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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Historical and Political Essays, by William
+Edward Hartpole Lecky
+
+
+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: Historical and Political Essays
+
+
+Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2007  [eBook #20389]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)
+
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original     |
+    | document have been preserved.                             |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this  |
+    | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this     |
+    | document.                                                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Longmans, Green, and Co.
+39 Paternoster Row, London
+New York, Bombay, and Calcutta
+1908
+All rights reserved
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                             PAGE
+     THOUGHTS ON HISTORY                                        1
+
+     THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY                            21
+
+     THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH                      43
+
+     IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY                           68
+
+     FORMATIVE INFLUENCES                                      90
+
+     CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE                             104
+
+     ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS                                 116
+
+     MADAME DE STAËL                                          131
+
+     THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL            151
+
+     THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY                              200
+
+     MR. HENRY REEVE                                          242
+
+     DEAN MILMAN                                              249
+
+     QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE                          275
+
+     OLD-AGE PENSIONS                                         298
+
+     INDEX                                                    319
+
+
+
+
+The Essays 'Thoughts on History,' 'Formative Influences,'
+'Madame de Staël,' 'Israel among the Nations,' 'Old-age
+Pensions,' appeared originally in the American Review, the
+_Forum_--the first under the title of 'The Art of Writing
+History'; 'Ireland in the Light of History,' in the _North
+American Review_. Those on Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Henry Reeve,
+and Dean Milman were written for the _Edinburgh Review_. The
+Essay on 'Queen Victoria as a Moral Force' appeared first in
+the _Pall Mall Magazine_; 'Carlyle's Message to His Age' in
+the _Contemporary Review_. 'The Political Value of History'
+was a presidential address delivered before the Birmingham and
+Midland Institute; 'The Empire,' an inaugural address
+delivered at the Imperial Institute; and the 'Memoir of the
+Fifteenth Earl of Derby' was originally prefixed to the
+volumes of his speeches and addresses.
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS ON HISTORY
+
+
+I do not propose in this paper to enter into any general inquiry about
+the best method of writing history. Such inquiries appear to me to be
+of no real value, for there are many different kinds of history which
+should be written in many different ways. A diplomatic, a military, or
+a parliamentary history, dealing with a short period or a particular
+episode, must evidently be treated in a very different spirit from an
+extended history where the object of the historian should be to
+describe the various aspects of the national life, and to trace
+through long periods of time the ultimate causes of national progress
+and decay. The history of religion, of art, of literature, of social
+and industrial development, of scientific progress, have all their
+different methods. A writer who treats of some great revolution that
+has transformed human affairs should deal largely in retrospect, for
+the most important part of his task is to explain the long course of
+events that prepared and produced the catastrophe; while a writer who
+treats of more normal times will do well to plunge rapidly into his
+theme.
+
+Historians, too, differ widely in their special talents, and these
+talents are never altogether combined. The power of vividly realising
+and portraying men, or societies or modes of thought that have long
+since passed away; the power of arranging and combining great
+multitudes of various facts; the power of judging with discrimination,
+accuracy, and impartiality conflicting arguments or evidence; the
+power of tracing through the long course of events the true chain of
+cause and effect, selecting the facts that are most valuable and
+significant and explaining the relation between general causes and
+particular effects, are all very different and belong to different
+types of mind. It is idle to expect a writer with the gifts of a
+Clarendon, a Kinglake, or a Froude to write history in the spirit of a
+Hallam or a Grote. Writers who are eminently distinguished for wide,
+patient, and accurate research have sometimes little power either of
+describing or interpreting the facts which they collect. All that can
+be said with any profit is that each writer will do best if he follows
+the natural bent of his genius, and that he should select those kinds
+or periods of history in which his special gifts have most scope and
+the qualities in which he is deficient are least needed.
+
+It is the fashion of a modern school of historical writers to deplore
+what they call the intrusion of literature into history. History, in
+their judgment, should be treated as science and not as literature,
+and the kind of intellect they most value is not unlike that of a
+skilful and well-trained attorney. To collect documents with industry;
+to compare, classify, interpret and estimate them is the main work of
+the historian. It is no doubt true that there are some fields of
+history where the primary facts are so little known, so much contested
+or so largely derived from recondite manuscript sources, that a
+faithful historian will be obliged in justice to his readers to
+sacrifice both proportion and artistic charm to the supreme importance
+of analysing evidence, reproducing documents and accumulating proofs;
+but in general the depreciation of the literary element in history
+seems to me essentially wrong. It is only necessary to recall the
+names of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Livy and Tacitus, of Gibbon and
+Macaulay, and of the long line of great masters of style who have
+related the annals of France. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted
+that there is no subject in which rarer literary qualities are more
+demanded than in the higher forms of history. The art of portraying
+characters; of describing events; of compressing, arranging, and
+selecting great masses of heterogeneous facts, of conducting many
+different chains of narrative without confusion or obscurity; of
+preserving in a vast and complicated subject the true proportion and
+relief, will tax the highest literary skill, and no one who does not
+possess some, at least, of these gifts in an unusual measure is likely
+to attain a permanent place among the great masters of history. It is
+a misfortune when some stirring and momentous period falls into the
+hands of the mere compiler, for he occupies the ground and a really
+great writer will hesitate to appropriate and plagiarise the materials
+his predecessor has collected. There are books of great research and
+erudition which one would have wished to have been all re-written by
+some writer of real genius who could have given order, meaning and
+vividness to a mere chaos of accurate and laboriously sifted learning.
+The great prominence which it is now the fashion to ascribe to the
+study of diplomatic documents, is very apt to destroy the true value
+and perspective of history. It is always the temptation of those who
+are dealing with manuscript materials to overrate the small personal
+details which they bring to light, and to give them much more than
+their due space in their narrative. This tendency the new school
+powerfully encourages. It is quite right that the treasure-houses of
+diplomatic correspondence which have of late years been thrown open
+should be explored and sifted, but history written chiefly from these
+materials, though it has its own importance, is not likely to be
+distinguished either by artistic form or by philosophical value. Those
+who are immersed in these studies are very apt to overrate their
+importance and the part which diplomacy and statesmanship have borne
+in the great movement of human affairs.
+
+A true and comprehensive history should be the life of a nation. It
+should describe it in its larger and more various aspects. It should
+be a study of causes and effects, of distant as well as proximate
+causes, and of the large, slow and permanent evolution of things. It
+should include, as Buckle and Macaulay saw, the social, the
+industrial, the intellectual life of the nation as well as mere
+political changes, and it should be pre-eminently marked by a true
+perspective dealing with subjects at a length proportioned to their
+real importance. All this requires a powerful and original intellect
+quite different from that of a mere compiler. It requires too, in a
+high degree, the kind of imagination which enables a man to reproduce
+not only the acts but the feelings, the ideals, the modes of thought
+and life of a distant past, and pierce through the actions and
+professions of men to their real characters. Insight into character is
+one of the first requisites of a historian. It is therefore, much to
+be desired that he should possess a wide knowledge of the world, the
+knowledge of different types of character, foreign as well as English,
+which travel and society and practical experience of business can
+give, and it will also be of no small advantage to him if he has
+passed through more than one intellectual or religious phase, widening
+the area of his appreciation and realisations. He should also have
+enough of the dramatic element to enable him to throw himself into
+ways of reasoning or feeling very different from his own. One of the
+most valuable of all forms of historical imagination is that which
+enables a writer to place himself in the point of view of the best men
+on different sides, and to bring out the full sense of opposing
+arguments. All these gifts or qualities are never in a high degree
+united, but they are all essential to a great historian, and a true
+school of history should widen instead of narrowing our conception of
+it.
+
+The supreme virtue of the historian is truthfulness, and it may be
+violated in many different degrees. The worst form is when a writer
+deliberately falsifies facts or deliberately excludes from his picture
+qualifying circumstances. But there are other and much more subtle
+ways in which party spirit continually and often quite unconsciously
+distorts history. All history is necessarily a selection of facts, and
+a writer who is animated by a strong sympathy with one side of a
+question or a strong desire to prove some special point will be much
+tempted in his selection to give an undue prominence to those that
+support his view, or, even where neither facts nor arguments are
+suppressed, to give a party character to his work by an unfair
+distribution of lights and shades. The strong and vivid epithets are
+chiefly reserved for the good or bad deeds on one side, the vague,
+general and comparatively colourless epithets for the corresponding
+deeds on the other side; and in this way very similar facts are
+brought before the reader with such different degrees of illumination
+and relief that they make a wholly different impression on his mind.
+In the history of Macaulay this defect may, I think, be especially
+traced. The characteristic defect of that great and in most respects
+admirable writer, both as historian and artist, was the singular
+absence of graduation in his mind. The neutral tints which are
+essential to the accurate shading of character seemed almost wanting,
+and a love of strong contrasted lights and shades, coupled with his
+supreme command of powerful epithets, continually misled him. But no
+attentive reader can fail to observe how unequally those epithets are
+distributed and how clearly this inequality discloses the strong bias
+under which he wrote.
+
+The truth of an historical picture lies mainly in its judicious and
+accurate shading, and it is this art which the historian should
+especially cultivate. He will scarcely do so with success unless it
+becomes to him not merely a matter of duty, but also a pleasure and a
+pride. The kind of interest which he takes in his narrative should be
+much less that of a politician and an advocate than of a painter, who,
+now darkening and now lightening the picture, seeks by many delicate
+touches to catch with exact fidelity the tone and hue of the object he
+represents.
+
+The degree of certainty that it is possible to attain in history
+varies greatly in different departments. The growth of institutions
+and laws, military events, changes in manners and in creeds, can be
+described with much confidence, and although it is more difficult to
+depict the inner moral life of nations, the influences that form their
+characters and prepare them for greatness or decay, yet when the
+materials for our induction are sufficiently large this field of
+history may be studied with great profit. Diplomatic history and the
+more secret springs of political history can only be fully disclosed
+when the archives relating to them have been explored and when the
+confidential correspondence of the chief actors in them has been
+published. The biographical element in history is always the most
+uncertain. Even among contemporaries the judgment of character and
+motives depends largely on indications so slight and subtle that they
+rarely pass into books and are only fully felt by direct personal
+contact, and the smallest knowledge of life shows how quickly
+anecdotes and sayings are distorted, coloured, and misplaced when they
+pass from lip to lip. Most of the 'good sayings' of history are
+invention, and most of them have been attributed to different persons.
+A history which is plainly written under the influence of party bias
+has the value of an advocate's speech giving one side of the question.
+When our only materials for the knowledge of a period are derived from
+such histories, the saying of Voltaire should be remembered--that we
+can confidently believe only the evil which a party writer tells of
+his own side and the good which he recognises in his opponents. In
+judging the historian we must consider his nearness to the events he
+relates, his probable means of information and the internal evidence
+in his narrative of accuracy, honesty, and judgment, and we must also
+consider the standard of proof and the methods of historical writing
+prevailing in his time. A modern writer who placed in the mouths of
+his personages speeches which he himself invented would be justly
+discredited, but in antiquity it was a recognised custom for a
+historian to embody in fictitious speeches the reflections suggested
+by his narrative and the motives which he believed to have actuated
+his heroes.
+
+Different ages differ enormously in the severity of proof which they
+exact, in the degree of accuracy which they attain. The credibility of
+a statement also depends not only on the amount of its evidence, but
+also on its own inherent probability. Everyone will feel that an
+amount of testimony that would be quite sufficient to persuade him
+that a butcher's boy had been seen driving along a highway is wholly
+different from that which would be required to persuade him that a
+ghost had been met there. The same rule applies to the history of the
+past, and it is complicated by the great difference in different ages
+of the measure of probability, or, in other words, by the strong
+predisposition in certain stages of knowledge to accept statements or
+explanations of facts which in later stages we know to be incredible
+or in a high degree improbable. Few subjects in history are more
+difficult than the laws of evidence in dealing with the supernatural
+and the extent to which the authority of historians in relating
+credible and probable facts is invalidated by the presence of a
+mythical element in their narratives.
