinck, who warned them then that the
      pinching hour was inevitable; but the caution was disregarded, and many of
      those individuals who are now the loudest in their imprecations on the
      memory of Sir Robert Peel, and who are the least content with the
      temperate course which is now recommended to them by those who have the
      extremely difficult office of upholding their interests in the House of
      Commons, entirely kept aloof, or would smile when they were asked for
      their support with sarcastic self-complacency, saying, &lsquo;Well, Sir, do you
      think after all that free trade has done us so much harm?&rsquo; Perhaps they
      think now, that if they had taken the advice of Lord George Bentinck and
      exerted themselves to return a majority to the House of Commons, it would
      have profited them more than useless execrations and barren discontent.
      But it is observable, that no individuals now grumble so much as the
      farmers who voted for free trader in 1847, unless indeed it be the
      shipowners, every one of whom for years, both in and out of Parliament,
      supported the repeal of the corn laws.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Protectionists maintained their numbers, though they did not increase
      them, in the new Parliament. Lord George Bentinck however gained an
      invaluable coadjutor by the re-appearance of Mr. Herries in public life, a
      gentleman whose official as well as parliamentary experience, fine
      judgment, and fertile resource, have been of inestimable service to the
      Protectionist party. The political connection which gained most were the
      Whigs; they were much more numerous and compact, but it was in a great
      measure at the expense of the general liberal element, and partly at the
      cost of the following of Sir Robert Peel. The triumphant Conservative
      majority of 1841 had disappeared; but the government, with all shades of
      supporters, had not an absolute majority.
    </p>
    <p>
      Had the general election been postponed until the autumn, the results
      might have been very different. That storm&mdash;which had been long
      gathering in the commercial atmosphere&mdash;then burst like a typhoon.
      The annals of our trade afford no parallel for the widespread disaster and
      the terrible calamities. In the month of September, fifteen of the most
      considerable houses in the city of London stopped payment for between five
      and six millions sterling. The governor of the Bank of England was himself
      a partner in one of these firms; a gentleman who had lately filled that
      office, was another victim; two other Bank directors were included in the
      list. The failures were not limited to the metropolis, but were
      accompanied by others of great extent in the provinces. At Manchester,
      Liverpool, and Glasgow large firms were obliged to suspend payments. This
      shock of credit arrested all the usual accommodation, and the pressure in
      the money-market, so terrible in the spring, was revived. The excitement
      and the alarm in the city of London were so great that when the Chancellor
      of the Exchequer hurried up to town on the 1st of October, he found that
      the interest of money was at the rate of 60 per cent. per annum. The Bank
      Charter produced the same injurious effect as it had done in April; it
      aggravated the evil by forcing men to hoard. In vain the commercial world
      deplored the refusal of the government to comply with the suggestion made
      by Lord George Bentinck and Mr. Thomas Baring in the spring; in vain they
      entreated them at least now to adopt it, and to authorize the Bank of
      England to enlarge the amount of their discounts and advances on approved
      security, without reference to the stringent clause of the charter. The
      government, acting, it is believed, with the encouragement and sanction of
      Sir Robert Peel, were obstinate, and three weeks then occurred during
      which the commercial credit of this country was threatened with total
      destruction. Nine more considerable mercantile houses stopped payment in
      the metropolis, the disasters in the provinces were still more extensive.
      The Royal Bank of Liverpool failed; among several principal establishments
      in that town, one alone stopped payment for upwards of a million sterling.
      The havoc at Manchester was also great. The Newcastle bank and the North
      and South Wales bank stopped. Consols fell to 79 1/4, and exchequer bills
      were at last at 35 per cent, discount. The ordinary rate of discount at
      the Bank of England was between 8 and 9 per cent., but out of doors
      accommodation was not to be obtained. In such a state of affairs, the
      small houses of course gave way. From their rising in the morning until
      their hour of retirement at night, the First Lord of the Treasury and the
      Chancellor of the Exchequer were employed in seeing persons of all
      descriptions, who entreated them to interfere and preserve the community
      from universal bankruptcy. &lsquo;Perish the world, sooner than violate a
      principle,&rsquo; was the philosophical exclamation of her Majesty&rsquo;s ministers,
      sustained by the sympathy and the sanction of Sir Robert Peel. At last,
      the governor and the deputy-governor of the Bank of England waited on
      Downing Street, and said it could go on no more. The Scotch banks had
      applied to them for assistance. The whole demand for discount was thrown
      upon the Bank of England. Two bill-brokers had stopped; two others were
      paralyzed. The Bank of England could discount no longer. Thanks to the
      Bank Charter, they were safe and their treasury full of bullion, but it
      appeared that everybody else must fall, for in four-and-twenty hours the
      machinery of credit would be entirely stopped. The position was frightful,
      and the government gave way. They did that on the 25th of October, after
      houses had fallen to the amount of fifteen millions sterling, which they
      had been counselled to do by Lord George Bentinck on the 25th of April. It
      turned out exactly as Mr. Thomas Baring had foretold. It was not want of
      capital or deficiency of circulation which had occasioned these awful
      consequences. It was sheer panic, occasioned by an unwisely stringent law.
      No sooner had the government freed the Bank of England from that
      stringency, than the panic ceased. The very morning the letter of license
      from the government to the Bank of England appeared, thousands and tens of
      thousands of pounds sterling were taken from the hoards, some from boxes
      deposited with bankers, although the depositors would not leave the notes
      in their bankers&rsquo; hands. Large parcels of notes were returned to the Bank
      of England cut into halves, as they had been sent down into the country,
      and so small was the real demand for an additional quantity of currency,
      that the whole amount taken from the Bank, when the unlimited power of
      issue was given, was under £400,000, and the Bank consequently never
      availed itself of the privilege which the government had accorded it. The
      restoration of confidence produced an ample currency, and that confidence
      had solely been withdrawn from the apprehension of the stringent clauses
      of the Bank Charter Act of 1844.
    </p>
    <p>
      These extraordinary events had not occurred unnoticed by Lord George
      Bentinck. The two subjects that mostly engaged his attention after the
      general election were the action of the Bank Charter and the state of our
      sugar colonies. Perhaps it would be best to give some extracts from his
      correspondence at this period. He was a good letter-writer, easy and
      clear. His characteristic love of details also rendered this style of
      communication interesting. It is not possible to give more than extracts,
      and it is necessary to omit all those circumstances which generally in
      letter-reading are most acceptable. His comments on men and things were
      naturally free and full, and he always endeavoured, for the amusement of
      his correspondents, to communicate the social gossip of the hour. But
      although all this must necessarily be omitted, his letters may afford some
      illustrations of his earnestness and energy, the constancy of his aim, and
      the untiring vigilance with which he pursued his object&mdash;especially
      those which are addressed to gentlemen engaged in commercial pursuits who
      cooperated with him in his investigations.
    </p>
    <p>
      TO A FRIEND.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harcourt House, August 30, 1847.
    </p>
    <p>
      An answer is come out to my address to my constituents at King&rsquo;s Lynn, and
      to my speech in answer to Peel&rsquo;s manifesto. Pray read it. At first I
      thought I could swear to its being * * * *, I now think I can swear to its
      being * * * *; the servility to Peel, and the official red-tape style
      would equally do for either; but the no-popery page, I think, fixes it on
      * * * *.
    </p>
    <p>
      I think it wretchedly weak, and have written some notes on the margin,
      showing up the principal points. The nine months&rsquo; famine of 1846-47, as
      contrasted with Peel&rsquo;s famine, shows a difference of between £6,000,000
      and £7,000,000; that is to say, on the balance in the nine months 1845-46,
      Ireland exported about three millions&rsquo; worth of breadstuffs, and not a
      soul died of famine. In the nine months 1846-47, she imported three
      millions&rsquo; sterling worth of bread-stuffs, which insufficed to prevent one
      million&mdash;or say half a million&mdash;of the people from dying of
      starvation.
    </p>
    <p>
      At present I have seen no notice of the pamphlet in any of the newspapers:
      if it is either * * * *&lsquo;s, or * * * *&lsquo;s, or * * * *&lsquo;s we shall see it
      reviewed in &lsquo;Times,&rsquo; &lsquo;Chronicle,&rsquo; and &lsquo;Spectator.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      The Bank of England has raised the interest on * * * *&lsquo;s mortgage
      one-third per cent., making an additional annual charge of £1,500 a year
      to him. I am very sorry for him, but I know nothing so likely to rouse the
      landed aristocracy from their apathy, and to weaken their idolatry of Peel
      so much as this warning note of the joint operation of his free trade and
      restrictive currency laws.
    </p>
    <p>
      TO A FRIEND.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harcourt House, September 2, 1847.
    </p>
    <p>
      I think it is * * * *. The trickster, I observe, has carefully reduced the
      pounds of cotton to cwts., in the hopes of concealing a great fraud to
      which he has condescended; taking, in the Whig year of 1841, the home
      consumption of cotton, whilst in Peel&rsquo;s year he gives entire importation
      as the home consumption, representing both as home consumption.
    </p>
    <p>
      In Peel&rsquo;s year, 1846, officially we have only the gross importation; but
      in the Whig year, 1841, the entire importation and the home consumption
      are given separately: the importation exceeding the home consumption by
      fifty million pounds. Burn&rsquo;s &lsquo;Glance,&rsquo; however, gives the importation and
      home consumption for both years; unfortunately, however, not in lbs. or
      cwts., but in bags. * * * *&lsquo;s fraud, however, is not the less apparent.
    </p>
    <p>
      He selects a Whig year when the home consumption was 220,-000 bags under
      the importation, and a year for Peel when the importation exceeded the
      home consumption by 280,000 bags, and claps down the figures as alike
      describing the home consumption.
    </p>
    <p>
      None of the Peel papers have taken up the subject: if they should, the
      &lsquo;Morning Post&rsquo; will answer the pamphlet; but I should like to have mine
      back again, in order that I may furnish them with the notes.
    </p>
    <p>
      * * * * was with me this morning, and called my attention to the
      circumstance that the author starts with &lsquo;We,&rsquo; but drops into the singular
      number; * * * * fancies it is Peel himself, but the page on endowment
      fixes it on * * * *.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord L * * * * means, I presume, that Peel&rsquo;s savage hatred is applied to
      the Protectionist portion of his old party, not of course to the
      janissaries and renegade portion.
    </p>
    <p>
      The following letter was in reply to one of a friend who had sent him
      information, several days before they occurred, of the great failures that
      were about to happen in the city of London. The list was unfortunately
      quite accurate, with the exception indeed of the particular house
      respecting which Lord George quotes the opinion of Baron Rothschild.
    </p>
    <p>
      TO A FRIEND.
    </p>
    <p>
      Welbeck, September 17, 1847.
    </p>
    <p>
      A thousand thanks for your letter, the intelligence in which created a
      great sensation at Doncaster.
    </p>
    <p>
      As yet none of the houses appear to have failed except S * * * *. Baron
      Rothschild was at Doncaster. I talked with him on the subject; he seemed
      not to doubt the probable failure of any of the houses you named, except *
      * * *. He declared very emphatically &lsquo;that * * * * house was as sound as
      any house in London.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord Fitzwilliam declares &lsquo;it is no free trade without free trade in
      money.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord Clanricarde is here&mdash;laughs at the idea of Parliament meeting in
      October; but talks much of the difficulties of Ireland&mdash;says he does
      not see how the rates are to be paid.