+
+Connected with this subject is also the question how far it is
+possible by merely internal evidence to decompose an ancient document,
+resolving it into its separate elements, distinguishing its different
+dates and its different degrees of credibility. The reader is no doubt
+aware with what a rare skill this method of inquiry has been pursued
+in the present century, chiefly by great German and Dutch scholars, in
+dealing with the early Jewish writings. At the same time, without
+disputing the value of their work or the importance of many of the
+results at which they have arrived, I may be pardoned for expressing
+my belief that this kind of investigation is often pursued with an
+exaggerated confidence. Plausible conjecture is too frequently
+mistaken for positive proof. Undue significance is attached to what
+may be mere casual coincidences, and a minuteness of accuracy is
+professed in discriminating between the different elements in a
+narrative which cannot be attained by mere internal evidence. In all
+writings, but especially in the writings of an age when criticism was
+unknown, there will be repetitions, contradictions, inconsistencies
+and diversities of style which do not necessarily indicate different
+authorship or dates.
+
+I have spoken of the uncertainty of the biographical element in
+history. It must, however, be said that when a historian is dealing
+with men who have played a very prominent part on the stage of life,
+the general acceptance of his judgment is a strong corroboration of
+its truth. It may be added that the later judgment of men is not
+unfrequently more true than the contemporary judgment. The wisdom of a
+teaching or of a policy is shown by its results, and these results are
+in most cases very gradually disclosed. Great men are like great
+mountains which are surrounded by lower peaks that often obscure their
+grandeur and seem to a near observer to equal or even to overtop them.
+It is only when seen from far off that their true dimensions are fully
+realised and they soar to heaven above all rivals. In the page of
+history men are judged mainly by the net result of their lives, by the
+broad lines of their characters and achievements. Many injudicious
+words, many minor weaknesses of conduct, are forgotten. Faults of
+manner, deficiencies of tact, awkwardnesses of appearance, which tell
+so largely upon the judgments of contemporaries, are no longer seen.
+The conversational nimbleness and versatility of intellect, the charm
+or assurance or magnetism of manner, the weight of social position,
+all of which tend to secure to an inferior man a pre-eminence in the
+circle in which he moves, are equally evanescent, and the shy, rugged,
+and tactless recluse often emerges on the strength of his genuine and
+abiding performances to a position in the eyes of the world which he
+never attained during his lifetime.
+
+That fine saying of Cardan, 'Tempus mea possessio, tempus ager meus,'
+might be the motto of the historian. Time is the field which he
+cultivates, and a true sense of space and distance should be one of
+the chief characteristics of his work. Few things are more difficult
+to attain than a just perspective in history. The most dramatic
+incidents are not the most important, and in weighing the joys and
+sorrows of the past our measures of judgment are almost hopelessly
+false. The most humane man cannot emancipate himself from the law of
+his nature, according to which he is more affected by some tragic
+circumstance which has taken place in his own house or in his own
+street than by a catastrophe which has carried anguish and desolation
+over enormous areas in a distant continent. In history, too, there are
+vast tracts which are almost necessarily unrealised. We judge a period
+mainly by its great men, by its brilliant or salient incidents, by the
+fortunes of a small class; and the great mass of obscure, suffering,
+inarticulate humanity, whose happiness is often so profoundly affected
+by political and military events, almost escapes our notice. It should
+be the object of history to bring before us past events in their true
+proportion and significance, and one of the greatest improvements in
+modern history is the increased attention which is paid to the
+social, industrial, and moral history of the poor. The paucity of our
+information and the difficulty of realising the conditions of obscure
+multitudes will always make this branch of history very imperfect, but
+it is one of the most essential to the just judgment of the past.
+
+Another task which lies before the historian is that of distinguishing
+proximate from ultimate causes. Our first natural impulse is to
+attribute a great change to the men who effected it and to the period
+in which it took place, and to neglect or underrate the long train of
+causes which had been, often through many generations, preparing its
+advent. A faithful historian must especially guard against this error.
+He must study the slow process of growth as well as the moment of
+efflorescence, the long progress of decay as well as the final
+catastrophe. He will probably find that the part played by statesmen
+and legislatures is less than he had imagined, and that the causes of
+the movements he relates must be sought over a wider area and through
+a longer period.
+
+Moral, intellectual, or economical movements very slightly connected
+with political life are often those which have most largely
+contributed to the good or evil fortunes of a nation; and even in the
+sphere of politics it is not the events which attract the most vivid
+contemporary interest that have the most enduring influence. Few
+things contribute so much to the formation of the social type as the
+laws regulating the succession of property and especially the
+agglomeration or division of landed property. The growth of militarism
+in a nation, besides its direct and obvious consequences, forms a type
+of character which will sooner or later show itself in almost every
+department of legislation, and the tendency of politics to enlarge or
+narrow the sphere of individual liberty or of government control, will
+affect most deeply the habits of the people. Laws regulating private
+enterprises, substituting State control or initiative for individual
+action, encouraging or discouraging thrift, and above all interfering
+with free contracts, have much more than an immediate influence, for
+they become the prolific parents of many further extensions. In the
+words of an excellent observer, it will be found 'that our legislative
+interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions,
+every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects
+of the preceding.' It is by studying such tendencies through long
+periods of time that their good or evil influences may be best
+discovered, and this should be one of the great tasks of the
+historian.
+
+But, however large a part may be given to the impersonal influences in
+history, he will still be largely concerned with the record of
+individual achievements, and the great men of the past will form the
+most conspicuous landmarks of his narrative. I have often thought,
+however, that nations are judged too much by the great men they have
+produced and not sufficiently by the way in which they have
+discriminated among them and appreciated them. Genius is like the wind
+that bloweth where it listeth, and it often appears in strangely
+uncongenial quarters. The true nobility of a nation is shown by the
+men they choose, by the men they follow, by the men they admire, by
+the ideals of character and conduct they place before them. Tried by
+such tests, there is often much that is profoundly saddening in the
+history of countries that have been far from poor in the number of
+their great men.
+
+In the judgment of historical characters there are two cautions on
+which it may not be useless to dwell. There is a large class of public
+men who show little capacity in dealing with or directing the present
+conditions of their time, but who see clearly the bourne to which
+existing forces or tendencies are moving and who, judged by their
+distant forecasts, will appear much wiser than their contemporaries.
+It is the natural bias of the historian to place them perhaps higher
+than they deserve. This power of just speculative foresight is no very
+rare gift, and in public affairs it is often as much a hindrance as a
+help. Forms of government and other great religious or political
+institutions, like the products of nature, have their times of
+immaturity, of growth, of ripeness and of decay, and it by no means
+follows because they at last become indefensible, that they have not
+during many generations discharged useful functions and that those who
+first assailed and condemned them are deserving of praise. Not
+unfrequently, indeed, a public man must take his choice whether by
+fully identifying himself with the existing conditions around him and
+employing them to the best advantages he will lead a useful and
+practical life, or whether as an advanced thinker he will associate
+himself with the cause that is one day to conquer, place himself in
+the van of progress and at the sacrifice of much present influence
+deserve the credit of foresight.
+
+Historians will probably always judge men and policies by their net
+results, by their final consequences, and this judgment is on the
+whole the most sure that we can attain. It is not, however, altogether
+infallible. Apart from the question of the moral character of the
+methods employed which a good historian should never omit from his
+consideration, success is not always a decisive proof of sagacity.
+Chance and the unexpected play a great part in human affairs, and a
+judgment founded on a perfectly just estimate of probabilities will
+often prove wrong. The result which was the least probable will come
+true, some wholly unforeseen and unforeseeable occurrence will scatter
+dangers that were very real and give a new complexion to events. The
+rise of some pre-eminently great or of some pre-eminently mischievous
+personage among the guiding influences of a nation will derange the
+most sagacious calculations, and the reckless gambler or the obtuse
+obstructionist may prove more right than the most cautious, the most
+skilful, the most farseeing statesman.
+
+A fatal and very common error is that of judging the actions of the
+past by the moral standard of our own age. This is especially the
+error of novices in history and of those who without any wide and
+general culture devote themselves exclusively to a single period.
+While the primary and essential elements of right and wrong remain
+unchanged, nothing is more certain than that the standard or ideal of
+duty is continually altering. A very humane man in another age may
+have done things which would now be regarded as atrociously barbarous.
+A very virtuous man may have done things which would now indicate
+extreme profligacy. We seldom indeed make sufficient allowance for the
+degree in which the judgments and dispositions of even the best man
+are coloured by the moral tone of the time or society in which they
+live. And what is true of individuals is equally true of nations. In
+order to judge equitably the legislation of any people, we must always
+consider corresponding contemporary legislations and ideas. When this
+is neglected our judgments of the past become wholly false. How often,
+for example, has such a subject as the history of the penal laws
+against Irish Catholics been treated without the smallest reference to
+the contemporary laws against Protestants that existed in every
+Catholic nation and the contemporary laws against Catholics that
+existed in almost every Protestant country in Europe. How often have
+the English commercial restrictions on the American colonies been
+treated as if they were instances of extreme and exceptional tyranny,
+while a more extended knowledge would show that they were simply the
+expression of ideas of commercial policy and about the relation of
+dependencies to the mother-country which then almost universally
+prevailed.
+
+It is not merely the moral standard that changes. A corresponding
+change takes place in the moral type, or, in other words, in the class
+of virtues which is especially cultivated and especially valued. To
+know an age aright we should above all things seek to understand its
+ideal, the direction in which the stream of its self-sacrifice and
+moral energy naturally flowed. Few things in history are more
+interesting and more valuable than a study of the causes that produced
+and modified these successive ideals. Thus in the moral type of pagan
+antiquity the civic virtues occupied incomparably the foremost place.
+The idea of a supremely good man was essentially that of a man of
+action, of a man whose whole life was devoted to the service of his
+country. The life and death of Cato were for generations the favourite
+model. He was deemed, in the words of an old Latin historian, to be of
+all men the one 'most like to virtue.' This pattern retained its force
+till the softening influence of the Greek spirit, permeating Roman
+life, made the stoical ideal seem too hard and unsympathising; till
+the corruption and despotism of the Empire had withdrawn the best men
+from political life and attached a certain taint or stigma to public
+employment; till new religions arose in the East, bringing with them
+new ideals to govern the world. Gradually we may trace the
+contemplative virtues rising to the foremost place until, about the
+fifth century, the ideal had totally changed. The heroic type was
+replaced by the saintly type. The supremely good man was now the
+ascetic. The first condition of sanctity was a complete abandonment of
+secular duties and cares and a complete subjugation of the body. A
+vast literature of legends arose reflecting and glorifying the
+prevailing ideal and holding up the hermit life as the supreme pattern
+of perfection, and this literature occupies a place in mediævalism
+very similar to that held by the 'Lives' of Plutarch in antiquity.
+
+Ancient art was essentially the glorification of the body, a
+representation of the full strength and beauty of developed manhood.
+The saint of the mediæval mosaic represents the body in its extreme
+maceration and humiliation. The rhetorician, Dio Chrysostom, in a
+somewhat whimsical passage, which was suggested by a remark of Plato,
+found a special moral significance in the fact that Homer, though he
+places his heroes on the the banks of what he calls 'the fishy
+Hellespont,' never makes them eat fish, but always flesh and the flesh
+of oxen, for this, as he says, is 'strength-producing food' and is
+therefore suited for the formation of heroes and the proper diet for
+men of virtue. Compare this judgment with the protracted, and indeed
+incredible, fasts which the monkish writers delighted in attributing
+to the saints of the desert, and we have a vivid picture of the change
+that had passed over the ideal.
+
+But as time moved on the ascetic ideal gradually declined and was
+replaced by the very different ideal of chivalry. It consisted chiefly
+of three new elements. The first element was a spirit of gallantry
+which gave women a wholly new place in the imaginations of men. It was
+in part a reaction against the extreme austerity of the saints, and
+this reaction was much intensified after the cessation of the panic
+which had risen at the close of the tenth century about the
+approaching end of the world. It was in part produced by the softer
+and more epicurean civilisation which grew up in the country bordering
+on the Pyrenees. It was especially represented in the romances and
+poems of the Troubadours, and the new tendency even received some
+assistance from the Church when the Council of Clermont, which
+originated the Crusades, imposed on the knight the religious
+obligation of defending all widows and orphans.
+
+The second element was an increased reverence for secular rank, which
+grew out of the feudal system, when a great hereditary aristocracy
+arose and all European society was moulded into a compact hierarchy,
+of which the serf was the basis and the emperor the apex. The
+principle of subordination and obedience ran through the whole
+edifice, and a respect for rank was universally diffused. Men came to
+associate their ideal of greatness with regal or noble authority, and
+they were therefore prepared to idealise any great sovereign who might
+arise. Such a sovereign appeared in Charlemagne, who exercised upon
+Christendom a fascination not less powerful than that which Alexander
+had once exercised upon Greece, and he accordingly soon became the
+centre of a whole literature of romance.
+
+The third element was the fusion of religious enthusiasm with the
+military spirit. Christianity in its first phases was utterly opposed
+to the military spirit; but this opposition was naturally mitigated
+when the Church triumphed under Constantine and became associated with
+governments and armies. The hostility was still further qualified when
+many tribes of warlike barbarians embraced the faith, and the military
+obligation which was an essential element of feudalism acted in the
+same direction. But, above all, the rise and conquests of
+Mohammedanism awoke the military energies of Christendom and
+determined the direction it should take. In the Crusades the two great
+streams of military enthusiasm and of religious enthusiasm met, and
+the result was the formation of a new ideal which for a long period
+mainly governed the imagination of Christendom.
+
+It for a time absorbed, eclipsed, and transformed all purely national
+ideals. No poet was ever more intensely English in his character and
+sympathies than Chaucer, and he wrote when the dazzling glories of
+Crécy and Poitiers were still very recent. Yet it is not on these
+fields, but in the long wars with the Moslems, that his pattern knight
+had won his renown. The military expeditions of Charlemagne were
+directed almost exclusively against the Saxons and against Slavonic
+tribes. With the Spanish Mohammedans he came but very slightly in
+contact. He made in person but one expedition against them, and that
+expedition was both insignificant and unsuccessful. But in the
+Karlovingian romances, which were written when the crusading
+enthusiasm was at its height, the figure of the great emperor
+underwent a strange and most significant transformation. The German
+wars were scarcely noticed. Charlemagne is surrounded with the special
+glory that ought to have belonged to Charles Martel. He is represented
+as having passed his entire life in a victorious struggle with the
+Mohammedans of Europe, and is even gravely credited with a triumphant
+expedition to Jerusalem. The three romances of the Crusades which are
+believed to be the oldest were all written by monks, and they all make
+Charlemagne their hero. Even geography was transformed by the new
+enthusiasm, and old maps sometimes represent Jerusalem as the centre
+of the world.
+
+In few periods has there been so great a difference between the ideals
+created by the popular imagination and the realities that are
+recognised by history. Few wars have been accompanied by more cruelty,
+more outrage, and more licentiousness than the Crusades or have
+brought a blacker cloud of disasters in their train. Yet the idea that
+inspired them was a lofty one, and they were so speedily transfigured
+by the imaginations of men that in combination with the other
+influences I have mentioned they created an ideal which is one of the
+most beautiful in the history of the world. We may trace it clearly in
+the romances of Arthur and Charlemagne and of the "Cid;" in the
+"Red-Cross Knight" of Tasso and Spenser; in the old ballads which
+paint so vividly the hero of chivalry, ever ready to draw his sword
+for his faith and his lady-love and in the cause of the feeble and the
+oppressed. The glorification of military courage and self-sacrifice
+which had been so prominent in antiquity was again in the ascendant,
+but it was combined with a new kind of honour and with a new vein of
+courtesy, modesty, and gentleness. When we apply the epithet
+'chivalrous' to a modern gentleman, this is no unmeaning term. There
+is even now an element in that character which may be distinctly
+traced to the ideal of chivalry which the Crusades made dominant in
+Europe.
+
+I do not propose to follow the history of other ideals that have in
+turn prevailed. What I have written will, I trust, be sufficient to
+illustrate a kind of history which appears to me to possess much
+interest and value. It will show, too, that a faithful historian is
+very largely concerned with the fictions as well as with the facts of
+the past. Legends which have no firm historical basis are often of the
+highest historical value as reflecting the moral sentiments of their
+time. Nor do they merely reflect them. In some periods they contribute
+perhaps more than any other influence to mould and colour them and to
+give them an enduring strength. The facts of history have been largely
+governed by its fictions. Great events often acquire their full power
+over the human mind only when they have passed through the
+transfiguring medium of the imagination, and men as they were supposed
+to be have even sometimes exercised a wider influence than men as they
+actually were. Ideals ultimately rule the world, and each before it
+loses its ascendancy bequeaths some moral truth as an abiding legacy
+to the human race.
+
+
+
+
+THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY
+
+
+When, shortly after I had accepted the honourable task which I am
+endeavouring to fulfil to-night, I received from your Secretary a
+report of the annual proceedings of the Birmingham and Midland
+Institute,--when I observed the immense range and variety of subjects
+included within your programme, illustrating so strikingly the intense
+intellectual activity of this great town,--my first feeling was one of
+some bewilderment and dismay. What, I asked myself, could I say that
+would be of much real value, addressing an unknown audience, and
+relating to fields of knowledge so vast, so multifarious, and in many
+of their parts so far beyond the range of my own studies? On
+reflection, however, it appeared to me that in this, as in most other
+cases, the proverb was a wise one which bids the cobbler stick to his
+last, and that a writer who, during many years of his life, has been
+engaged in the study of English history could hardly do better than
+devote the time at his disposal to-night to a few reflections on the
+political value of history, and on the branches and methods of
+historical study that are most fitted to form a sound political
+judgment.
+
+Is history a study of real use in practical, and especially in
+political, life? The question, as you know, has been by no means
+always answered in the same way. In its earlier stages history was
+regarded chiefly as a form of poetry recording the more dramatic
+actions of kings, warriors, and statesmen. Homer and the early
+ballads are indeed the first historians of their countries, and long
+after Homer one of the most illustrious of the critics of antiquity
+described history as merely 'poetry free from the incumbrance of
+verse.' The portraits that adorned it gave some insight into human
+character; it breathed noble sentiments, rewarded and stimulated noble
+actions, and kindled by its strong appeals to the imagination high
+patriotic feeling; but its end was rather to paint than to guide, to
+consecrate a noble past than to furnish a key for the future; and the
+artist in selecting his facts looked mainly for those which could
+throw the richest colour upon his canvas. Most experience was in his
+eyes (to adopt an image of Coleridge) like the stern light of a ship,
+which illuminates only the path we have already traversed; and a large
+proportion of the subjects which are most significant as illustrating
+the true welfare and development of nations were deliberately rejected
+as below the dignity of history. The old conception of history can
+hardly be better illustrated than in the words of Savage Landor. 'Show
+me,' he makes one of his heroes say, 'how great projects were
+executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Show
+me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend
+to them in reverence.... Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as
+religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and measures in the
+market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the light they
+love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful throne,
+and at the sides of her Eloquence and War.'[1]
+
+It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that a very different
+conception of history grew up. Historians then came to believe that
+their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem;
+to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth,
+prosperity, and adversity. The history of morals, of industry, of
+intellect, and of art; the changes that take place in manners or
+beliefs; the dominant ideas that prevailed in successive periods; the
+rise, fall, and modification of political constitutions; in a word,
+all the conditions of national well-being became the subjects of their
+works. They sought rather to write a history of peoples than a history
+of kings. They looked specially in history for the chain of causes and
+effects. They undertook to study in the past the physiology of
+nations, and hoped by applying the experimental method on a large
+scale to deduce some lessons of real value about the conditions on
+which the well-being of society mainly depends.
+
+How far have they succeeded in their attempt, and furnished us with a
+real compass for political guidance? Let me in the first place frankly
+express my own belief that to many readers of history the study is not
+only useless, but even positively misleading. An unintelligent, a
+superficial, a pedantic or an inaccurate use of history is the source
+of very many errors in practical judgment. Human affairs are so
+infinitely complex that it is vain to expect that they will ever
+exactly reproduce themselves, or that any study of the past can enable
+us to predict the future with the minuteness and the completeness that
+can be attained in the exact sciences. Nor will any wise man judge the
+merits of existing institutions solely on historic grounds. Do not
+persuade yourself that any institution, however great may be its
+antiquity, however transcendent may have been its uses in a remote
+past, can permanently justify its existence, unless it can be shown
+to exercise a really beneficial influence over our own society and our
+own age. It is equally true that no institution which is exercising
+such a beneficial influence should be condemned, because it can be
+shown from history that under other conditions and in other times its
+influence was rather for evil than for good.
+
+These propositions may seem like truisms; yet how often do we hear a
+kind of reasoning that is inconsistent with them! How often, for
+example, in the discussions on the Continent on the advantages and
+disadvantages of monastic institutions has the chief stress of the
+argument been laid upon the great benefits which those institutions
+produced in ages that were utterly different from our own,--in the
+dark period of the barbarian invasions, when they were the only
+refuges of a pacific civilisation, the only libraries, the only
+schools, the only centres of art, the only refuge for gentle and
+intellectual natures; the chief barrier against violence and rapine;
+the chief promoters of agriculture and industry! How often in
+discussions on the merits and demerits of an Established Church in
+England have we heard arguments drawn from the hostility which the
+Church of England showed towards English liberty in the time of the
+Stuarts; although it is abundantly evident that the dangers of a royal
+despotism, which were then so serious, have utterly disappeared, and
+that the political action of the Church of England at that period was
+mainly governed by a doctrine of the Divine right of kings, and of the
+duty of passive obedience, which is now as dead as the old belief that
+the king's touch could cure scrofula! How often have the champions of
+modern democracy appealed in support of their views to the glories of
+the democracies of ancient Greece, without ever reminding their
+hearers that these small municipal republics rested on the basis of
+slavery, and that the bulk of those who would exercise the chief
+controlling influence over affairs in a pure democracy of the modern
+type were absolutely excluded from political power! How often in
+discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of Home Rule in
+Ireland do we find arguments drawn from the merits or demerits of the
+Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century, with a complete
+forgetfulness of the fact that this Parliament consisted exclusively
+of a Protestant gentry; that it represented in the highest degree the
+property of the country, and the classes who are most closely attached
+to English rule; that it was constituted in such a manner that the
+English Government could exercise a complete control over its
+deliberations, and that for good or for ill it was utterly unlike any
+body that could now be constituted in Ireland!