    </p>
    <p>
      Messrs. Drummond are calling in their mortgages. I expect to hear that
      this practice will be general; money dear, corn cheap, incumbrances
      enhanced, and rents depressed. What will become of the apathetic country
      gentlemen? I judge from * * * * &lsquo;s language, that Lord John Russell will
      stand or fall by the Bank Charter Act-but that he feels very apprehensive
      of being unable to maintain it.
    </p>
    <p>
      I agree with Bonham, in thinking that the Protectionist party is smashed
      for the present Parliament; but I must say I think Protectionist
      principles and policy are likely to come into repute again far sooner than
      was expected; and though Peel&rsquo;s party be a compact body, and formidable in
      the House of Commons, I cannot think that there appears that in the
      working of his measures to make it likely that he should be soon again
      carried into power on the shoulders of the people. I think his political
      reputation must ebb further before it can rise again, if it should ever
      rise again. * * * * thought him &lsquo;broken and in low spirits,&rsquo; when he met
      him at Longshaw; but Lord * * * *, who was there at the same time, came
      away more Peelite than ever, and told them at Bretby that Sir Robert said,
      &lsquo;That he was quite surprised at the number of letters he got every day
      from members returned to Parliament, saying they meant to vote with him.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      You may rely upon it the Peelites are very sanguine that they will be in
      power again almost directly. We must keep them out.
    </p>
    <p>
      TO MR. BURN, EDITOR OF THE &lsquo;COMMERCIAL GLANCE.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Welbeck, September 38, 1847. To the many courtesies you have already
      bestowed upon me, I will sincerely thank you to add that of informing me
      what have been the estimated cotton crops in the United States in each of
      the last four years. I would also thank you to inform me the comparative
      importation, home consumption, re-exportation, and stocks on hand of
      cotton of the first seven months of the current and three preceding years.
    </p>
    <p>
      TO MR. BURN.
    </p>
    <p>
      Welbeck, October 4, 1847.
    </p>
    <p>
      Your statistics have reached me in the very nick of time, and are
      invaluable. I care nothing about &lsquo;outsides,&rsquo; it is &lsquo;insides&rsquo; I look to;
      give me a good &lsquo;heart,&rsquo; and I don&rsquo;t care how rough the &lsquo;bark&rsquo; is.
    </p>
    <p>
      Anything so good I fear to spoil by suggesting the most trivial addition,
      else I should say it would be an interesting feature to classify the
      exports of cotton goods, etc., etc., under three heads:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      1st. To the British colonies and British possessions abroad.
    </p>
    <p>
      2nd. To the northern states of Europe, France, Spain, Germany, Italy,
      etc., etc., the United States of America, and other countries having high
      tariffs.
    </p>
    <p>
      3rd. To China, Turkey, Africa, and the Southern States of America, and
      countries with low tariffs.
    </p>
    <p>
      I fear these failures of East and West India houses must entail great
      distress upon Manchester, and the manufacturing interests generally. You
      have given an account of the bankruptcies in the cotton trade during a
      long series of years till last year inclusive; are you able to say how the
      first nine months of the current year stands in comparison with its
      predecessors?
    </p>
    <p>
      I so highly prize your new work, that I must ask for a dozen copies to
      distribute among my friends.
    </p>
    <p>
      P. S. I have already parted with the copy you sent me; may I, therefore,
      beg another without waiting for any other binding?
    </p>
    <p>
      TO A FRIEND.
    </p>
    <p>
      Welbeck, October 5, 1847.
    </p>
    <p>
      I shall go up to town on Friday evening, in my way to Newmarket, and shall
      be at Harcourt House all Saturday and Sunday, and shall be delighted to
      see you, and have a thorough good talk with you. Free trade seems working
      mischief faster than the most fearful of us predicted, and Manchester
      houses, as I am told, &lsquo;failing in rows,&rsquo; ashamed to do penance in public,
      are secretly weeping in sackcloth and ashes, and heartily praying that
      Peel and Cobden had been hanged before they were allowed to ruin the
      country.
    </p>
    <p>
      Money at Manchester is quoted one and a quarter per cent, for ten days:
      £45 12s. 6d. per cent. per annum!
    </p>
    <p>
      TO A FRIEND.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harcourt House, October 22, 1847. I have this moment got a note from
      Stuart, telling me that &lsquo;the Chancellor has this afternoon sent out his
      notice of the business to be taken in his own court during Michaelmas
      term, that is, from the 2nd of November till the 26th, and below it there
      is this notice&mdash;<i>except those days on which the Lord Chancellor may
      sit in the House of Lords</i>!!!&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Surely this must portend a November session.
    </p>
    <p>
      TO A FRIEND.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harcourt House, October 23, 1847. The fat banker&rsquo;s gossip is all stuff.
      Peel goes to Windsor today, I believe on an invitation of some standing. *
      * * * who had been dining at Palmerston&rsquo;s last night, tells me that he
      does not think that ministers mean calling Parliament together, and is
      confident they mean to maintain the Bank Charter Act. There have been some
      first-rate articles and letters in the &lsquo;Morning Chronicle&rsquo; lately on this
      subject.
    </p>
    <p>
      TO A FRIEND.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harcourt House, November 6, 1847.
    </p>
    <p>
      I will stay over Tuesday, that I may have the pleasure of a thorough talk
      with you.
    </p>
    <p>
      I am told things are gradually getting better. I expect, however, a fresh
      reverse about six weeks or two months hence, when the returned lists of
      the stoppages in the East and West Indies, consequent upon the late
      failures here, come home. The Western Bank of Scotland is whispered about.
      If that were to fail, it might bring the canny Scots to their senses; but
      they are a headstrong race.
    </p>
    <p>
      A committee on commercial distress having been appointed, the principal
      reason for the summoning of the new Parliament in the autumn had been
      satisfied, and an adjournment until a month after Christmas was in
      prospect. Before, however, this took place, a new and interesting question
      arose, which led to considerable discussion, and which ultimately
      influenced in no immaterial manner the parliamentary position of Lord
      George Bentinck.
    </p>
    <p>
      The city of London at the general election had sent to the House of
      Commons, as a colleague of the first minister, a member who found a
      difficulty in taking one of the oaths appointed by the House to be sworn
      preliminarily to any member exercising his right of voting. The difficulty
      arose from this member being not only of the Jewish race, but
      unfortunately believing only in the first part of the Jewish religion.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
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    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER X.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>The Jews</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      THE relations that subsist between the Bedoueen race that, under the name
      of Jews, is found in every country of Europe, and the Teutonic,
      Sclavonian, and Celtic races which have appropriated that division of the
      globe, will form hereafter one of the most remarkable chapters in a
      philosophical history of man. The Saxon, the Sclav, and the Celt have
      adopted most of the laws and many of the customs of these Arabian tribes,
      all their literature and all their religion. They are therefore indebted
      to them for much that regulates, much that charms, and much that solaces
      existence. The toiling multitude rest every seventh day by virtue of a
      Jewish law; they are perpetually reading, &lsquo;for their example,&rsquo; the records
      of Jewish history, and singing the odes and elegies of Jewish poets; and
      they daily acknowledge on their knees, with reverent gratitude, that the
      only medium of communication between the Creator and themselves is the
      Jewish race. Yet they treat that race as the vilest of generations; and
      instead of logically looking upon them as the human family that has
      contributed most to human happiness, they extend to them every term of
      obloquy and every form of persecution.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us endeavour to penetrate this social anomaly that has harassed and
      perplexed centuries.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is alleged that the dispersion of the Jewish race is a penalty incurred
      for the commission of a great crime: namely, the crucifixion of our
      blessed Lord in the form of a Jewish prince, by the Romans, at Jerusalem,
      and at the instigation of some Jews, in the reign of Tiberius Augustus
      Caesar. Upon this, it may be observed, that the allegation is neither
      historically true nor dogmatically sound.
    </p>
    <p>
      I. <i>Not historically true</i>. It is not historically true, because at
      the time of the advent of our Lord, the Jewish race was as much dispersed
      throughout the world as at this present time, and had been so for many
      centuries. Europe, with the exception of those shores which are bathed by
      the midland sea, was then a primeval forest, but in every city of the
      great Eastern monarchies and in every province of the Roman empire, the
      Jews had been long settled. We have not precise authority for saying that
      at the advent there were more Jews established in Egypt than in Palestine,
      but it may unquestionably be asserted that at that period there were more
      Jews living, and that too in great prosperity and honour, at Alexandria
      than at Jerusalem. It is evident from various Roman authors, that the
      Jewish race formed no inconsiderable portion of the multitude that filled
      Rome itself, and that the Mosaic religion, undisturbed by the state, even
      made proselytes. But it is unnecessary to enter into any curious
      researches on this head, though the authorities are neither scant nor
      uninteresting. We are furnished with evidence the most complete and
      unanswerable of the pre-dispersion by the sacred writings themselves. Not
      two months after the crucifixion, when the Third Person of the Holy
      Trinity first descended on Jerusalem, it being the time of the great
      festivals, when the Jews, according to the custom of the Arabian tribes
      pursued to this day in the pilgrimage to Mecca, repaired from all quarters
      to the central sacred place, the holy writings inform us that there were
      gathered together in Jerusalem &lsquo;Jews, devout men, out of every nation
      under heaven.&rsquo; And that this expression, so general but so precise, should
      not be mistaken, we are shortly afterwards, though incidentally, informed,
      that there were Parthians, Medes, and Persians at Jerusalem, professing
      the Mosaic faith; Jews from Mesopotamia and Syria, from the countries of
      the lesser and the greater Asia; Egyptian, Libyan, Greek, and Arabian
      Jews; and, especially, Jews from Rome itself, some of which latter are
      particularly mentioned as Roman proselytes. Nor is it indeed historically
      true that the small section of the Jewish race which dwelt in Palestine
      rejected Christ. The reverse is the truth. Had it not been for the Jews of
      Palestine, the good tidings of our Lord would have been unknown for ever
      to the northern and western races. The first preachers of the gospel were
      Jews, and none else; the historians of the gospel were Jews, and none
      else. No one has ever been permitted to write under the inspiration of the
      Holy Spirit, except a Jew. For nearly a century no one believed in the
      good tidings except Jews. They nursed the sacred flame of which they were
      the consecrated and hereditary depositaries. And when the time was ripe to
      diffuse the truth among the ethnics, it was not a senator of Rome or a
      philosopher of Athens who was personally appointed by our Lord for that
      office, but a Jew of Tarsus, who founded the seven churches of Asia. And
      that greater church, great even amid its terrible corruptions, that has
      avenged the victory of Titus by subjugating the capital of the Caesars,
      and has changed every one of the Olympian temples into altars of the God
      of Sinai and of Calvary, was founded by another Jew, a Jew of Galilee.