+
+Or again, to turn to another field: it is quite certain that every age
+has special dangers to guard against, and that as time moves on these
+dangers not only change, but are sometimes even reversed. There have
+been periods in English history when the great dangers to be
+encountered sprang from the excessive and encroaching power of a
+monarchy or of an aristocracy. The battle to be then fought was for
+the free exercise of religious worship and expression of religious
+opinion, for a free parliament, for a free press, for a free platform,
+for an independent jury-box. All the best patriotism, all the most
+heroic self-sacrifice of the nation, was thrown into defence of these
+causes; and the wisest statesmen of the time made it the main object
+of their legislation to protect and consolidate them.
+
+These things are now as valuable as they ever were, but no reasonable
+man will maintain that they are in the smallest danger. The battles of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been definitely won. A
+kind of language which at one period of English history implied the
+noblest heroism is now the idlest and cheapest of clap-trap. The
+sycophant and the self-seeker bow before quite other idols than of
+old. The dangers of the time come from other quarters; other
+tendencies prevail, other tasks remain to be accomplished; and a
+public man who in framing his course followed blindly in the steps of
+the heroes or reformers of the past would be like a mariner who set
+his sails to the winds of yesterday.
+
+It is difficult, I think, to doubt that the judgments of all of us are
+more or less affected by causes of this kind. It is, I imagine, true
+of the great majority of educated men that their first political
+impression or bias is formed much less by the events of their own time
+than by childish recollections of the more dramatic conflicts of the
+past. We are Cavaliers or Roundheads before we are Conservatives or
+Liberals; and although we gradually learn to realise how profoundly
+the condition of affairs and the balance of forces have altered, yet
+no wise man can doubt the power which the first bias of the
+imagination exercises in very many cases through a whole life.
+Language which grew out of bygone conflicts continues to be used long
+after those conflicts and their causes have ended; but that which was
+once a very genuine voice comes at last to be little more than an
+insincere echo.
+
+The best corrective for this kind of evil is a really intelligent
+study of history. One of the first tasks that every sincere student
+should set before himself is to endeavour to understand what is the
+dominant idea or characteristic of the period with which he is
+occupied; what forces chiefly ruled it, what forces were then rising
+into a dangerous ascendancy, and what forces were on the decline; what
+illusions, what exaggerations, what false hopes and unworthy
+influences chiefly prevailed. It is only when studied in this spirit
+that the true significance of history is disclosed, and the same
+method which furnishes a key to the past forms also an admirable
+discipline for the judgment of the present. He who has learnt to
+understand the true character and tendencies of many succeeding ages
+is not likely to go very far wrong in estimating his own.
+
+Another branch of history which I would especially commend to the
+attention of all political students is the history of Institutions. In
+the constantly fluctuating conditions of human life no institution
+ever remained for a long period unaltered. Sometimes with changed
+beliefs and changed conditions institutions lose all their original
+utility. They become simply useless, obstructive, and corrupt; and
+though by mere passive resistance they may continue to exist long
+after they have ceased to serve any good purpose, they will at last be
+undermined by their own abuses. Other institutions, on the other hand,
+show the true characteristic of vitality--the power of adapting
+themselves to changed conditions and new utilities. Few things in
+history are more interesting and more instructive than a careful study
+of these transformations. Sometimes the original objects almost wholly
+disappear, and utilities which were either never contemplated by the
+founders or were only regarded as of purely secondary importance take
+the first place on the scene. The old plan and symmetry almost
+disappear as the institution is modified now in this direction and now
+in that to meet some pressing want. The first architects, if they
+could rise from the dead, would scarcely recognise their
+creation--would perhaps look on it with horror. The indirect
+advantages of an institution are sometimes greater than its direct
+ones; and institutions are often more valuable on account of the evils
+they avert than on account of the positive advantages they produce.
+Not unfrequently in their later and transformed condition they
+exercise wider and greater influence than when they were originally
+established; for the strength derived from the long traditions of the
+past and from the habits that are formed around anything that is
+deeply rooted in the national life gives them a vastly increased
+importance.
+
+There is probably no better test of the political genius of a nation
+than the power which it possesses of adapting old institutions to new
+wants; and it is, I think, in this skill and in this disposition that
+the political pre-eminence of the English people has been most
+conspicuously shown. It is difficult to overrate its importance. It is
+the institutions of a country that chiefly maintain the sense of its
+organic unity, its essential connection with its past. By their
+continuous existence they bind together as by a living chain the past
+with the present, the living with the dead.
+
+Few greater calamities can befall a nation than to cut herself off, as
+France did in her great Revolution, from all vital connection with her
+own past. This is one of the chief lessons you will learn from
+Burke--the greatest and truest of all our political teachers. Bacon
+expressed in an admirable sentence the best spirit of English politics
+when he urged that 'men in their innovations should follow the example
+of Time itself, which indeed innovated greatly, but quietly, and by
+degrees scarcely to be perceived.'
+
+There is a third department of history which appears to me especially
+valuable to political students. It is the history of those vast
+Revolutions for good or for ill which seem to have transformed the
+characters or permanently changed the fortunes of nations, either by a
+sudden and violent shock or by the slow process of gradual renovation.
+You will find on this subject, in our country, two great and opposite
+exaggerations. There is a school of writers, of which Buckle is an
+admirable representative, who are so struck by the long chain of
+causes, extending over many centuries, that preceded and prepared
+Revolutions, that they teach a kind of historic fatalism, reducing
+almost to nothing the action of Individualities; and there is another
+school, which is specially represented by Carlyle, who reduce all
+history into biographies, into the action of a few great men upon
+their kind.
+
+The one class of writers will tell you with great truth that the Roman
+Republic was not destroyed by Cæsar, but by the long train of
+influences that made the career of Cæsar a possibility. They will show
+how influences working through many generations had sapped the
+foundations of the Republic--how the beliefs and habits on which it
+once rested had passed away--how its institutions no longer
+corresponded with the prevailing wants and ideas--how a form of
+government which had proved excellently adapted for a restricted
+dominion failed when the Roman eagles flew triumphantly over the whole
+civilised world, and how in this manner the strongest tendencies of
+the time were preparing the downfall of the Republic, and the
+establishment of a great empire upon its ruins. They will show how the
+intellectual influences of the Renaissance, the invention of printing,
+and a crowd of other causes, many of them at first sight very remote
+from theological controversies, had in the sixteenth century so
+shaken the power of the Roman Catholic Church, that the way was
+prepared for the Reformation, and it became possible for Luther and
+Calvin to succeed, where Wyckliffe and Huss had failed. They will show
+how profoundly our theological beliefs are affected by our general
+conception of the system of the universe, and how inevitably, as
+Science changes the latter, the former will undergo a corresponding
+process of modification. Creeds that are no longer in harmony with the
+general spirit of the time may long continue, but a new spirit will be
+breathed into the old forms. Those portions which are most discordant
+with our fresh knowledge will be neglected or attenuated. Although
+they may not be openly discarded, they will cease to be realised or
+vitally operative.
+
+In the sphere of politics a similar law prevails, and the fate of
+nations largely depends upon forces quite different from those on
+which the mere political historian concentrates his attention. The
+growth of military or industrial habits; the elevation or depression
+of different classes; the changes that take place in the distribution
+of wealth; inventions or discoveries that alter the course or
+character of industry or commerce, or reverse the relative advantages
+of different nations in the competitions of life; the increase and,
+still more, the diffusion of knowledge; the many influences that
+affect convictions, habits and ideals, that raise, or lower, or modify
+the moral tone and type--all these things concur in shaping the
+destinies of nations. Legislation is only really successful when it is
+in harmony with the general spirit of the age. Laws and statesmen for
+the most part indicate and ratify, but do not create. They are like
+the hands of the watch, which move obedient to the hidden machinery
+behind.
+
+In all this kind of speculation there is, I believe, great truth, and
+it opens out fields of inquiry that are of the utmost interest and
+importance. I have, however, long thought that it has been pushed by
+some modern writers to extravagant exaggeration. As you well know,
+there is another aspect of history, which, long before Carlyle, was
+enforced by some of the ablest and most independent intellects of
+Christendom. Pascal tells us that if Cleopatra's nose had been
+shorter, the whole face of the world might have been changed, and
+Voltaire is never tired of dwelling on the small springs on which the
+greatest events of history turn. Frederick the Great, who was probably
+the keenest practical intellect of his age, constantly insisted on the
+same view. In the vast field of politics, he maintained, casual events
+which no human sagacity can predict play by far the largest part. We
+are in most cases groping our way blindly in the dark. Occasionally,
+when favourable circumstances occur, there is a gleam of light of
+which the skilful avail themselves. All the rest is uncertainty. The
+world is mainly governed by a multitude of secondary, obscure, or
+impenetrable causes. It is a game of chance in which the most skilful
+may lose like the most ignorant. 'The older one becomes the more
+clearly one sees that King Hazard fashions three-fourths of the events
+in this miserable world.'
+
+My own view of this question is that though there are certain streams
+of tendency, though there is a certain steady and orderly evolution
+that it is impossible in the long run to resist, yet individual action
+and even mere accident have borne a very great part in modifying the
+direction of history. It is with History as with the general laws of
+Nature. We can none of us escape the all-pervading force of
+gravitation, or the influence of the climate under which we live, or
+the succession of the seasons, or the laws of growth and of decay; yet
+man is not a mere passive weed drifting helplessly upon the sea of
+life, and human wisdom and human folly can do and have done much to
+modify the conditions of his being.
+
+It is quite true that religions depend largely for their continued
+vitality upon the knowledge and intellectual atmosphere of their time;
+but there are periods when the human mind is in such a state of
+pliancy that a small pressure can give it a bent which will last for
+generations. If Mohammed had been killed in one of the first
+skirmishes of his career, I know no reason for believing that a great
+monotheistic religion would have arisen in Arabia, capable of moulding
+for more than twelve hundred years not only the beliefs, laws, and
+governments, but also the inmost moral and mental character of a vast
+section of the human race. Gibbon was probably right in his conjecture
+that if Charles Martel had been defeated at the famous battle near
+Tours, the creed of Islam would have overspread a great part of what
+is now Christian Europe, and in that case it might have ruled over it
+for centuries. No one can follow the history of the conversion of the
+barbarians to Christianity without perceiving how often a religion has
+been imposed in the first instance by the mere will of the ruler,
+which gradually took such root that it became far too strong for any
+political power to destroy. Persecution cannot annihilate a creed
+which is firmly established, or maintain a creed which has been
+thoroughly undermined, but there are intermediate stages in which its
+influence on national beliefs has been enormously great. Even at the
+Reformation, though more general causes were of capital importance,
+political events had a very large part in defining the frontier line
+between the rival creeds, and the divisions so created have for the
+most part endured.
+
+In secular politics numerous instances of the same kind will occur to
+every thoughtful reader of history. If, as might easily have happened,
+Hannibal after the battle of Cannae had taken and burned Rome, and
+transferred the supremacy of the world to a maritime commercial State
+upon the Mediterranean; if, instead of the Regency, Louis XV. and
+Louis XVI., France had passed during the eighteenth century under
+sovereigns of the stamp of the elder branch of the House of Orange or
+of Henry IV., or of the Great Elector, or of Frederick the Great; if,
+at the French Revolution, the supreme military genius had been
+connected with the character of Washington rather than with the
+character of Napoleon--who can doubt that the course of European
+history would have been vastly changed? The causes that made
+constitutional liberty succeed in England, while it failed in other
+countries where its prospects seemed once at least as promising, are
+many and complex; but no careful student of English history will doubt
+the prominence among them of the accidental fact that James II., by
+embracing Catholicism, had thrown the Church feeling at a very
+critical moment into opposition to the monarchical feeling, and that
+in the last days of Anne, when the question of the succession was
+trembling most doubtfully in the balance, his son refused to conform
+to the Anglican creed.
+
+Laws are no doubt in a great degree inoperative when they do not
+spring from and represent the opinion of the nation, but they have in
+their turn a great power of consolidating, deepening, and directing
+opinion. When some important progress has been attained, and with the
+support of public opinion has been embodied in a law, that law will do
+much to prevent the natural reflux of the wave. It becomes a kind of
+moral landmark, a powerful educating influence, and by giving what had
+been achieved the sanction of legality, it contributes largely to its
+permanence. Roman law undoubtedly played a great part in European
+history long after all the conditions in which it was first enacted
+had passed away, and the legislator who can determine in any country
+the system of national education, or the succession of property, will
+do much to influence the opinions and social types of many succeeding
+generations.
+
+The point, however, on which I would here especially insist is that
+there has scarcely been a great revolution in the world which might
+not at some stage of its progress have been either averted, or
+materially modified, or at least greatly postponed, by wise
+statesmanship and timely compromise. Take, for example, the American
+Revolution, which destroyed the political unity of the English race.
+You will often hear this event treated as if it were simply due to the
+wanton tyranny of an English Government, which desired to reduce its
+colonies to servitude by taxing them without their consent. But if you
+will look closely into the history of that time--and there is no
+history which is more instructive--you will find that this is a gross
+misrepresentation. What happened was essentially this. England, under
+the guidance of the elder Pitt, had been waging a great and most
+successful war, which left her with an enormously extended Empire, but
+also with an addition of more than seventy millions to her National
+Debt. That debt was now nearly one hundred and forty millions, and
+England was reeling under the taxation it required. The war had been
+waged largely in America, and its most brilliant result was the
+conquest of Canada, by which the old American colonies had benefited
+more than any other part of the Empire, for the expulsion of the
+French from North America put an end to the one great danger which
+hung over them. It was, however, extremely probable that if France
+ever regained her strength, one of her first objects would be to
+recover her dominion in America.
+
+Under these circumstances the English Government concluded that it was
+impossible that England alone, overburdened as she was by taxation,
+could undertake the military defence of her greatly extended Empire.
+Their object, therefore, was to create subsidiary armies for its
+defence. Ireland already raised by the vote of the Irish Parliament,
+and out of exclusively Irish resources, an army consisting of from
+twelve to fifteen thousand men, most of whom were available for the
+general purposes of the Empire. In India, under a despotic system, a
+separate army was maintained for the protection of India. It was the
+strong belief of the English Government that a third army should be
+maintained in America for the defence of the American colonies and of
+the neighbouring islands, and that it was just and reasonable that
+America should bear some part of the expense of her own defence. She
+was charged with no part of the interest of the National Debt; she
+paid nothing towards the cost of the navy which protected her coast;
+she was the most lightly taxed and the most prosperous portion of the
+Empire; she was the part which had benefited most by the late war, and
+she was the part which was most likely to be menaced if the war was
+renewed. Under these circumstances Grenville determined that a small
+army of ten thousand men should be kept in America, under the distinct
+promise that it was never to serve beyond that country and the West
+Indian Isles, and he asked America to contribute 100,000_l._ a year,
+or about a third part of its expense.
+
+But here the difficulty arose. The Irish army was maintained by the
+vote of the Irish Parliament; but there was no single parliament
+representing the American colonies, and it soon became evident that it
+was impossible to induce thirteen State legislatures to agree upon any
+scheme for supporting an army in America. Under these circumstances
+Grenville in an ill-omened moment resolved to revive a dormant power
+which existed in the Constitution, and levy this new war-tax by
+Imperial taxation. He at the same time guaranteed the colonists that
+the proceeds of this tax should be expended solely in America; he
+intimated to them in the clearest way that if they would meet his
+wishes by themselves providing the necessary sum, he would be
+abundantly satisfied, and he delayed the enforcement of the measure
+for a year in order to give them ample time for doing so.
+
+Such and so small was the original cause of difference between England
+and her colonies. Who can fail to see that it was a difference
+abundantly susceptible of compromise, and that a wise and moderate
+statesmanship might easily have averted the catastrophe? There are few
+sadder and few more instructive pages in history than those which show
+how mistake after mistake was committed, till the rift which was once
+so small widened and deepened; till the two sections of the English
+race were thrown into an irreconcilable antagonism, and the fair
+vision of an United Empire in the East and in the West came for ever
+to an end.
+
+Or glance for a moment at the French Revolution. It is a favourite
+task of historians to trace through the preceding generations the long
+train of causes that made the transformation of French institutions
+absolutely inevitable; but it is not so often remembered that when the
+States-General met in 1789 by far the larger part of the benefits of
+the Revolution could have been attained without difficulty, without
+convulsion, and by general consent. The nobles and clergy had pledged
+themselves to surrender their feudal privileges and their privileges
+in taxation; a reforming king was on the throne, and a reforming
+minister was at his side. If the spirit of moderation had then
+prevailed, the inevitable transformation might probably have been made
+without the effusion of a drop of blood. Jefferson was at this time
+the Minister of the United States in Paris. As an old republican he
+knew well the conditions of free governments, and among the
+politicians of his own country he represented the democratic section.
+I know few words in history more pathetic than those in which he
+described the situation. 'I was much acquainted,' he writes, 'with the
+leading patriots of the Assembly. Being from a country which had
+successfully passed through a similar reformation, they were disposed
+to my acquaintance, and had some confidence in me. I urged most
+strenuously an immediate compromise to secure what the Government were
+now ready to yield.... It was well understood that the King would
+grant at this time (1) freedom of the person by Habeas Corpus; (2)
+freedom of conscience; (3) freedom of the press; (4) trial by jury;
+(5) a representative legislature; (6) annual meetings; (7) the
+origination of laws; (8) the exclusive right of taxation and
+appropriation; and (9) the responsibility of Ministers; and with the
+exercise of these powers they could obtain in future whatever might be
+further necessary to improve and preserve their constitution. They
+thought otherwise,' continued Jefferson; 'and events have proved their
+lamentable error; for after thirty years of war, foreign and domestic,
+the loss of millions of lives, the prostration of private happiness,
+and the foreign subjugation of their own country for a time, they have
+obtained no more, nor even that securely.'[2]
+
+Let me, in concluding these observations, sum up in a few words some
+other advantages which you may derive from history. It is, I think,
+one of the best schools for that kind of reasoning which is most
+useful in practical life. It teaches men to weigh conflicting
+probabilities, to estimate degrees of evidence, to form a sound
+judgment of the value of authorities. Reasoning is taught by actual
+practice much more than by any _a priori_ methods. Many good
+judges--and I own I am inclined to agree with them--doubt much whether
+a study of formal logic ever yet made a good reasoner. Mathematics are
+no doubt invaluable in this respect, but they only deal with
+demonstrations; and it has often been observed how many excellent
+mathematicians are somewhat peculiarly destitute of the power of
+measuring degrees of probability. But history is largely concerned
+with the kind of probabilities on which the conduct of life mainly
+depends. There is one hint about historical reasoning which I think
+may not be unworthy of your notice. When studying some great
+historical controversy, place yourselves by an effort of the
+imagination alternately on each side of the battle; try to realise as
+fully as you can the point of view of the best men on either side, and
+then draw up upon paper the arguments of each in the strongest form
+you can give them. You will find that few practices do more to
+elucidate the past, or form a better mental discipline.
+
+History, again, greatly expands our horizon and enlarges our
+experience by bringing us in direct contact with men of many times and
+countries. It gives young men something of the experience of old men,
+and untravelled men something of the experience of travelled ones. A
+great source of error in our judgment of men is that we do not make
+sufficient allowance for the difference of types. The essentials of
+right and wrong no doubt continue the same, but if you look carefully
+into history you will find that the special stress which is attached
+to particular virtues is constantly changing. Sometimes it is the
+civic virtues, sometimes the religious virtues, sometimes the
+industrial virtues, sometimes the love of truth, sometimes the more
+amiable dispositions, that are most valued, and occupy the foremost
+place in the moral type. The men of each age must be judged by the
+ideal of their own age and country, and not by the ideal of ours. Men
+look at life in very different aspects, and they differ greatly in
+their ways of reasoning, in the qualities they admire, in the aims
+which they chiefly prize. In few things do they differ more than in
+their capacity for self-government; in the kinds of liberty they
+especially value; in their love or dislike of government guidance or
+control.
+
+The power of realising and understanding types of character very
+different from our own is not, I think, an English quality, and a
+great many of our mistakes in governing other nations come from this
+deficiency. Some thirty or forty years ago especially it was the
+custom of English statesmen to write and speak as if the salvation of
+every nation depended mainly upon its adoption of a miniature copy of
+the British Constitution. Now, if there is a lesson which history
+teaches clearly, it is that the same institutions are not fitted for
+all nations, and that what in one nation may prove perfectly
+successful, will in another be supremely disastrous. The habits and
+traditions of a nation; the peculiar bent of its character and
+intellect; the degree in which self-control, respect for law, the
+spirit of compromise, and disinterested public spirit are diffused
+through the people; the relations of classes, and the divisions of
+property, are all considerations of capital importance. It is a great
+error, both in history and in practical politics, to attach too much
+value to a political machine. The essential consideration is by what
+men and in what spirit that machine is likely to be worked. Few
+Constitutions contain more theoretical anomalies, and even
+absurdities, than that under which England has attained to such an
+unexampled height of political prosperity; while a servile imitation
+of some of the most skilfully-devised Constitutions in Europe has not
+saved some of the South American States from long courses of anarchy,
+bankruptcy, and revolution.
+
+These are some of the political lessons that may be drawn from
+history. Permit me, in conclusion, to say that its most precious
+lessons are moral ones. It expands the range of our vision, and
+teaches us in judging the true interests of nations to look beyond the
+immediate future. Few good judges will deny that this habit is now
+much wanted. The immensely increased prominence in political life of
+ephemeral influences, and especially of the influence of a daily
+press; the immense multiplication of elections, which intensifies
+party conflicts, all tend to concentrate our thoughts more and more
+upon an immediate issue. They narrow the range of our vision, and make
+us somewhat insensible to distant consequences and remote
+contingencies. It is not easy, in the heat and passion of modern
+political life, to look beyond a parliament or an election, beyond the
+interest of a party or the triumph of an hour. Yet nothing is more
+certain than that the ultimate, distant, and perhaps indirect
+consequences of political measures are often far more important than
+their immediate fruits, and that in the prosperity of nations a large
+amount of continuity in politics and the gradual formation of
+political habits are of transcendent importance. History is never more
+valuable than when it enables us, standing as on a height, to look
+beyond the smoke and turmoil of our petty quarrels, and to detect in
+the slow developments of the past the great permanent forces that are
+steadily bearing nations onwards to improvement or decay.
+
+The strongest of these forces are the moral ones. Mistakes in
+statesmanship, military triumphs or disasters, no doubt affect
+materially the prosperity of nations, but their permanent political
+well-being is essentially the outcome of their moral state. Its
+foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in
+a high standard of moral worth and of public spirit; in simple habits,
+in courage, uprightness, and self-sacrifice, in a certain soundness
+and moderation of judgment, which springs quite as much from character
+as from intellect. If you would form a wise judgment of the future of
+a nation, observe carefully whether these qualities are increasing or
+decaying. Observe especially what qualities count for most in public
+life. Is character becoming of greater or less importance? Are the men
+who obtain the highest posts in the nation men of whom in private life
+and irrespective of party competent judges speak with genuine respect?