    </p>
    <p>
      From all which it appears that the dispersion of the Jewish race,
      preceding as it did for countless ages the advent of our Lord, could not
      be for conduct which occurred subsequently to the advent, and that they
      are also guiltless of that subsequent conduct which has been imputed to
      them as a crime, since for Him and His blessed name, they preached, and
      wrote, and shed their blood &lsquo;as witnesses.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      But, is it possible that that which is not historically true can be
      dogmatically sound? Such a conclusion would impugn the foundations of all
      faith. The followers of Jesus, of whatever race, need not however be
      alarmed. The belief that the present condition of the Jewish race is a
      penal infliction for the part which some Jews took at the crucifixion is
      not dogmatically sound.
    </p>
    <p>
      2. <i>Not dogmatically sound</i>. There is no passage in the sacred
      writings that in the slightest degree warrants the penal assumption. The
      imprecation of the mob at the crucifixion is sometimes strangely quoted as
      a divine decree. It is not a principle of jurisprudence, human or
      inspired, to permit the criminal to ordain his own punishment. Why, too,
      should they transfer any portion of the infliction to their posterity?
      What evidence have we that the wild suggestion was sanctioned by
      Omnipotence? On the contrary, amid the expiating agony, a Divine Voice at
      the same time solicited and secured forgiveness. And if unforgiven, could
      the cry of a rabble at such a scene bind a nation?
    </p>
    <p>
      But, dogmatically considered, the subject of the crucifixion must be
      viewed in a deeper spirit. We must pause with awe to remember what was the
      principal office to be fulfilled by the advent. When the ineffable mystery
      of the Incarnation was consummated, a Divine Person moved on the face of
      the earth in the shape of a child of Israel, not to teach but to expiate.
      True it is that no word could fall from such lips, whether in the form of
      profound parable, or witty retort, or preceptive lore, but to guide and
      enlighten; but they who, in those somewhat lax effusions which in these
      days are honoured with the holy name of theology, speak of the morality of
      the Gospel as a thing apart and of novel revelation, would do well to
      remember that in promulgating such doctrines they are treading on very
      perilous ground. There cannot be two moralities; and to hold that the
      Second Person of the Holy Trinity could teach a different morality from
      that which had been already revealed by the First Person of the Holy
      Trinity, is a dogma so full of terror that it may perhaps be looked upon
      as the ineffable sin against the Holy Spirit. When the lawyer tempted our
      Lord, and inquired how he was to inherit eternal life, the great Master of
      Galilee referred him to the writings of Moses. There he would find
      recorded &lsquo;the whole duty of man;&rsquo; to love God with all his heart, and
      soul, and strength, and mind, and his neighbour as himself. These two
      principles are embalmed in the writings of Moses, and are the essence of
      Christian morals.*
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     * &lsquo;Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.&rsquo; 
     &mdash;Leviticus xix.  18.
</pre>
    <p>
      It was for something deeper than this, higher and holier than even Moses
      could fulfil, that angels announced the Coming. It was to accomplish an
      event pre-ordained by the Creator of the world for countless ages. Born
      from the chosen house of the chosen people, yet blending in his
      inexplicable nature the Divine essence with the human elements, a
      sacrificial Mediator was to appear, appointed before all time, to purify
      with his atoning blood the myriads that had preceded and the myriads that
      will follow him. The doctrine embraces all space and time&mdash;nay, chaos
      and eternity; Divine persons are the agents, and the redemption of the
      whole family of man the result. If the Jews had not prevailed upon the
      Romans to crucify our Lord, what would have become of the Atonement? But
      the human mind cannot contemplate the idea that the most important deed of
      time could depend upon human will. The immolators were preordained like
      the victim, and the holy race supplied both. Could that be a crime which
      secured for all mankind eternal joy&mdash;which vanquished Satan, and
      opened the gates of Paradise? Such a tenet would sully and impugn the
      doctrine that is the corner-stone of our faith and hope. Men must not
      presume to sit in judgment on such an act. They must bow their heads in
      awe and astonishment and trembling gratitude.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, though the opinion that the dispersion of the Jewish race must be
      deemed a penalty incurred for their connection with the crucifixion has
      neither historical nor doctrinal sanction, it is possible that its
      degrading influence upon its victims may have been as efficacious as if
      their present condition were indeed a judicial infliction. Persecution, in
      a word, although unjust, may have reduced the modern Jews to a state
      almost justifying malignant vengeance. They may have become so odious and
      so hostile to mankind, as to merit for their present conduct, no matter
      how occasioned, the obloquy and ill-treatment of the communities in which
      they dwell and with which they are scarcely permitted to mingle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let us examine this branch of the subject, which, though of more limited
      interest, is not without instruction.
    </p>
    <p>
      In all the great cities of Europe, and in some of the great cities of
      Asia, among the infamous classes therein existing, there will always be
      found Jews. They are not the only people who are usurers, gladiators, and
      followers of mean and scandalous occupations, nor are they anywhere a
      majority of such, but considering their general numbers, they contribute
      perhaps more than their proportion to the aggregate of the vile. In this
      they obey the law which regulates the destiny of all persecuted races: the
      infamous is the business of the dishonoured; and as infamous pursuits are
      generally illegal pursuits, the persecuted race which has most ability
      will be most successful in combating the law. The Jews have never been so
      degraded as the Greeks were throughout the Levant before the emancipation,
      and the degradation of the Greeks was produced by a period of persecution
      which, both in amount and suffering, cannot compare with that which has
      been endured by the children of Israel. This peculiarity, however, attends
      the Jews under the most unfavourable circumstances; the other degraded
      races wear out and disappear; the Jew remains, as determined, as expert,
      as persevering, as full of resource and resolution as ever. Viewed in this
      light, the degradation of the Jewish race is alone a striking evidence of
      its excellence, for none but one of the great races could have survived
      the trials which it has endured.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, though a material organization of the highest class may account for
      so strange a consequence, the persecuted Hebrew is supported by other
      means. He is sustained by a sublime religion. Obdurate, malignant, odious,
      and revolting as the lowest Jew appears to us, he is rarely demoralized.
      Beneath his own roof his heart opens to the influence of his beautiful
      Arabian traditions. All his ceremonies, his customs, and his festivals are
      still to celebrate the bounty of nature and the favour of Jehovah. The
      patriarchal feeling lingers about his hearth. A man, however fallen, who
      loves his home is not wholly lost. The trumpet of Sinai still sounds in
      the Hebrew ear, and a Jew is never seen upon the scaffold, unless it be at
      an <i>auto da fè</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      But, having made this full admission of the partial degradation of the
      Jewish race, we are not prepared to agree that this limited degeneracy is
      any justification of the prejudices and persecution which originated in
      barbarous or mediæval superstitions. On the contrary, viewing the
      influence of the Jewish race upon the modern communities, without any
      reference to the past history or the future promises of Israel; dismissing
      from our minds and memories, if indeed that be possible, all that the
      Hebrews have done in the olden time for man and all which it may be their
      destiny yet to fulfil, we hold that instead of being an object of
      aversion, they should receive all that honour and favour from the northern
      and western races, which, in civilized and refined nations, should be the
      lot of those who charm the public taste and elevate the public feeling. We
      hesitate not to say that there is no race at this present, and following
      in this only the example of a long period, that so much delights, and
      fascinates, and elevates, and ennobles Europe, as the Jewish.
    </p>
    <p>
      We dwell not on the fact, that the most admirable artists of the drama
      have been and still are of the Hebrew race: or, that the most entrancing
      singers, graceful dancers, and exquisite musicians, are sons and daughters
      of Israel: though this were much. But these brilliant accessories are
      forgotten in the sublimer claim.
    </p>
    <p>
      It seems that the only means by which in these modern times we are
      permitted to develop the beautiful is music. It would appear definitively
      settled that excellence in the plastic arts is the privilege of the
      earlier ages of the world. All that is now produced in this respect is
      mimetic, and, at the best, the skilful adaptation of traditional methods.
      The creative faculty of modern man seems by an irresistible law at work on
      the virgin soil of science, daily increasing by its inventions our command
      over nature, and multiplying the material happiness of man. But the
      happiness of man is not merely material. Were it not for music, we might
      in these days say, the beautiful is dead. Music seems to be the only means
      of creating the beautiful, in which we not only equal, but in all
      probability greatly excel, the ancients. The music of modern Europe ranks
      with the transcendent creations of human genius; the poetry, the statues,
      the temples, of Greece. It produces and represents as they did whatever is
      most beautiful in the spirit of man and often expresses what is most
      profound. And who are the great composers, who hereafter will rank with
      Homer, with Sophocles, with Praxiteles, or with Phidias? They are the
      descendants of those Arabian tribes who conquered Canaan, and who by
      favour of the Most High have done more with less means even than the
      Athenians.
    </p>
    <p>
      Forty years ago&mdash;not a longer period than the children of Israel were
      wandering in the desert&mdash;the two most dishonoured races in Europe
      were the Attic and the Hebrew, and they were the two races that had done
      most for mankind. Their fortunes had some similarity: their countries were
      the two smallest in the world, equally barren and equally famous; they
      both divided themselves into tribes: both built a most famous temple on an
      acropolis; and both produced a literature which all European nations have
      accepted with reverence and admiration. Athens has been sacked oftener
      than Jerusalem, and oftener razed to the ground; but the Athenians have
      escaped expatriation, which is purely an Oriental custom. The sufferings
      of the Jews, however, have been infinitely more prolonged and varied than
      those of the Athenians. The Greek nevertheless appears exhausted. The
      creative genius of Israel, on the contrary, never shone so bright; and
      when the Russian, the Frenchman, and the Anglo-Saxon, amid applauding
      theatres or the choral voices of solemn temples, yield themselves to the
      full spell of a Mozart or a Mendelssohn, it seems difficult to comprehend
      how these races can reconcile it to their hearts to persecute a Jew.
    </p>
    <p>
      We have shown that the theological prejudice against the Jews has no
      foundation, historical or doctrinal; we have shown that the social
      prejudice, originating in the theological but sustained by superficial
      observations, irrespective of religious prejudice, is still more unjust,
      and that no existing race is so much entitled to the esteem and gratitude
      of society as the Hebrew. It remains for us to notice the injurious
      consequences to European society of the course pursued by the communities
      to this race; and this view of the subject leads us to considerations
      which it would become existing statesmen to ponder.