+Are they men of sincere convictions, sound judgment, consistent lives,
+indisputable integrity, or are they men who have won their positions
+by the arts of a demagogue or an intriguer; men of nimble tongues and
+not earnest beliefs--skilful, above all things, in spreading their
+sails to each passing breeze of popularity? Such considerations as
+these are apt to be forgotten in the fierce excitement of a party
+contest; but if history has any meaning, it is such considerations
+that affect most vitally the permanent well-being of communities, and
+it is by observing this moral current that you can best cast the
+horoscope of a nation.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Pericles and Aspasia._
+
+[2] Jefferson's _Memoirs_, i. 80.
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH
+
+
+I have been asked on the present occasion to deliver a short address
+which might serve as an introduction to the course of lectures and
+conferences on the history and resources of the different portions of
+the Empire which are to take place in the Imperial Institute. In
+attempting to discharge this task my first reflection is one which the
+very existence of the Institute can hardly fail to suggest to anyone
+with any knowledge of recent history. It is the great revolution of
+opinion which has taken place in England within the last few years
+about the real value to her both of her colonies and of her Indian
+Empire. Not many years ago it was a popular doctrine among a large and
+important class of politicians that these vast dominions were not
+merely useless but detrimental to the mother-country, and that it
+should be the end of a wise policy to prepare and facilitate their
+disruption. Bentham, in a pamphlet called 'Emancipate your Colonies,'
+advocated a speedy and complete separation. James Mill, who held a
+high place among these politicians, wrote an article on Colonies for
+the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' which clearly expresses their view.
+Colonies, he contended, are very little calculated to yield any
+advantage whatever to the countries that hold them, and their chief
+influence is to produce and prolong bad government. Why, then, he
+asks, do European nations maintain them? The answer is very
+characteristic, both of the man and of his school. Something, he
+charitably admits, is due to mere ignorance, to mistaken views of
+utility; but the main cause is of another kind. He quotes the saying
+of Sancho Panza, who desired to possess an island in order that he
+might sell its inhabitants as slaves, and put the money in his pocket;
+and he maintains that the chief cause of our Colonial Empire is the
+selfish interest of the governing few who valued colonies because they
+gave them places and enabled them to multiply wars. In more moderate
+and decorous language, Goldwin Smith wrote a book, the object of which
+was to show how desirable it was that this Empire should be gradually
+but steadily reduced to the sweet simplicity of two islands. Similar
+views prevailed very generally in the Manchester school. Cobden
+frequently expressed them. The question of the colonies, he
+maintained, was mainly a question of pounds, shillings, and pence; he
+proved, as he imagined, by many figures that they were a very bad
+bargain; and he expressed his confident hope that one of the results
+of free trade would be 'gradually and imperceptibly to loosen the
+bands which unite our colonies to us.' About our Indian Empire he
+entertained much stronger opinions. He described it as a calamity and
+a curse to the people of England. He looked on it, in his own words,
+'with an eye of despair,' and declared that it was destroying and
+demoralising the national character. It was the belief of his school
+of politicians that all the nations of the world would speedily follow
+the example of England and adopt a policy of perfect free trade; that
+when all men were able to sell their industries with equal facility in
+all countries, it would become a matter of little consequence to them
+under what flag they lived, and that this complete commercial
+assimilation would soon be followed by a general movement for
+disarming, which would put an end to all fear of future war.
+
+Many politicians who certainly cannot be classified with the
+Manchester school held views tending in some degree in the same
+direction. Even Sir Cornewall Lewis in his treatise on the 'Government
+of Dependencies,' which was published in 1841, summed up the
+advantages and disadvantages of a great empire in a manner that gives
+the impression that in his own judgment the disadvantages on the whole
+predominated. In the Autobiography of that great writer and excellent
+public servant Sir Henry Taylor, who for many years exercised much
+influence in the Colonial Office, we have a curious picture of the
+opinions which were held on this subject about thirty years ago, both
+by Sir Henry Taylor himself and by Sir Frederick Rogers, who was at
+this time permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. They
+both agreed that all our North American colonies were a kind of
+_damnosa hereditas_, and that it was in a high degree desirable that
+they should be amicably separated from Great Britain. Sir Henry Taylor
+wrote his views on the subject with great frankness to the Duke of
+Newcastle, who was then Secretary of State. 'When your Grace and the
+Prince of Wales,' he said, 'were employing yourselves so successfully
+in conciliating the colonists, I thought that you were drawing closer
+ties which might better be slackened, if there were any chance of
+their slipping away altogether. I think that a policy which has regard
+to a not very far off future should prepare facilities and
+propensities for separation.... In my estimation the worst consequence
+of the late dispute with the United States has been that of involving
+this country and its North American provinces in closer relations and
+a common cause.'[3] 'I have always believed,' wrote Sir Frederick
+Rogers in 1885--'and the belief has so confirmed and consolidated
+itself, that I can hardly realise the possibility of anyone seriously
+thinking the contrary--that the destiny of our colonies is
+independence; and that in this point of view the function of the
+Colonial Office is to secure that our connection while it lasts shall
+be as profitable to both parties, and our separation when it comes as
+amicable as possible.'
+
+I do not believe that opinions of this kind, though they were held by
+a large and powerful section of English politicians, ever penetrated
+very deeply into the English nation. One of the causes of Mr. Cobden's
+'despair' was his conviction that the English people would never be
+persuaded to surrender India except at the close of a disastrous and
+exhausting war, and in his day the policy of national surrender was
+certainly not that of the statesmen who led either party in
+Parliament. No one would attribute it to Mr. Disraeli, in whose long
+political life the note of Imperialism was perhaps that which sounded
+with the clearest ring, and it was quite as repugnant to Lord
+Palmerston and Lord John Russell. In an admirable speech which was
+delivered in the beginning of 1850, Lord John Russell disclaimed all
+sympathy with it, and I can well remember the indignation with which
+in his latter days he was accustomed to speak of the views on the
+subject which were then frequently expressed. 'When I was young,' he
+once said to me, 'it was thought the mark of a wise statesman that he
+had turned a small kingdom into a great empire. In my old age it
+appears to be thought the object of a statesman to turn a great
+empire into a small kingdom.'
+
+I do not think that anyone who has watched the current of English
+opinion will doubt that the views of the Manchester school on this
+subject have within the last few years steadily lost ground, and that
+a far warmer and, in my opinion, nobler and more healthy feeling
+towards India and the colonies has grown up. The change may be
+attributed to many causes. In the first place, what Carlyle called
+'The Calico Millennium' has not arrived. The nations have not adopted
+free trade, but nearly all of them, including unfortunately many of
+our own colonies, have raised tariff walls against our trade. The
+Reign of Peace has not come. National antipathies and jealousies play
+about as great a part in human affairs as they ever did, and there are
+certainly not less than three and a half millions, there are probably
+nearly four millions, of men under arms in what are called the peace
+establishments of Europe. It is beginning to be clearly seen that,
+with our vast, redundant, ever-growing population, with our enormous
+manufactures, and our utterly insufficient supply of home-grown food,
+it is a matter of life and death to the nation, and especially to its
+working classes, that there should be secure and extending fields open
+to our goods, and in the present condition of the world we must mainly
+look for these fields within our own Empire. The gigantic dimensions
+that Indian trade has assumed within the last few years, and the
+extraordinary commercial development of some other parts of our
+Empire, have pointed the moral, and it has been made still more
+apparent by the eagerness with which other Powers, and especially
+Germany, have flung themselves into the path of colonisation. In an
+age, too, when all the paths of professional and industrial life in
+our country are crowded to excess, the competitive system has combined
+with our new acquisitions of territory to throw open noble fields of
+employment, enterprise and ambition to poor and struggling talent, and
+India is proving a school of inestimable value for maintaining some of
+the best and most masculine qualities of our race. It is the great
+seed-plot of our military strength; and the problems of Indian
+administration are peculiarly fitted to form men of a kind that is
+much needed among us--men of strong purpose and firm will, and high
+ruling and organising powers, men accustomed to deal with facts rather
+than with words, and to estimate measures by their intrinsic value,
+and not merely by their party advantages, men skilful in judging human
+character under its many types and aspects and disguises.
+
+If again we turn to our great self-governing colonies, we have learnt
+to feel how valuable it is, in an age in which international
+jealousies are so rife, that there should be vast and rapidly growing
+portions of the globe that are not only at peace with us, but at one
+with us; how unspeakably important it is to the future of the world
+that the English race, through the ages that are to come, should cling
+as closely as possible together. As a distinguished statesman who
+lately represented the United States in England[4] has admirably said,
+'If it is not always true that trade follows flag, it is at least true
+that "heart follows flag,"' and the feeling that our fellow-subjects
+in distant parts of the Empire bear to us is very different from the
+feeling even of the most friendly foreign nation. Our great colonies
+have readily undertaken the responsibility of providing for their own
+defence by land, and even in some degree by sea. If the protection of
+their coasts in time of war might become a great strain upon our navy,
+this disadvantage is largely balanced by the importance of distant
+maritime possessions to every nation that desires to maintain an
+efficient fleet; by the immense advantage to a great commercial Power
+of secure harbours and coaling stations scattered over the world. It
+is not difficult to conceive circumstances in which the destruction of
+some of our main industries, occurring, perhaps, in the midst of a
+great war, might make it utterly impossible for our present population
+to live upon British soil, and when the possession of vast territories
+under the British flag, and in the hands of the British race, might
+become a matter of transcendent importance. Think for a moment of the
+colossal, and indeed appalling, proportions which our great towns are
+assuming! Think of all the vice and ignorance and disease, of all the
+sordid abject misery, of all the lawless passions that are festering
+within them! And then consider how precarious are many of the
+conditions of our industrial prosperity, how grave and how numerous
+are the dangers that threaten it both from within and from without.
+Who can reflect seriously on these things without feeling that the day
+may come--perhaps at no distant date--when the question of emigration
+may overshadow all others? To many of us, indeed, it seems one of the
+greatest errors of modern English statesmanship that when the great
+exodus from Ireland took place after the famine, Government took no
+step to aid it, or to direct it to quarters where it would have been
+of real benefit to the Empire. Many good judges think that the
+advantages of such interference in allaying bitter feelings,
+softening a disastrous crisis, and permanently strengthening the
+Empire, might have been well purchased even if they cost as much as
+England has sometimes lost by one comparatively insignificant war or
+by one disastrous strike. In dealing with this question of emigration
+in the future, colonial assistance may be of supreme importance. And
+those who have understood the significance of that memorable incident
+in our recent history--the despatch of Australian troops to fight our
+battles in the Soudan--may perceive that there is at least a
+possibility of a still closer and more beneficent union between
+England and her colonies--a union that would vastly increase the
+strength of both, and by doing so become a great guarantee of peace in
+the world.
+
+It would be a calumny to suppose that the change of feeling I have
+described was solely due to a calculation of interests. Patriotism
+cannot be reduced to a mere question of money, and a nation which has
+grown tired of the responsibilities of empire, and careless of the
+acquisitions of its past and of its greatness in the future, would
+indeed have entered into a period of inevitable decadence. Happily we
+have not yet come to this. I believe the overwhelming majority of the
+people of these islands are convinced that an England reduced to the
+limits which the Manchester school would assign to it would be an
+England shorn of the chief elements of its dignity in the world, and
+that no greater disgrace could befall them than to have sacrificed
+through indifference, or negligence, or faint-heartedness, an Empire
+which has been built up by so much genius and so much heroism in the
+past. Railways and telegraphs and newspapers have brought us into
+closer touch with our distant possessions, have enabled us to realise
+more vividly both their character and their greatness, and have thus
+extended the horizon of our sympathies and interests. The figures of
+illustrious colonial statesmen are becoming familiar to us. Men formed
+in Indian and colonial spheres are becoming more numerous and
+prominent in our own public life. The presence in England of a High
+Commissioner from Canada, and of Agents-General from our other
+colonies, constitutes a real though informal colonial representation,
+and on more than one recent occasion our foreign policy has been
+swayed by colonial pressure. These young democracies, with their vast
+undeveloped resources, their unwearied energies, their great social
+and industrial problems, are beginning to loom largely in the
+imaginations of Europe. They feel, we believe, a just pride in being
+members of a great and ancient Empire, and heirs to the glories of its
+past. We, in our turn, feel a no less just pride in our union with
+those coming nations which are still lit with the hues of sunrise and
+rich in the promise of the future.
+
+It has been suggested to me that I should on the present occasion say
+something about the methods by which this great Empire was built up,
+but it is obvious that in a short address like the present it is only
+possible to touch on so large a subject in the most cursory manner.
+Much is due to our insular position and our command of the sea, which
+gave Englishmen, in the competition of nations, a peculiar power both
+of conquering and holding distant dependencies. Being precluded,
+perhaps quite as much by their position as by their desire, from
+throwing themselves, like most continental nations, into a long course
+of European aggression, they have largely employed their redundant
+energies in exploring, conquering, civilising, and governing distant
+and half-savage lands. They have found, like all other nations, that
+an Empire planted amid the shifting sands of half-civilised and
+anarchical races is compelled for its own security, and as a mere
+matter of police, to extend its borders. The chapter of
+accidents--which has played a larger part in most human affairs than
+many very philosophical enquirers are inclined to admit--has counted
+for something. But, in addition to these things, there are certain
+general characteristics of English policy which have contributed very
+largely to the success of the Empire.
+
+It has been the habit of most nations to regulate colonial governments
+in all their details according to the best metropolitan ideas, and to
+surround them with a network of restrictions. England has in general
+pursued a different course. Partly on system, but partly also, I
+think, from neglect, she has always allowed an unusual latitude to
+local knowledge and to local wishes. She has endeavoured to secure,
+wherever her power extends, life and property, and contract and
+personal freedom, and, in these latter days, religious liberty; but
+for the rest she has meddled very little; she has allowed her
+settlements to develop much as they please, and has given, in practice
+if not in theory, the fullest powers to her governors. It is
+astonishing, in the history of the British Empire, how large a part of
+its greatness is due to the independent action of individual
+adventurers, or groups of emigrants, or commercial companies, almost
+wholly unassisted and uncontrolled by the Government at home. An
+Empire formed by such methods is not likely to exhibit much symmetry
+and unity of plan, but it is certain to be pervaded in an unusual
+degree, in all its parts, by a spirit of enterprise and self-reliance;
+it will probably be peculiarly fertile in men not only of energy but
+of resource, capable of dealing with strange conditions and
+unforeseen exigencies. England in the past periods of her history has,
+on the whole, been singularly successful in adapting her different
+administrations to widely different national circumstances and
+characters, and governments of the most various types have arisen
+under her rule. Nothing in the history of the world is more wonderful
+than that under the flag of these two little islands there should have
+grown up the greatest and most beneficent despotism in the world,
+comprising nearly two hundred and thirty millions of inhabitants under
+direct British rule, and more than fifty millions under British
+protectorates; while at the same time British colonies and settlements
+that are scattered throughout the globe number not less than fifty-six
+distinct subordinate governments.
+
+This system would have been less successful if it had not been for two
+important facts. The original stuff of which our Colonial Empire was
+formed was singularly good. Some of the most important of our colonies
+were founded in the days of religious war, and the early settlers
+consisted largely of religious refugees--a class who are usually
+superior to the average of men in intellectual and industrial
+qualities, and are nearly always greatly superior to them in strength
+of conviction, and in those high moral qualities which play so great a
+part in the well-being of nations. Besides this, in those distant
+days, the difficulties of emigration were so great that they were
+rarely voluntarily encountered except by men of much more than average
+courage, enterprise and resource. These early adventurers were
+certainly often of no saintly type, but they were largely endowed with
+the robuster qualities that are most needed for grappling with new
+circumstances and carving out the empires of the future.
+
+The second fact is the high standard of patriotism and honour which we
+may, I think, truly say has nearly always prevailed among English
+public servants. It is not an easy thing to secure honest and faithful
+administration in remote countries, far from the supervision and
+practical control of the central government. I think we may boast with
+truth that England has attained this end, not indeed perfectly, but at
+least to a greater degree than most other nations. The history of
+Indian and colonial governors has never been written as a whole, but
+it is well worthy of study. In the appointment of these men party has
+always counted for something, and family has counted for something;
+but they have never been the only considerations, and, on the whole, I
+believe it will be found, if we consider the three elements of
+character, capacity and experience, that our Indian and colonial
+governors represent a higher level of ruling qualities than has been
+attained by any line of hereditary sovereigns, or by any line of
+elected presidents. In the period of the foundation of our Indian
+Empire much was done that was violent and rapacious, but the best
+modern research seems to show that the picture which a few years ago
+was generally accepted had been greatly overcharged. The history of
+Warren Hastings and his companions has been recently studied with
+great knowledge and ability, and with the result that the more serious
+opinions on the subject have been considerably modified. Much
+exaggeration undoubtedly grew up in the last century, partly through
+ignorance of Oriental affairs, and partly also through the eloquence
+of Burke. There is no figure in English political history for which I
+at least entertain a greater reverence than Edmund Burke. I believe
+him to have been a man of transparent honesty, as well as of
+transcendent genius; but his politics were too apt to be steeped in
+passion, and he was often carried away by the irresistible force of
+his own imagination and feelings. Misrepresentations were greatly
+consolidated by the Indian History of James Mill, which was for a long
+time the main, and indeed almost the only, source from which
+Englishmen obtained their knowledge of Indian history. It was written,
+as might be expected, with the strongest bias of hostility to the
+English in India, yet I suspect that many superficial readers imagined
+that a history which was so unquestionably dull must be at least
+impartial and philosophical. Unfortunately, Macaulay relied greatly on
+it, and, without having made any serious independent studies on the
+subject, he invested some of its misrepresentations with all the
+splendour of his eloquence. I believe all competent authorities are
+now agreed that his essay on Warren Hastings, though it is one of the
+most brilliant of his writings, is also one of the most seriously
+misleading.
+
+I am not prepared to say that the reaction of opinion produced by the
+new school of Indian historians has not been sometimes carried too
+far, but these writers have certainly dispelled much exaggeration and
+some positive falsehood. They have shown that, although under
+circumstances of extreme difficulty and extraordinary temptation, some
+very bad things were done by Englishmen in India, these things were
+neither as numerous nor as grave as has been alleged.
+
+On the whole, too, it may be truly said that English colonial policy
+in its broad lines has to a remarkable degree avoided grave errors.
+The chief exception is to be found in the series of mistakes which
+produced the American Revolution, and ended in the loss of our chief
+American colonies. Yet even in this instance it is, I believe, coming
+to be perceived that there is much more to be said for the English
+case than the historians of the last generation were apt to imagine.
+In imposing commercial restrictions on the colonies and endeavouring
+to secure for the mother-country the monopoly of their trade, we
+merely acted upon ideas that were then almost universally received,
+and our commercial code was on the whole less illiberal than that of
+other nations. Both Spain and France imposed restrictions on their
+colonies which were far more severe, and the English restrictions were
+at least mitigated by frequent partial relaxations and exceptions, by
+some important monopolies granted in favour of the colonies in the
+English market and by bounties encouraging several branches of
+colonial produce. It is at least certain that under the large measure
+of political liberty granted by the English Government to the English
+colonies their material prosperity, even in the worst period of
+commercial restriction, steadily and rapidly advanced. This has been
+clearly shown by more than one writer on our side of the Atlantic, but
+the subject has never been treated with more exhaustive knowledge and
+more perfect impartiality than by an American writer--Mr. George
+Beer--whose work on the Commercial Policy of England has recently been
+published by Columbia College, in New York. No one will now altogether
+defend Grenville's policy of taxing America by the Imperial
+Parliament, but it ought not to be forgotten that it was expressly
+provided that every farthing of this taxation was to be expended in
+America, and devoted to colonial defence. England had just terminated
+a great war, which, by expelling the French from Canada, had been of
+inestimable advantage to her colonies, but which had left the
+mother-country almost crushed by debt. All that Grenville desired was,
+that the American colonies should provide a portion of the cost of
+their own defence, as our great colonies are doing at the present
+time, and he only resorted to Imperial taxation because he despaired
+of achieving this end by any other means. The step which he took was
+no doubt a false one. As is so often the case in England, it was made
+worse by party changes and by party recriminations, and many later
+mistakes aggravated and embittered the original dispute; but I think
+an impartial reader of this melancholy chapter of English history will
+come to the conclusion that these mistakes were by no means all on one
+side.
+
+It is a story which is certainly not without its lesson to our own
+time. It is very improbable that any future statesman will follow the
+example of George Grenville, and endeavour by Act of Parliament to
+impose taxation on a self-governing colony; but it would be a grave
+error to suppose that the danger of unwise parliamentary interference
+in Indian and colonial affairs has diminished. Great as are the
+advantages of telegraphs and newspapers in the government of the
+Empire, they are not without their drawbacks. Government by telegraph
+is a very dangerous thing, and there is, I fear, an increasing
+tendency to override local knowledge, and to apply English standards
+and methods of government to wholly un-English conditions.
+Ill-considered resolutions of the House of Commons, often passed in
+obedience to some popular fad, and without any real intention of
+carrying them into effect; language used in Parliament which is often
+due to no deeper motive than a desire to win the favour of some class
+of voters in an English constituency, may do as much as serious
+misgovernment to alienate great masses of British subjects beyond the
+sea. All really competent judges are agreed that one of the first
+conditions of successful government in India has been that Indian
+questions have for the most part been kept out of the range of English
+party politics, and that Indian government has been conducted on
+principles essentially different from democratic government at home.
+
+On the whole, however, it is impossible to review the colonial history
+of England without being struck with the many serious dangers that
+might easily have shattered the Empire, which were averted by wise
+statesmanship and timely--or at least not fatally tardy--concession.
+There was the question of the criminal population which we once
+transported to Australia. In the early stage of the colony, when the
+population was very sparse and the need for labour very imperative,
+this was not regarded as in any degree a grievance; but the time came
+when it became a grievance of the gravest kind, and the Imperial power
+had at length the wisdom to abandon it. There was the question of the
+different and hostile religious bodies existing in different portions
+of the Empire, at a time when the monopoly of political power by the
+members of a single Established Church, the exclusive endowment of its
+clergy, and the maintenance of the purely Protestant character of the
+English Government were cherished as religious duties by politicians
+at home. Yet at this very time an established and endowed Roman
+Catholic Church was flourishing in Canada, and there were numerous
+examples throughout the British dominions of the concurrent endowment
+of different forms of religious belief by the State,[5] while in India
+it abstained, with an extreme, and sometimes even an exaggerated,
+scrupulousness, from all measures that could by any possibility offend
+the native religious prejudices. There was the question of
+Slavery--though we were freed from the most difficult part of this
+problem by the secession of America. In addition, however, to its
+moral aspects, it affected most vitally the material prosperity of
+some of our richest colonies; it raised the very dangerous
+constitutional question of the right of the Imperial Parliament to
+interfere with the internal affairs of a self-governing colony, and it
+brought the Home Government into more serious collision with the local
+Governments than any question since the American Revolution. Whatever
+may be thought of the wisdom of the measures by which we abolished
+slavery in our West Indian colonies, no one at least can deny the
+liberality of a Parliament which voted from Imperial resources twenty
+millions for the accomplishment of the work. There was the conflict of
+race and creed which between 1830 and 1840 had brought Canada to
+absolute rebellion, and threatened a complete alienation of Canadian
+feeling from the mother-country. This discontent was effectually
+allayed and dispelled by the union of Upper and Lower Canada under a
+system of constitutional government of the most liberal character,
+which gave the colonists on all subjects of internal legislation a
+legislative independence that was in practice almost complete.