    </p>
    <p>
      The world has by this time discovered that it is impossible to destroy the
      Jews. The attempt to extirpate them has been made under the most
      favourable auspices and on the largest scale; the most considerable means
      that man could command have been pertinaciously applied to this object for
      the longest period of recorded time. Egyptian Pharaohs, Assyrian kings,
      Roman emperors, Scandinavian crusaders, Gothic princes, and holy
      inquisitors have alike devoted their energies to the fulfilment of this
      common purpose. Expatriation, exile, captivity, confiscation, torture on
      the most ingenious, and massacre on the most extensive, scale, with a
      curious system of degrading customs and debasing laws which would have
      broken the heart of any other people, have been tried, and in vain. The
      Jews, after all this havoc, are probably more numerous at this date than
      they were during the reign of Solomon the Wise, are found in all lands,
      and, unfortunately, prospering in most. All of which proves that it is in
      vain for man to attempt to battle the inexorable law of nature, which has
      decreed that a superior race shall never be destroyed or absorbed by an
      inferior.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the influence of a great race will be felt; its greatness does not
      depend upon its numbers, otherwise the English would not have vanquished
      the Chinese, nor would the Aztecs have been overthrown by Cortez and a
      handful of Goths. That greatness results from its organization, the
      consequences of which are shown in its energy and enterprise, in the
      strength of its will and the fertility of its brain. Let us observe what
      should be the influence of the Jews, and then ascertain how it is
      exercised. The Jewish race connects the modern populations with the early
      ages of the world, when the relations of the Creator with the created were
      more intimate than in these days, when angels visited the earth, and God
      himself even spoke with man. The Jews represent the Semitic principle; all
      that is spiritual in our nature. They are the trustees of tradition and
      the conservators of the religious element. They are a living and the most
      striking evidence of the falsity of that pernicious doctrine of modern
      times&mdash;the natural equality of man. The political equality of a
      particular race is a matter of municipal arrangement, and depends entirely
      on political considerations and circumstances; but the natural equality of
      man now in vogue, and taking the form of cosmopolitan fraternity, is a
      principle which, were it possible to act on it, would deteriorate the
      great races and destroy all the genius of the world. What would be the
      consequence on the great Anglo-Saxon republic, for example, were its
      citizens to secede from their sound principle of reserve, and mingle with
      their negro and coloured populations? In the course of time they would
      become so deteriorated that their states would probably be reconquered and
      regained by the aborigines whom they have expelled, and who would then be
      their superiors. But though nature will never ultimately permit this
      theory of natural equality to be practised, the preaching of this dogma
      has already caused much mischief, and may occasion much more. The native
      tendency of the Jewish race, who are justly proud of their blood, is
      against the doctrine of the equality of man. They have also another
      characteristic, the faculty of acquisition. Although the European laws
      have endeavoured to prevent their obtaining property, they have
      nevertheless become remarkable for their accumulated wealth. Thus it will
      be seen that all the tendencies of the Jewish race are conservative. Their
      bias is to religion, property, and natural aristocracy: and it should be
      the interest of statesmen that this bias of a great race should be
      encouraged, and their energies and creative powers enlisted in the cause
      of existing society.
    </p>
    <p>
      But existing society has chosen to persecute this race which should
      furnish its choice allies, and what have been the consequences?
    </p>
    <p>
      They may be traced in the last outbreak of the destructive principle in
      Europe. An insurrection takes place against tradition and aristocracy,
      against religion and property. Destruction of the Semitic principle,
      extirpation of the Jewish religion, whether in the Mosaic or in the
      Christian form, the natural equality of man, and the abrogation of
      property, are proclaimed by the secret societies who form provisional
      governments, and men of Jewish race are found at the head of every one of
      them. The people of God coöperate with atheists; the most skilful
      accumulators of property ally themselves with communists; the peculiar and
      chosen race touch the hand of all the scum and low castes of Europe! And
      all this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom which
      owes to them even its name, and whose tyranny they can no longer endure.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the secret societies, in February, 1848, surprised Europe, they were
      themselves surprised by the unexpected opportunity, and so little capable
      were they of seizing the occasion, that had it not been for the Jews, who
      of late years unfortunately have been connecting themselves with these
      unhallowed associations, imbecile as were the governments, the
      uncalled-for outbreak would not have ravaged Europe. But the fiery energy
      and the teeming resources of the children of Israel maintained for a long
      time the unnecessary and useless struggle. If the reader throw his eye
      over the provisional governments of Germany and Italy, and even of France,
      formed at that period, he will recognize everywhere the Jewish element.
      Even the insurrection, and defence, and administration of Venice, which,
      from the resource and statesmanlike moderation displayed, commanded almost
      the respect and sympathy of Europe, were accomplished by a Jew&mdash;Manini&mdash;who,
      by the bye, is a Jew who professes the whole of the Jewish religion, and
      believes in Calvary as well as Sinai,&mdash;&lsquo;a converted Jew,&rsquo; as the
      Lombards styled him, quite forgetting, in the confusion of their ideas,
      that it is the Lombards who are the converts&mdash;not Manini.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus it will be seen, that the persecution of the Jewish race has deprived
      European society of an important conservative element, and added to the
      destructive party an influential ally. Prince Metternich, the most
      enlightened of modern statesmen, not to say the most intellectual of men,
      was, though himself a victim of the secret societies, fully aware of these
      premises. It was always his custom, great as were the difficulties which
      in so doing he had to encounter, to employ as much as possible the Hebrew
      race in the public service. He could never forget that Napoleon, in his
      noontide hour, had been checked by the pen of the greatest of political
      writers; he had found that illustrious author as great in the cabinet as
      in the study; he knew that no one had more contributed to the deliverance
      of Europe. It was not as a patron, but as an appreciating and devoted
      friend, that the High Chancellor of Austria appointed Frederick Gentz
      secretary to the Congress of Vienna&mdash;and Frederick Gentz was a child
      of Israel.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is no doubt to be deplored that several millions of the Jewish race
      should persist in believing in only a part of their religion; but this is
      a circumstance which does not affect Europe, and time, with different
      treatment, may remove the anomaly which perhaps may be accounted for. It
      should be recollected, that the existing Jews are perhaps altogether the
      descendants of those various colonies and emigrations which, voluntary or
      forced, long preceded the advent. Between the vast carnage of the Roman
      wars, from Titus to Hadrian, and the profession of Christ by his
      countrymen, which must have been very prevalent, since the Christian
      religion was solely sustained by the Jews of Palestine during the greater
      part of its first century, it is improbable that any descendants of the
      Jews of Palestine exist who disbelieve in Christ. After the fall of
      Jerusalem and the failure of Barchochebas, no doubt some portion of the
      Jews found refuge in the desert, returning to their original land after
      such long and strange vicissitudes. This natural movement would account
      for those Arabian tribes, of whose resistance to Mohammed we have ample
      and authentic details, and who, if we are to credit the accounts which
      perplex modern travellers, are to this day governed by the Pentateuch
      instead of the Koran.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Christianity was presented to the ancestors of the present Jews, it
      came from a very suspicious quarter, and was offered in a very
      questionable shape. Centuries must have passed in many instances before
      the Jewish colonies heard of the advent, the crucifixion, and the
      atonement; the latter, however, a doctrine in perfect harmony with Jewish
      ideas. When they first heard of Christianity, it appeared to be a Gentile
      religion, accompanied by idolatrous practices, from which severe
      monotheists, like the Arabians, always recoil, and holding the Jewish race
      up to public scorn and hatred. This is not the way to make converts.
    </p>
    <p>
      There have been two great colonies of the Jewish race in Europe; in Spain
      and in Sarmatia. The origin of the Jews in Spain is lost in the night of
      time. That it was of great antiquity we have proof. The tradition, once
      derided, that the Iberian Jews were a Phoenician colony has been favoured
      by the researches of modern antiquaries, who have traced the Hebrew
      language in the ancient names of the localities. It may be observed,
      however, that the languages of the Jews and the Philistines, or
      Phoenicians, were probably too similar to sanction any positive induction
      from such phenomena; while on the other hand, in reply to those who have
      urged the improbability of the Jews, who had no seaports, colonizing
      Spain, it may be remarked that the colony may have been an expatriation by
      the Philistines in the course of the long struggle which occurred between
      them and the invading tribes previous to the foundation of the Hebrew
      monarchy. We know that in the time of Cicero the Jews had been settled
      immemorially in Spain. When the Romans, converted to Christianity and
      acted on by the priesthood, began to trouble the Spanish Jews, it appears
      by a decree of Constantine that they were owners and cultivators of the
      soil, a circumstance which alone proves the antiquity and the nobility of
      their settlement, for the possession of the land is never conceded to a
      degraded race. The conquest of Spain by the Goths in the fifth and sixth
      centuries threatened the Spanish Jews, however, with more serious
      adversaries than the Romans. The Gothic tribes, very recently converted to
      their Syrian faith, were full of barbaric zeal against those whom they
      looked upon as the enemies of Jesus. But the Spanish Jews sought
      assistance from their kinsmen the Saracens on the opposite coast; Spain
      was invaded and subdued by the Moors, and for several centuries the Jew
      and the Saracen lived under the same benignant laws and shared the same
      brilliant prosperity. In the history of Spain during the Saracenic
      supremacy any distinction of religion or race is no longer traced. And so
      it came to pass that when at the end of the fourteenth century, after the
      fell triumph of the Dominicans over the Albigenses, the holy inquisition
      was introduced into Spain, it was reported to Torquemada that two-thirds
      of the nobility of Arragon, that is to say of the proprietors of the land,
      were Jews.
    </p>
    <p>
      All that these men knew of Christianity was, that it was a religion of
      fire and sword, and that one of its first duties was to avenge some
      mysterious and inexplicable crime which had been committed ages ago by
      some unheard of ancestors of theirs in an unknown land. The inquisitors
      addressed themselves to the Spanish Jews in the same abrupt and ferocious
      manner in which the monks saluted the Mexicans and the Peruvians. All
      those of the Spanish Jews, who did not conform after the fall of the
      Mohammedan kingdoms, were expatriated by the victorious Goths, and these
      refugees were the main source of the Italian Jews, and of the most
      respectable portion of the Jews of Holland. These exiles found refuge in
      two republics; Venice and the United Provinces. The Portuguese Jews, it is
      well known, came from Spain, and their ultimate expulsion from Portugal
      was attended by the same results as the Spanish expatriation.
    </p>
    <p>
      The other great division of Jews in Europe are the Sarmatian Jews, and
      they are very numerous. They amount to nearly three millions. These
      unquestionably entered Europe with the other Sarmatian nations, descending
      the Borysthenes and ascending the Danube, and are according to all
      probability the progeny of the expatriations of the times of
      Tiglath-Pileser and Nebuchadnezzar. They are the posterity of those
      &lsquo;devout men,&rsquo; Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, who were attending the
      festivals at Jerusalem at the time of the descent of the Holy Spirit.
      Living among barbarous pagans, who never molested them, these people went
      on very well, until suddenly the barbarous pagans, under the influence of
      an Italian priesthood, were converted to the Jewish religion, and then as
      a necessary consequence the converts began to harass, persecute, and
      massacre the Jews.
    </p>
    <p>
      These people had never heard of Christ. Had the Romans not destroyed
      Jerusalem, these Sarmatian Jews would have had a fair chance of obtaining
      from civilized beings some clear and coherent account of the great events
      which had occurred. They and their fathers before them would have gone up
      in customary pilgrimage to the central sacred place, both for purposes of
      devotion and purposes of trade, and they might have heard from Semitic
      lips that there were good tidings for Israel. What they heard from their
      savage companions, and the Italian priesthood which acted on them, was,
      that there were good tidings for all the world except Israel, and that
      Israel, for the commission of a great crime of which they had never heard
      and could not comprehend, was to be plundered, massacred, hewn to pieces,
      and burnt alive in the name of Christ and for the sake of Christianity.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Eastern Jews, who are very numerous, are in general the descendants of
      those who in the course of repeated captivities settled in the great
      Eastern monarchies, and which they never quitted. They live in the same
      cities and follow the same customs as they did in the days of Cyrus. They
      are to be found in Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor; at Bagdad, at
      Hamadan, at Smyrna. We know from the Jewish books how very scant was the
      following which accompanied Esdras and Nehemiah back to Jerusalem. A
      fortress city, built on a ravine, surrounded by stony mountains and
      watered by a scanty stream, had no temptations after the gardens of
      Babylon and the broad waters of the Euphrates. But Babylon has vanished
      and Jerusalem remains, and what are the waters of Euphrates to the brook
      of Kedron! It is another name than that of Jesus of Nazareth with which
      these Jews have been placed in collision, and the Ishmaelites have not
      forgotten the wrongs of Hagar in their conduct to the descendants of
      Sarah.
    </p>
    <p>
      Is it therefore wonderful that a great portion of the Jewish race should
      not believe in the most important portion of the Jewish religion? As,
      however, the converted races become more humane in their behaviour to the
      Jews, and the latter have opportunity fully to comprehend and deeply to
      ponder over true Christianity, it is difficult to suppose that the result
      will not be very different. Whether presented by a Roman or Anglo-Catholic
      or Genevese divine, by pope, bishop, or presbyter, there is nothing, one
      would suppose, very repugnant to the feelings of a Jew when he learns that
      the redemption of the human race has been effected by the mediatorial
      agency of a child of Israel: if the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation
      be developed to him, he will remember that the blood of Jacob is a chosen
      and peculiar blood; and if so transcendent a consummation is to occur, he
      will scarcely deny that only one race could be deemed worthy of
      accomplishing it. There may be points of doctrine on which the northern
      and western races may perhaps never agree. The Jew like them may follow
      that path in those respects which reason and feeling alike dictate; but
      nevertheless it can hardly be maintained that there is anything revolting
      to a Jew to learn that a Jewess is the queen of heaven, or that the flower
      of the Jewish race are even now sitting on the right hand of the Lord God
      of Sabaoth.
    </p>
    <p>
      Perhaps, too, in this enlightened age, as his mind expands, and he takes a
      comprehensive view of this period of progress, the pupil of Moses may ask
      himself, whether all the princes of the house of David have done so much
      for the Jews as that prince who was crucified on Calvary. Had it not been
      for Him, the Jews would have been comparatively unknown, or known only as
      a high Oriental caste which had lost its country. Has not He made their
      history the most famous in the world? Has not He hung up their laws in
      every temple? Has not He vindicated all their wrongs? Has not He avenged
      the victory of Titus and conquered the Caesars? What successes did they
      anticipate from their Messiah? The wildest dreams of their rabbis have
      been far exceeded. Has not Jesus conquered Europe and changed its name
      into Christendom? All countries that refuse the cross wither, while the
      whole of the new world is devoted to the Semitic principle and its most
      glorious offspring the Jewish faith, and the time will come when the vast
      communities and countless myriads of America and Australia, looking upon
      Europe as Europe now looks upon Greece, and wondering how so small a space
      could have achieved such great deeds, will still find music in the songs
      of Sion and still seek solace in the parables of Galilee.
    </p>
    <p>
      These may be dreams, but there is one fact which none can contest.
      Christians may continue to persecute Jews, and Jews may persist in
      disbelieving Christians, but who can deny that Jesus of Nazareth, the
      Incarnate Son of the Most High God, is the eternal glory of the Jewish
      race?
    </p>
    <p>
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    <h2>
      CHAPTER XI.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>Jewish Disabilities</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      IT WOULD seem to follow from the views expressed in the preceding chaptet,
      that in communities professing a belief in our Lord, the Jewish race ought
      not to be subject to any legislative dishonour or disqualification. These
      views, however, were not those which influenced Lord George Bentinck in
      forming his opinion that the civil disabilities of those subjects of her
      Majesty who profess that limited belief in divine revelation which is
      commonly called the Jewish religion should be removed. He had supported a
      measure to this effect in the year 1833, guided in that conduct by his
      devoted attachment to the equivocal principle of religious liberty, the
      unqualified application of which principle seems hardly consistent with
      that recognition of religious truth by the state to which we yet adhere,
      and without which it is highly probable that the northern and western
      races, after a disturbing and rapidly degrading period of atheistic
      anarchy, may fatally recur to their old national idolatries, modified and
      mythically dressed up according to the spirit of the age. It may be
      observed that the decline and disasters of modern communities have
      generally been relative to their degree of sedition against the Semitic
      principle. Since the great revolt of the Celts against the first and
      second testament, at the close of the last century, France has been
      alternately in a state of collapse or convulsion. Throughout the awful
      trials of the last sixty years, England, notwithstanding her deficient and
      meagre theology, has always remembered Sion. The great Transatlantic
      republic is intensely Semitic, and has prospered accordingly. This sacred
      principle alone has consolidated the mighty empire of all the Russias. How
      omnipotent it is cannot be more clearly shown than by the instance of
      Rome, where it appears in its most corrupt form. An old man on a Semitic
      throne baffles the modern Attilas, and the recent invasion of the
      barbarians, under the form of red republicans, socialists, communists, all
      different phases which describe the relapse of the once converted races
      into their primitive condition of savagery. Austria would long ago have
      dissolved but for the Semitic principle, and if the north of Germany has
      never succeeded in attaining that imperial position which seemed its
      natural destiny, it is that the north of Germany has never at any time
      been thoroughly converted. Some perhaps may point to Spain as a remarkable
      instance of decline in a country where the Semitic principle has exercised
      great influence. But the fall of Spain was occasioned by the expulsion of
      her Semitic population: a million families of Jews and Saracens, the most
      distinguished of her citizens for their industry and their intelligence,
      their learning and their wealth.
    </p>
    <p>
      It appears that Lord George Bentinck had offended some of his followers by
      an opinion expressed in his address to his constituency in &lsquo;47, that in
      accordance with the suggestion of Mr. Pitt, some provision should be made
      for the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland out of the land. Although
      this opinion might offend the religious sentiments of some, and might be
      justly looked upon by others as a scheme ill-suited to the character of an
      age adverse to any further religious endowments, it must be acknowledged
      that no member of the Protectionist party had any just cause of complaint
      against Lord George for the expression of an opinion which he had always
      upheld, and of his constancy to which he had fairly given his friends
      notice. This was so generally felt that the repining died away. The Jewish
      question, as it was called, revived these religious emotions. These
      feelings, as springing from the highest sentiment of our nature, and
      founded, however mistaken in their application, on religious truth, are
      entitled to deep respect and tenderness; but no one can indulge them by
      the compromise of the highest principles, or by sanctioning a course which
      he really believes to be destructive of the very object which their
      votaries wish to cherish.
    </p>
    <p>
      As there are very few Englishmen of what is commonly called the Jewish
      faith, and as therefore it was supposed that political considerations
      could not enter into the question, it was hoped by many of the followers
      of Lord George Bentinck that he would not separate himself from his party
      on this subject, and very earnest requests and representations were made
      to him with that view. He was not insensible to them; he gave them
      prolonged and painful consideration; they greatly disquieted him. In his
      confidential correspondence he often recurs to the distress and anxiety
      which this question and its consequences as regarded his position with
      those friends to whom he was much attached occasioned him. It must not,
      therefore, be supposed that, in the line he ultimately took with reference
      to this question, he was influenced, as some have unkindly and
      unwarrantably fancied, by a self-willed, inexorable, and imperious spirit.
      He was no doubt, by nature, a proud man, inclined even to arrogance, and
      naturally impatient of contradiction; but two severe campaigns in the
      House of Commons had already mitigated these characteristics: he
      understood human nature, he was fond of his party, and, irrespective of
      other considerations, it pained his ardent and generous heart to mortify
      his comrades. It was therefore not in any degree from temper, but from
      principle,&mdash;from as pure, as high, and as noble a sense of duty as
      ever actuated a man in public life,&mdash;that Lord George Bentinck
      ultimately resolved that it was impossible for him to refuse to vote for
      the removal of what are commonly called Jewish disabilities. He had voted
      in this particular cause shortly after his entrance into public life; it
      was in accordance with that general principle of religious liberty to
      which he was an uncompromising adherent; it was in complete agreement with
      the understanding which subsisted between himself and the Protectionist
      party, when at their urgent request he unwillingly assumed the helm. He
      was entreated not to vote at all; to stay away, which the severe
      indisposition under which he was then labouring warranted. He did not
      rudely repulse these latter representations, as has been circulated. On
      the contrary, he listened to them with kindness, and was not uninfluenced
      by them. Enfeebled by illness, he had nearly brought himself to a
      compliance with a request urged with affectionate importunity, but from
      which his reason and sense of duty held him aloof. After long and deep and
      painful pondering, when the hour arrived, he rose from his bed of
      sickness, walked into the House of Commons, and not only voted, but spoke
      in favour of his convictions. His speech remains, one of the best ever
      delivered on the subject, not only full of weighty argument, but touched
      with a high and even tender vein of sentiment.
    </p>
    <p>
      This vote and speech of Lord George Bentinck no doubt mortified at the
      moment a considerable portion of his followers, and occasioned great
      dissatisfaction among a very respectable though limited section of them.
      This latter body must either have forgotten or they must have been
      strangely unacquainted with the distinct understanding on which Lord
      George had undertaken the lead of the party, or otherwise they could not
      have felt authorized in conveying to him their keen sense of
      disapprobation. Unfortunately he received this when the House had
      adjourned for the holidays, and when Mr. Bankes, who had been the organ of
      communication with him in &lsquo;46, was in the country, and when the party was
      of course generally dispersed. Lord George did not take any pains to
      ascertain whether the representation which was made to him was that of the
      general feeling of a large party, or that only of a sincere, highly
      estimable, but limited section. He was enfeebled and exhausted by
      indisposition; he often felt, even when in health, that the toil of his
      life was beyond both his physical and moral energies; and though he was of
      that ardent and tenacious nature that he never would have complained, but
      have died at his post, the opportunity of release coming to him at a
      moment when he was physically prostrate was rather eagerly seized, and the
      world suddenly learnt at Christmas, with great astonishment, that the
      renowned leader of the Protectionist party had relinquished his trust.
    </p>
    <p>
      The numerous communications which he received must have convinced him that
      the assumed circumstances under which he acted had not been accurately
      appreciated by him. He was implored to reconsider his course, as one very
      detrimental to the cause to which he was devoted, and which would probably
      tend to the triumph of those whose policy he had attempted to defeat, and
      whose personal conduct he had at least succeeded in punishing.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;The prophesied time has come,&rsquo; he wrote to his friend Mr. Bankes, on the
      23rd of December, 1847, &lsquo;when I have ceased to be able to serve the party,
      the great cause of Protection, or my country, by any longer retaining the
      commission bestowed on me in the spring of 1846. You will remember,
      however, that when unfeignedly and honestly, but in vain, trying to escape
      from being raised to a position which I foresaw I must fail to maintain
      with advantage to you or honour to myself, I at last gave my consent, I
      only did so on the express understanding that my advancement should be
      held to be merely a pro tempore appointment, waiting till the country
      should have the opportunity of sending to Parliament other men better
      fitted to lead the country gentlemen of England. I have recalled these
      circumstances to your mind with no other purpose than that the party may
      feel how entirely free they are, without even the suspicion of doing an
      injustice to me or of showing me in this any disrespect, to remodel their
      arrangements, and to supersede my lieutenancy by the appointment of a
      superior and permanent commander.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      And again on Christmas-day, to the same gentleman, in reply to an
      acknowledgment of the preceding, he says, while thanking Mr. Bankes &lsquo;for
      his warm-hearted letter as very grateful to his feelings,&rsquo;&mdash;&rsquo; 
      Confidentially I tell you, that far from feeling in the least annoyed, I
      shall feel greatly relieved by a restoration to privacy and freedom. I
      worked upon my spirit in &lsquo;46 and &lsquo;47; but I have learnt now that I have
      shaken my constitution to the foundation, and I seriously doubt my being
      able to work on much longer.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      He wrote on the 24th of December to one of his most intimate friends and
      warmest supporters, Mr. Christopher, the member for Lincolnshire, who had
      remonstrated with him as to his decision: &lsquo;It is not in my nature to
      retain a station one moment after I get a hint even that any portion of
      those who raised me to it are wearied of seeing me there. The old members
      of the party will all recollect how clearly I foresaw and foretold that I
      should be found a very inconvenient as well as a very inefficient leader,
      so soon as the great Protection battle was brought to a close. I predicted
      all that has since occurred; and no one more cordially agrees than I do in
      the wisdom of the present decision, the spirit I presume of which is that
      no great party or large body of men can be successfully, or to any good
      purpose, led except by a man who heart and soul sympathizes with them in
      all their feelings, partialities, and prejudices. Cold reason has a poor
      chance against such influences. There can be no <i>esprit de corps</i> and
      no zeal where there is not a union of prejudices as well as of commercial
      opinions. The election of a leader united with the great body of the party
      in these respects, will tend greatly to reunite its scattered particles,
      even on those questions where I shall be able to give my aid with all my
      wonted zeal, which will not be the less spirited because it will be free
      and independent.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      At a later period, acknowledging an address signed by the great body of
      the Protectionist party, and presented to him by the present Earl Talbot,
      then a member of the House of Commons, Lord George wrote, &lsquo;The
      considerations which obliged me to surrender a post of honour which every
      independent and high-minded English gentleman has at all times prized
      above the highest rewards in the gift of the crown, &ldquo;the leadership of the
      country gentlemen of England,&rdquo; will never influence me to swerve from any
      endeavours of which my poor abilities and bodily energies are capable in
      the promotion of the prosperity of all classes in the British empire at
      home and in the colonies, any more than they can ever make me forget the
      attachment, the friendship, and the enthusiastic support of those who
      stood by me to the end of the death struggle for British interests and for
      English good faith and political honour, and to whose continued friendship
      and constancy I know I am indebted for this graceful and grateful
      compliment.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      If Lord George Bentinck was inexorable to the entreaties of his friends,
      it must not be supposed that he was influenced in the course which he
      pursued, as was presumed by many at the time not acquainted with the
      circumstances, by any feeling of pique or brooding sullenness. No
      high-spirited man under vexatious and distressing circumstances ever
      behaved with more magnanimity. In this he was actuated in a great degree
      by a sense of duty, but still more by that peculiar want of selfishness
      which was one of the most beautiful traits of his character. The moment he
      had at all recovered from the severe attack by which, to use his own
      language, he had been &lsquo;struck down in the first week of the session,&rsquo; and
      from the effects of which it may be doubted whether he ever entirely
      recovered, he laboured zealously to induce some competent person to
      undertake the office which he had thought it expedient to resign, offering
      in several instances to serve in the ranks, and to assist with his utmost
      energies, both in and out of the House, the individual who would undertake
      the responsible direction in the Commons.
    </p>
    <p>
      These efforts, though indefatigable, were not successful, for those who
      were competent to the office cared not to serve under any one except
      himself. About this time, a personage of great station, and who very much
      admired Lord George Bentinck, wrote to him, and recommended him not to
      trouble himself about the general discipline of the party, but to follow
      his own course, and lead that body of friends who under all circumstances
      would adhere to him, instancing the case of Mr. Canning, under
      circumstances not altogether dissimilar. Lord George replied: &lsquo;As for my
      rallying a personal party round myself, as Mr. Canning did, I have no
      pretension to anything of the kind; when Mr. Canning did that, the House
      of Commons, and England too, acknowledged him to be the greatest orator
      who had survived Pitt and Fox; he had been Secretary of State for foreign
      affairs, and had taken a conspicuous part in rousing the country to carry
      on the war against France.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      The nature of the subject, dealing as it necessarily does with so many
      personal details, renders it impossible to make public the correspondence
      in which Lord George Bentinck was engaged at this time in his attempts to
      place the Protectionist party under the guidance of one who would unite
      all sympathies; but were that publication possible, it would place Lord
      George Bentinck in a very noble and amiable light, and prove a gentleness
      and softness in his nature for which those who were not very intimate with
      him did not give him credit. Not that it must be for a moment supposed
      that he was insensible to what was occurring. He was the most sensitive as
      well as the proudest of men. When the writer called at Harcourt House, to
      bid him farewell, before the Christmas holidays, and, conversing very
      frankly on the course which he was then pursuing, inquired as to his
      future proceedings, Lord George said with emotion: &lsquo;In this cause I have
      shaken my constitution and shortened my days, and I will succeed or die.&rsquo; 
      In the course of the year 1848, walking home, talking together, from the
      House of Commons, he twice recurred to this terrible alternative.
    </p>
    <p>
      But all considerations were merged at this moment in the predominant one
      which was to keep the party together. He wrote to a friend at the end of
      January, who urged him, as the hour of work approached and the injurious
      inconveniences of his abdication would be more felt, to confer with his
      former followers and reconsider his position, that no personal feeling
      prevented his taking that course, but that he felt any resumption of
      responsibility on his part would not be pleasing to a section of those who
      formerly served with him, and that there would be a &lsquo;split&rsquo; in the ranks.
      &lsquo;As far as I am personally concerned,&rsquo; he added, &lsquo;I could submit to
      anything short of having my ears cut off and appearing as a &ldquo;Croppy,&rdquo; to
      be free again. My pride cannot stand leading an unwilling party; I would
      just as soon thrust myself into a dinner-room where I was at once an
      uninvited and an unwelcome guest.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      In the meantime, according to his custom, the moment that he had
      sufficiently recovered from his illness, he prepared with the utmost zeal
      for the coming struggle respecting the fate of our sugar colonies, in
      which subject he was soon absorbed.
    </p>
    <p>
      Parliament reassembled on the 3rd of February, and on that night Lord
      George Bentinck brought forward his motion for &lsquo;a select committee to
      inquire into the present condition and prospects of the interests
      connected with and dependent on sugar and coffee planting in her Majesty&rsquo;s
      East and West Indian possessions and the Mauritius, and to consider
      whether any and what measures can be adopted by Parliament for their
      relief.&rsquo; When he entered the House, Lord George walked up to the head of
      the second bench below the gangway, on the opposition side, and thus
      significantly announced that he was no longer the responsible leader of
      the Protectionist party. It was the wish of the writer of these pages, who
      had resolved to stand or fall by him, to have followed his example and to
      have abdicated the prominent seat in which the writer had been unwillingly
      and fortuitously placed; but by the advice, or rather at the earnest
      request, of Lord George Bentinck, this course was relinquished as
      indicative of schism, which he wished to discourage; and the circumstance
      is only mentioned as showing that Lord George was not less considerate at
      this moment of the interests of the Protectionist party than when he led
      them with so much confidence and authority. The session, however, was to
      commence without a leader, without any recognized organ of communication
      between parties, or any responsible representative of opinion in debate.
      All again was chaos. There is, however, something so vital in the
      Conservative party that it seems always to rally under every disadvantage.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord George spoke well to his resolution: the House soon recognized he was
      master of his case, and though few foresaw at the moment the important
      consequences to which this motion would lead, the House was interested
      from the first; and though there was no division, the debate lasted two
      days, and was sustained on both sides with great animation.
    </p>
    <p>
      The mover vindicated himself very successfully for only proposing a
      committee of inquiry. &lsquo;It has been represented to me,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;by the
      colonies and by persons in this country who are interested in them, that
      the course which I am proposing is not consistent with the necessities of
      the case; that there is something pusillanimous in the motion which I am
      going to make; that in point of fact the interests connected with sugar
      and coffee planting are in extremis; and that while the question of their
      redress is being discussed in a committee above-stairs, these great
      interests will perish. They say to me that a committee of inquiry will be
      to them of the nature of that comfort which,
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     &ldquo;Like cordials after death, come late; &rdquo;
 </pre>
    <p>
      and that before the committee shall have reported, the West-Indian
      interest will be altogether past recovery. But, sir, it is for me to
      consider what my power is to obtain any substantial relief by a direct
      vote of this House; and when I remember that in July, 1846, I moved a
      resolution the purport of which was, to maintain the protection for the
      West-Indian and the East-Indian free-labour colonies which they now seek,
      and that I had but one hundred and thirty gentlemen to support me, while
      two hundred and sixty-five votes were recorded in favour of the measure of
      the Government admitting slave-labour sugar, I feel that it is hopeless
      for me to endeavour in this House, where I have no reason to suppose any
      addition has been made to the members acquiescing in my views, to convert
      that minority into a majority; and more especially when I recollect that
      on that occasion but five gentlemen connected with the West-Indian and
      East-Indian interests recorded their votes with me, I think the
      West-Indian interest has not a good case against me when they blame me for
      not taking a more resolute step on this occasion.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      He was not, however, without hope from the course which he had decided to
      pursue. &lsquo;Looking, as I have done, at the deplorable state of the West
      Indies, the East Indies, and the Mauritius, and holding, as I do, in my
      hand a list of forty-eight great houses in England&mdash;twenty-six of the
      first commercial houses in London, sixteen in Liverpool, and six elsewhere&mdash;which
      have failed, and whose liabilities amount in the whole to £6,300,000 and
      upwards, none of which I believe would have fallen had it not been for the
      ruin brought upon them by the change in the sugar duties and the
      consequent reduction in the price of their produce,&mdash;I do hope,
      through the intervention of a committee of this House, I may be able to
      prevail upon the House to change its policy with regard to this great
      question.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord George was supported in this debate by Mr. Thomas Baring, in one of
      the best speeches ever made in the House of Commons. Few more combine
      mastery of the case with parliamentary point than this gentleman. It is
      not impossible to find a man capable of addressing the House of Commons
      who understands the subject; it is not impossible to find a man who can
      convey his impressions on any subject to the House in a lively and
      captivating manner, though both instances are rarer than the world would
      imagine; but a man who at the same time understands a question and can
      handle it before a popular assembly in a popular style, who teaches
      without being pedantic, can convey an argument in an epigram, and instruct
      as the Mexicans did by picture, possesses a talent for the exercise of
      which he is responsible to his sovereign and his country.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Baring said that he could not perfectly agree either with Lord John
      Russell or Lord George Bentinck, that Protection or Free Trade must be in
      what they called a circle, round which in their legislation they must
      always move; that they must either give protection to everything or free
      trade to everything. He could not say that because sugar claimed
      protection, coals must have protection also. Neither would he, on the
      other hand, apply free trade to every article. He acknowledged the
      advantage of competition as a stimulus: he thought that, placing things on
      equal grounds, competition was undoubtedly a great advantage. He could
      understand a competition to try the mutual speed of race-horses; but there
      could be no competition between a race-horse and a steam-engine, for the
      power of the animal could bear no comparison with that of the machine!
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr. Baring could look back to no legislation more humiliating than the
      legislation regarding our colonies. No great interest was ever so much
      trifled with, so much sacrificed to the cry of the day; at one moment to
      no slavery and another to cheap sugar.
    </p>
    <p>
      The committee was granted, and it was generally felt that the question was
      consequently quieted for the session.
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XII.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>Leader Perforce</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      DURING the first six weeks of this famous committee the attendance of its
      members was not very regular, and its labours attracted little attention.
      The evidence on the East-India part of the question was closed and
      reported to the House by the end of February; after that period the
      evidence was reported to the House every week or ten days. Towards the end
      of March, rumours began to circulate of the extraordinary vigour and
      ability with which this investigation was pursued, and of the novel,
      authentic, and striking evidence that had been elicited. The proceedings
      were talked of in the House of Commons and on the Royal Exchange; the City
      men who were examined went back to their companions with wondrous tales of
      the energy and acuteness of Harcourt House, and the order, method, and
      discipline of the committee-room at Westminster. As time elapsed, the
      hopes of the colonial interest again revived. It was generally felt that
      Lord George had succeeded in establishing an irresistible case. It was
      rumoured that the government could not withstand it. Those who had
      originally murmured at the course which he had adopted of moving for a
      committee of inquiry, instead of proposing a specific measure of relief,
      and had treated an investigation as a mere means of securing inaction, now
      recanted their rash criticism, and did justice to his prescience and
      superior judgment, as well as to his vast information and indefatigable
      exertions. The week during which the committee sat on their report was a
      very anxious one; the divisions were known every day in the House of
      Commons; the alternations of success and discomfiture, and the balanced
      numbers that so often called for the interposition of the chairman, were
      calculated to sustain the excitement; and when, on the 29th of May, it was
      known that the report was at length agreed to, and that a committee of
      free traders had absolutely recommended a differential duty of 10s. in
      favour of our own produce, one might have fancied from the effect visibly
      produced, that a government was changed.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few days before&mdash;it was the day after the Derby, May 25th&mdash;the
      writer met Lord George Ben-tinck in the library of the House of Commons.
      He was standing before the book-shelves, with a volume in his hand, and
      his countenance was greatly disturbed. His resolutions in favour of the
      colonial interest after all his labours had been negatived by the
      committee on the 22nd, and on the 24th, his horse Surplice, whom he had
      parted with among the rest of his stud, solely that he might pursue
      without distraction his labours on behalf of the great interests of the
      country, had won that paramount and Olympian stake, to gain which had been
      the object of his life. He had nothing to console him, and nothing to
      sustain him except his pride. Even that deserted him before a heart which
      he knew at least could yield him sympathy. He gave a sort of superb groan:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;All my life I have been trying for this, and for what have I sacrificed
      it!&rsquo; he murmured.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was in vain to offer solace.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;You do not know what the Derby is,&rsquo; he moaned out.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;Yes, I do; it is the blue ribbon of the turf.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;It is the blue ribbon of the turf,&rsquo; he slowly repeated to himself, and
      sitting down at the table, he buried himself in a folio of statistics.
    </p>
    <p>
      But on Monday, the 29th, when the resolution in favour of a 10s.
      differential duty for the colonies had at the last moment been carried,
      and carried by his casting vote, &lsquo;the blue ribbons of the turf were all
      forgotten. Not for all the honours and successes of all the meetings,
      spring or autumn, Newmarket, Epsom, Goodwood, Doncaster, would he have
      exchanged that hour of rapture. His eye sparkled with fire, his nostril
      dilated with triumph, his brow was elate like a conqueror, his sanguine
      spirit saw a future of continued and illimitable success.
    </p>
    <p>
      &lsquo;We have saved the colonies,&rsquo; he said,&mdash;&lsquo;saved the colonies. I knew
      it must be so. It is the knell of free trade.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      Notwithstanding the formal renunciation of the leadership of the
      Protectionist party by Lord George Bentinck, it was soon evident to the
      House and the country that that renunciation was merely formal. In these
      days of labour, the leader of a party must be the man who does the work,
      and that work cannot now be accomplished without the devotion of a life.
      Whenever a great question arose, the people out of doors went to Lord
      George Bentinck, and when the discussion commenced, he was always found to
      be the man armed with the authority of knowledge. There was, however, no
      organized debate and no party discipline. No one was requested to take a
      part, and no attendance was ever summoned. The vast majority sitting on
      the Protectionist benches always followed Bentinck, who, whatever might be
      his numbers in the lobby, always made a redoubtable stand in the House.
      The situation however, it cannot be denied, was a dangerous one for a
      great party to persevere in, but no permanent damage accrued, because
      almost every one hoped that before the session was over, the difficulty
      would find a natural solution in the virtual chief resuming his formal and
      responsible post. Notwithstanding his labours on the two great committees
      of the year&mdash;those on colonial and commercial distress,&mdash;Lord
      George Bentinck found time to master the case of the shipping interest
      when the navigation laws were attacked, to impugn in a formal motion the
      whole of the commercial policy of Sir Robert Peel, even while the sugar
      and coffee planting committee was still sitting, and to produce, early in
      March, a rival budget. It was mainly through the prolonged resistance
      which he organized against the repeal of the navigation laws, that the
      government, in 1848, was forced to abandon their project. The resistance
      was led with great ability by Mr. Herries, and the whole party put forward
      their utmost strength to support him. But it is very difficult to convey a
      complete picture of the laborious life of Lord George Bentinck during the
      sitting of Parliament. At half-past nine o&rsquo;clock there called upon him the
      commercial representatives of the question of the day; after these
      conferences came his elaborate and methodical correspondence, all of which
      he carried on himself in a handwriting clear as print, and never employing
      a secretary; at twelve or one o&rsquo;clock he was at a committee, and he only
      left the committee-room to take his seat in the House of Commons, which he
      never quitted till the House adjourned, always long past midnight, and
      often at two o&rsquo;clock in the morning. Here he was ready for all comers,
      never omitting an opportunity to vindicate his opinions, or watching with
      lynx-like vigilance the conduct of a public office. What was not his least
      remarkable trait is, that although he only breakfasted on dry toast, he
      took no sustenance all this time, dining at White&rsquo;s at half-past two
      o&rsquo;clock in the morning. After his severe attack of the influenza he broke
      through this habit a little during the last few months of his life, moved
      by the advice of his physician and the instance of his friends. The writer
      of these observations prevailed upon him a little the last year to fall
      into the easy habit of dining at Bellamy&rsquo;s, which saves much time, and
      permits the transaction of business in conversation with a congenial
      friend. But he grudged it: he always thought that something would be said
      or done in his absence, which would not have occurred had he been there;
      some motion whisked through, or some return altered. His principle was
      that a member should never be absent from his seat.
    </p>
    <p>
      The session of &lsquo;48 had been one of unexampled length, having lasted ten
      months, and, as usual under such circumstances, the obstacles to the
      transaction of public business were sought everywhere except in the real
      quarter. The forms of the House and the propensity to unnecessary
      discussion among its members were chiefly denounced. Lord George Bentinck
      did not agree in the justness of these criminations; they were eagerly
      caught by the thoughtless and the superficial, but it was his habit to
      investigate and analyze everything, and he found that these charges had no
      basis. The forms of the House of Commons are the result of accumulated
      experience and have rarely been tampered with successfully, while on the
      other hand a parliamentary government is by name and nature essentially a
      government of discussion. It is not at all difficult to conceive a mode of
      governing a country more expeditious than by a parliament; but where truth
      as well as strength is held to be an essential element of legislation,
      opinion must be secured an unrestricted organ. Superfluity of debate may
      often be inconvenient to a minister, and sometimes perhaps even
      distasteful to the community; but criticizing such a security for justice
      and liberty as a free-spoken parliament is like quarrelling with the
      weather because there is too much rain or too much sunshine. The casual
      inconvenience should be forgotten in the permanent blessing. Acting upon
      these false imputations a committee was even appointed, two years ago, of
      the most eminent members of the House of Commons, to investigate the
      subject and suggest remedies, and some votaries of the Transatlantic type
      recommended the adoption of the rules of Congress where each speaker is
      limited to an hour. But an hour from an uninteresting speaker would be a
      great infliction. The good sense and the good taste of the House of
      Commons will be found on the whole to be the best regulators of the
      duration of a debate.
    </p>
    <p>
      The truth is that the delay in the conduct of parliamentary business which
      has been much complained of during the last few years, murmurs of which
      were especially rife in 1848, is attributable to the fact that the
      ministry, though formed of men inferior in point of ability to none who
      could be reasonably intrusted with administration, had not sufficient
      parliamentary strength. After all their deliberations and foresight,&mdash;after
      all their observations of the times and study of the public interest,
      their measures when launched from the cabinet into the House were not
      received by a confiding majority, firm in their faith in the statesmanlike
      qualities of the authors of these measures and in their sympathy with the
      general political system of which the ministry was the representative. On
      the contrary, the success of the measures depended on a* variety of
      sections who in their aggregate exceeded in number and influence the party
      of the ministers. These became critics and took the ministerial measures
      in hand; the measures became, the measures, not of the cabinet, but of the
      House of Commons; and a purely legislative assembly became, in consequence
      of the weakness of the government, yearly more administrative. This was
      undoubtedly a great evil, and occasioned, besides great delay, many crude
      enactments, as will be the case where all are constructors and none are
      responsible, but the evil was not occasioned by the forms of the House or
      the length of the speeches. Sir Robert Peel was unquestionably a very able
      administrator, but if he had not had a majority of ninety he would have
      fallen in as ill repute as has been too often the lot of Lord John
      Russell.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lord George Bentinck was very anxious that there should be a parliamentary
      summary of this enormous and eventful session of &lsquo;48, that the conduct of
      business by the ministry should be traced and criticized and the character
      of the House of Commons vindicated, and he appealed to the writer of these
      observations to undertake the task. But the writer was unwilling to accede
      to this suggestion, not only because at the end of August he shrank from a
      laborious effort, but principally because he did not hold that his
      position in the House of Commons warranted on his part such an
      interference, since, after all, he was only the comrade in arms of one who
      chose to be only an independent member of the House. He therefore
      unaffectedly stated that he thought the office was somewhat above his
      measure. But Lord George Bentinck would not listen to these
      representations. &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t pretend to know much,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;but I can judge
      of men and horses.&rsquo; It is difficult to refuse those who are themselves
      setting a constant example of self-sacrifice, and therefore, so far as the
      labour was concerned, the writer would not have shrunk from the exertion
      even on the last day of the month of August, and when the particular wish
      of Lord George was found to be more general than the writer presumed to
      suppose, he accordingly endeavoured to accomplish the intention.
    </p>
    <p>
      Three or four days after this, the writer, about to leave London, called
      at Harcourt House, to say farewell to his comrade in arms. He passed with
      Lord George the whole morning, rather indulging in the contemplation of
      the future than in retrospect. Lord George was serene, cheerful, and
      happy. He was content with himself, which was rarely the case, and
      remembered nothing of his career but its distinction, and the ennobling
      sense of having done his duty.
    </p>
    <p>
      Any misunderstandings that may have for a moment irritated him seemed
      forgotten; he appeared conscious that he possessed the confidence and
      cordial regard of the great majority of the Protectionist party, although
      he chose to occupy a private post, and he was proud of the consciousness.
      He was still more sensible of the sympathy which he had created out of
      doors, which he greatly appreciated, and to which, though with his usual
      modesty, he more than once recurred. &lsquo;The thing is to get the people out
      of doors with you,&rsquo; he repeated, &lsquo;men like the merchants; all the rest
      follow.&rsquo; It was evident that the success of his colonial committee had
      greatly satisfied his spirit. He had received that day the vote of thanks
      of the West-India body for his exertions. He said more than once, that
      with a weak government, a parliamentary committee properly worked might do
      wonders. He said he would have a committee on import duties next year, and
      have all the merchants to show what share the foreigners had obtained of
      the reductions that had been made of late years. He maintained, that,
      quite irrespective of the general arrangements of the new commercial
      system, Sir Robert Peel had thrown away a great revenue on a number of
      articles of very inferior importance, and he would prove this to the
      country. He said our colonial empire ought to be reconstructed by a total
      abolition of all duties on produce from her Majesty&rsquo;s dominions abroad.
    </p>
    <p>
      All his ideas were large, clear, and coherent. He dwelt much on the
      vicissitudes which most attend all merely foreign trade, which, though it
      should be encouraged, ought not to be solely relied on, as was the fashion
      of this day. Looking upon war as occasionally inevitable, he thought a
      commercial system based upon the presumption of perpetual peace to be full
      of ruin. His policy was essentially imperial and not cosmopolitan.
    </p>
    <p>
      About to part probably for many months, and listening to him as he spoke,
      according to his custom, with so much fervour and sincerity, one could not
      refrain from musing over his singular and sudden career. It was not three
      years since he had in an instant occupied the minds of men. No series of
      parliamentary labours had ever produced so much influence in the country
      in so short a time. Never was a reputation so substantial built up in so
      brief a period. AH the questions with which he had dealt were colossal
      questions: the laws that should regulate competition between native and
      foreign labour; the interference of the state in the development of the
      resources of Ireland; the social and commercial condition of our tropical
      colonies; the principles upon which our revenue should be raised; the laws
      which should regulate and protect our navigation. But it was not that he
      merely expressed opinions upon these subjects; he came forward with
      details in support of his principles and policy, which it had before been
      believed none but a minister could command. Instead of experiencing the
      usual and almost inevitable doom of private members of Parliament, and
      having his statements shattered by official information, Lord George
      Bentinck on the contrary, was the assailant, and the successful assailant,
      of an administration on these very heads. He often did their work more
      effectually than all their artificial training enabled them to do it. His
      acute research, and his peculiar sources of information, roused the
      vigilance of all the public offices of the country. Since his time, there
      has been more care in preparing official returns, and in arranging the
      public correspondence placed on the table of the House of Commons.
    </p>
    <p>
      When one remembered that in this room, not three years ago, he was trying
      to find a lawyer who would make a speech for him in Parliament, it was
      curious to remember that no one in the period had probably addressed the
      House of Commons oftener. Though his manner, which was daily improving,
      was not felicitous in the House, the authority of his intellect, his
      knowledge, and his character, made him one of the great personages of
      debate; but with the country who only read his speeches he ranked high as
      an orator. It is only those who have had occasion critically to read and
      examine the long series of his speeches who can be conscious of their
      considerable merits. The information is always full and often fresh, the
      scope large, the argument close, and the style, though simple, never bald,
      but vigorous, idiomatic, and often picturesque. He had not credit for this
      in his day, but the passages which have been quoted in this sketch will
      prove the justness of this criticism. As a speaker and writer, his
      principal need was condensation. He could not bear that anything should
      remain untold. He was deficient in taste, but he had fervour of feeling,
      and was by no means void of imagination.
    </p>
    <p>
      The writer, in his frequent communications with him of faithful and
      unbounded confidence, was often reminded of the character by Mr. Burke of
      my Lord Keppell.
    </p>
    <p>
      The labours of Lord George Bentinck had been supernatural, and one ought
      perhaps to have felt then that it was impossible they could be continued
      on such a scale of exhaustion; but no friend could control his eager life
      in this respect; he obeyed the law of his vehement and fiery nature, being
      one of those men who in whatever they undertake know no medium, but will
      &lsquo;succeed or die.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      But why talk here and now of death! He goes to his native county and his
      father&rsquo;s proud domain, to breathe the air of his boyhood and move amid the
      parks and meads of his youth. Every breeze will bear health, and the sight
      of every hallowed haunt will stimulate his pulse. He is scarcely older
      than Julius Cæsar when he commenced his public career, he looks as high
      and brave, and he springs from a long-lived race.
    </p>
    <p>
      He stood upon the <i>perron</i> of Harcourt House, the last of the great
      hotels of an age of stately dwellings with its wings, and court-yard, and
      carriage portal, and huge outward walls. He put forth his hand to bid
      farewell, and his last words were characteristic of the man&mdash;of his
      warm feelings and of his ruling passion: &lsquo;God bless you; we must work, and
      the country will come round us.&rsquo; 
    </p>
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER XIII.
    </h2>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
     <i>The Curtain Falls</i>
</pre>
    <p>
      THE heavens darken; a new character enters upon the scene.
    </p>
    <p>
      They say that when great men arise they have a mission to accomplish and
      do not disappear until it is fulfilled. Yet this is not always true. After
      all his deep study and his daring action Mr. Hampden died on an obscure
      field, almost before the commencement of that mighty struggle which he
      seemed born to direct. In the great contention between the patriotic and
      the cosmopolitan principle which has hardly begun, and on the issue of
      which the fate of this island as a powerful community depends, Lord George
      Ben-tinck appeared to be produced to represent the traditionary influences
      of our country in their most captivating form. Born a natural leader of
      the people, he was equal to the post. Free from prejudices, his large mind
      sympathized with all classes of the realm. His courage and his constancy
      were never surpassed by man. He valued life only as a means of fulfilling
      duty, and truly it may be said of him, that he feared none but God.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few days after the interview noticed in the last chapter, Lord George
      Bentinck returned to Welbeck. Some there were who thought him worn by the
      exertions of the session, and that an unusual pallor had settled upon that
      mantling and animated countenance. He himself never felt in better health
      or was ever in higher spirits, and greatly enjoyed the change of life, and
      that change to a scene so dear to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      On the 21 st of September, after breakfasting with his family, he retired
      to his room, where he employed himself With some papers, and then wrote
      three letters, one to Lord Enfield, another to the Duke of Richmond, and
      the third to the writer of these pages. That letter is now at hand; it is
      of considerable length, consisting of seven sheets of note-paper, full of
      interesting details of men and things, and written not only in a cheerful
      but even a merry mood. Then, when his letters were sealed, about four
      o&rsquo;clock he took his staff and went forth to walk to Thoresby, the seat of
      Lord Manvers, distant between five and six miles from Welbeck, where Lord
      George was to make a visit of two days. In consequence of this his valet
      drove over to Thoresby at the same time to meet his master. But the master
      never came. Hours passed on and the master never came. At length the
      anxious servant returned to Welbeck, and called up the groom who had
      driven him over to Thoresby and who was in bed, and inquired whether he
      had seen anything of Lord George on the way back, as his lord had never
      reached Thoresby. The groom got up, and accompanied by the valet and two
      others took lanthorns, and followed the footpath which they had seen Lord
      George pursuing as they themselves went to Thoresby.
    </p>
    <p>
      About a mile from the Abbey, on the path which they had observed him
      following, lying close to the gate which separates a water meadow from the
      deer-park, they found the body of Lord George Bentinck. He was lying on
      his face; his arms were under his body, and in one hand he grasped his
      walking-stick. His hat was a yard or two before him, having evidently been
      thrown off in falling. The body was cold and stiff. He had been long dead.
    </p>
    <p>
      A woodman and some peasants passing near the spot, about two hundred yards
      from the gate in question, had observed Lord George, whom at the distance
      they had mistaken for his brother the Marquis of Titchfield, leaning
      against this gate. It was then about half-past four o&rsquo;clock, or it might
      be a quarter to five, so he could not have left his home much more than
      half an hour. The woodman and his companions thought &lsquo;the gentleman&rsquo; was
      reading, as he held his head down. One of them lingered for a minute
      looking at the gentleman, who then turned round, and might have seen these
      passers-by, but he made no sign to them.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus it seems that the attack, which was supposed to be a spasm of the
      heart, was not instantaneous in its effects, but with proper remedies
      might have been baffled. Terrible to think of him in his death-struggle
      without aid, and so near a devoted hearth! For that hearth, too, what an
      impending future!
    </p>
    <p>
      The terrible news reached Nottingham on the morning of the 22nd, at
      half-past nine o&rsquo;clock, and, immediately telegraphed to London, was
      announced by a second edition of the &lsquo;Times&rsquo; to the country. Consternation
      and deep grief fell upon all men. One week later, the remains arrived from
      Welbeck at Harcourt House, to be entombed in the family vault of the
      Bentincks, that is to be found in a small building in a dingy street, now
      a chapel of ease, but in old days the parish church among the fields of
      the pretty village of Marylebone.
    </p>
    <p>
      The day of interment was dark, and cold, and drizzling. Although the last
      offices were performed in the most scrupulously private manner, the
      feelings of the community could not be repressed. From nine till eleven
      o&rsquo;clock that day all the British shipping in the docks and the river, from
      London Bridge to Gravesend, hoisted their flags half-mast high, and minute
      guns were fired from appointed stations along the Thames. The same
      mournful ceremony was observed in all the ports of England and Ireland;
      and not only in these, for the flag was half-mast high on every British
      ship at Antwerp, at Rotterdam, and at Havre.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ere the last minute gun sounded, all was over. Followed to his tomb by
      those brothers who, if not consoled, might at this moment be sustained by
      the remembrance that to him they had ever been brothers not only in name
      but in spirit, the vault at length closed on the mortal remains of <i>George
      Bentinck</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      One who stood by his side in an arduous and unequal struggle, who often
      shared his councils and sometimes perhaps soothed his cares, who knew well
      the greatness of his nature and esteemed his friendship among the chief of
      worldly blessings, has stepped aside from the strife and passion of public
      life to draw up this record of his deeds and thoughts, that those who come
      after us may form some conception of his character and career, and trace
      in these faithful though imperfect pages the portraiture of an <i>English
      Worthy</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">





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