+Considered as a measure of conciliation this has proved one of the
+most successful of the nineteenth century, and in spite of a few
+discordant notes it may be truly said that there are few greater
+contrasts in the present reign than are presented between Canadian
+feeling towards the mother-country when Queen Victoria ascended the
+throne and Canadian feeling at the present hour. There was also the
+great and dangerous task to be accomplished of adapting the system of
+colonial government to the different stages of colonial development.
+There was a time when the colonies were so weak that they depended
+mainly on England for their protection; but, unlike some of the great
+colonising Powers of ancient and modern times, England never drew a
+direct tribute from her colonies, and, in spite of much unwise and
+some unjust legislation, I believe there was never a time when they
+were not on the whole benefited by the connection. Soon, however, the
+colonies grew to the strength and maturity of nationhood, and the
+mother-country speedily recognised the fact, and allowed no unworthy
+or ungenerous fears to restrain her from granting them the fullest
+powers, both of self-government and of federation. It is true that she
+still sends out a governor--usually drawn from the ranks of
+experienced and considerable English public men--to preside over
+colonial affairs. It is true that she retains a right of veto which is
+scarcely ever exercised except to prevent some intercolonial or
+international dispute, some act of violence, or some grave anomaly in
+the legislation of the Empire. It is true that colonial cases may be
+carried, on appeal, to an English tribunal, representing the very
+highest judicial capacity of the mother-country, and free from all
+possibility and suspicion of partiality; but I do not believe that any
+of these light ties are unpopular with any considerable section of the
+colonists. On the other hand, though it would be idle to suppose that
+our great colonies depend largely upon the mother-country, I believe
+that most colonists recognise that there is something in the weight
+and dignity attaching to fellow-membership and fellow-citizenship in
+a great Empire--something in the protection of the greatest navy in
+the world--something in the improved credit which connection with a
+very rich centre undoubtedly gives to colonial finance.
+
+It is the custom of our friends and neighbours on the Continent to
+bestow much scornful remark on the egotism of English policy, which
+attends mainly to the interests of the British Empire, and is not
+ready to make war for an idea and in support of the interests of
+others. I think, if it were necessary, we might fairly defend
+ourselves by showing that in the past we have meddled with the affairs
+of other nations quite as much as is reasonable. For my own part, I
+confess that I distrust greatly these explosions of military
+benevolence. They always begin by killing a great many men. They
+usually end in ways that are not those of a disinterested
+philanthropy. After all, an egotism that mainly confines itself to the
+well-being of about a fifth part of the globe cannot be said to be of
+a very narrow type, and it is essentially by her conduct to her own
+Empire that the part of England in promoting the happiness of mankind
+must be ultimately judged. It is indeed but too true that many of the
+political causes which have played a great part on platforms, in
+parties, and in Parliaments are of such a nature that their full
+attainment would not bring relief to one suffering human heart, or
+staunch one tear of pain, or add in any appreciable degree to the real
+happiness of a single home. But most assuredly Imperial questions are
+not of this order. Remember what India had been for countless ages
+before the establishment of British rule. Think of its endless wars of
+race and creed, its savage oppressions, its fierce anarchies, its
+barbarous customs; and then consider what it is to have established
+for so many years over the vast space from the Himalayas to Cape
+Comorin a reign of perfect peace; to have conferred upon more than two
+hundred and fifty millions of the human race perfect religious
+freedom, perfect security of life, liberty, and property; to have
+planted in the midst of these teeming multitudes a strong central
+government, enlightened by the best knowledge of Western Europe, and
+steadily occupied in preventing famine, alleviating disease,
+extirpating savage customs, multiplying the agencies of civilisation
+and progress. This is the true meaning of that system of government on
+which Mr. Cobden looked with 'an eye of despair.' What work of human
+policy--I would even say what form of human philanthropy--has ever
+contributed more largely to reduce the great sum of human misery and
+to add to the possibilities of human happiness?
+
+And if we turn to the other side of our Empire, although it is quite
+true that our great free colonies are fully capable of shaping their
+destinies for themselves, may we not truly say that these noble
+flowers have sprung from British and from Irish seeds? May we not say
+that the laws, the Constitutions, the habits of thought and character
+that have so largely made them what they are, are mainly of English
+origin? May we not even add that it is in no small part due to their
+place in the British Empire that these vast sections of the globe,
+with their diverse and sometimes jarring interests, have remained at
+perfect peace with us and with each other, and have escaped the curse
+of an exaggerated militarism, which is fast eating like a canker into
+the prosperity of the great nations of Europe?
+
+When responsible government was conceded by the British Government to
+her more important colonies, it was done in the fullest and largest
+measure. Although the mother-country remained burdened with the task
+of defending them she made no reservation securing for herself free
+trade with her colonies or even preferential treatment, and she
+surrendered unconditionally to the local legislatures the waste and
+unoccupied lands which had long been regarded in England as held in
+trust for the benefit of the Empire as a whole. The growing belief
+that the connection with the colonies was likely to be a very
+transitory one, and also the belief that free-trade doctrines were
+likely speedily to prevail, no doubt influenced English statesmen, and
+it is not probable that any of them foresaw that both Canada and
+Australia would speedily make use of their newly acquired power to
+impose heavy duties on English goods. The strongly protectionist
+character which the English colonies assumed at a time when England
+had committed herself to the most extreme free-trade policy tended no
+doubt to separation, and when the English Government adopted the
+policy of withdrawing its garrisons from the colonies, when the North
+American colonies, with the full assent of the mother-country, formed
+themselves into a great federation, and when a movement in the same
+direction sprang up in Australia, it was the opinion of some of the
+most sagacious statesmen and thinkers in England that the time of
+separation was very near.[6]
+
+On the whole, however, these predictions have hitherto been falsified.
+The federation of North America and, at a later period, the federation
+of Australia have been followed by an increased and not a diminished
+disposition on the side of the colonists to draw closer the ties with
+the mother-country, while in England the popular imagination has been
+more and more impressed with the growing magnitude and importance of
+her colonial dominions. The tendency towards great political
+agglomerations based upon an affinity of race, language and creed,
+which has produced the Pan-Slavonic movement and the Pan-Germanic
+movement, and which chiefly made the unity of Italy, has not been
+without its influence in the English-speaking world, and it is felt
+that a close union between its several parts is essential if it is
+fully to maintain its relative position under the new conditions of
+the world. The English-speaking nations comprise the most rapidly
+increasing, the most progressive, the most happily situated nations of
+the earth, and if their power and influence are not wasted by internal
+quarrels their type of civilisation must one day become dominant in
+the world.
+
+Whether their harmony and unity are likely to be attained is one of
+the great problems of the future, but the ideal is one which every
+patriotic Englishman should at least set before him. It is not one
+which can be called an assured destiny, and to many the chances seem
+on the whole against it. Unexpected collisions of interest or passion
+or ambition may at any time mar the prospects, and in great
+democracies largely influenced by demagogues and by an irresponsible
+and anonymous Press there are always powerful agencies that do not
+make for peace. Immediate party interests both at home and in the
+colonies too frequently blind men to distant and ulterior
+consequences, and the many ill-wishers to the British Empire are sure
+to direct their policy largely to its disruption. The natural bond of
+union of a great Empire is economical unity, binding its several parts
+together by a common system of free trade and by a common commercial
+policy towards other Powers. Unfortunately the profoundly different
+policy adopted on these matters in England and her colonies has made
+such a Union almost impracticable, and it is quite possible for the
+English colonies to be united by closer commercial ties with foreign
+countries than with the mother-country. The question of the common
+defence of the Empire and the question of the representation of the
+colonies in Imperial politics are also questions of great difficulty
+and of pressing importance.
+
+Something has been done showing at least a disposition to meet them.
+The concession of preferential duties in favour of England by some of
+our most important colonies, the small subsidies made to the
+maintenance of the British navy, and the far more important military
+assistance given by the colonies to the mother-country in the Egyptian
+and the South African wars are indicative of the feeling of closer
+unity which has grown up between England and her colonies, and in
+addition to the appointment of Agents-General, the introduction of a
+few eminent colonial judges into the Judicial Committee of the Privy
+Council, which is the Supreme Court of Appeal of the Empire, has given
+the colonies some real representation in Imperial affairs. Much more,
+however, in this direction may be done. There have been several
+instances of eminent colonials obtaining seats in the English House of
+Commons to the great advantage of the Empire, but a regular
+representation of the colonies in this assembly may, I think, be
+dismissed as altogether impracticable. The mere distance is a
+sufficient objection, and at least nine-tenths of the business of the
+House of Commons deals with purely English questions depending for
+their wise solution on inherited English habits and on compromises
+with existing institutions, and a large proportion of them are
+problems which have been already dealt with in the colonies on other
+grounds and without any of the complexities of an old country. What
+reason could there be for calling in the colonists to adjudicate,
+perhaps even to turn the balance, on questions relating to English
+education, English licensing laws, English taxation, English
+dispositions of property? The difficulty of distinguishing between
+Imperial and local questions would be insuperable. The division of the
+House into two categories of members with distinct spheres of voting
+power would prove unworkable, and the colonial representatives would
+during most of their time in Parliament have nothing to do. An
+increase in the number of peers drawn from the colonies would be less
+impracticable, but there would be much that is invidious in the
+choice; much danger that the colonial peers living in England would
+get out of touch with the colonies and become an object of envy and
+jealousy; and English lawyers do not think that a large infusion of
+colonial law peers would raise the competence of the Supreme Judicial
+Tribunal of the Empire, which represents at present the highest legal
+talent and attainments in England and deals mainly with English legal
+questions. A Consultative Council, however, consisting of the
+Agents-General and perhaps reinforced by additional colonial
+representatives and dealing exclusively with Imperial questions, does
+not seem wholly impracticable, and many competent judges believe that
+a supreme legal tribunal for dealing with inter-colonial and
+international conflicts might be constructed which would be both more
+efficient and more representative than any that now exists.
+
+It is probable, however, that the true tie that must unite the
+different portions of the Empire must be mainly a moral one. In the
+conditions of modern life no power is likely to maintain long a vast,
+scattered, heterogeneous Empire if the central governing power within
+it has declined; if through want of efficiency, or moral energy, or
+moral purity, it ceases to win the respect of its several parts. It is
+no less true that the cohesion can only be permanently maintained by
+the wide diffusion of a larger and Imperial patriotism, pervading the
+whole like a vital principle; binding men by the ties of pride and of
+affection to the great Empire to which they belong, and subordinating
+to its maintenance local and party and class interests. If this spirit
+dies out, the movement of disintegration is sure to begin. No
+political machinery, no utilitarian calculation, will in the long run
+be powerful enough to arrest it.
+
+What may be the future place of these islands in the government of the
+world no human being can foretell. Nations, as history but too plainly
+shows, have their periods of decay as well as their periods of growth.
+The balance of power in the world is constantly shifting. Maxims and
+influences very different from those which made England what she is
+are in the ascendant, and the clouds upon the horizon are neither few
+nor slight. But, whatever fate may be in store for these islands, and
+for the political unity we so justly prize, we may at least
+confidently predict that no revolution in human affairs can now
+destroy the future ascendancy of the English language and of the
+Imperial race. Whatever misfortunes, whatever humiliations the future
+may reserve to us, they cannot deprive England of the glory of having
+created this mighty Empire.
+
+    Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power.
+    But what has been, has been--and we have had our hour.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Autobiography_, ii. pp. 234, 235.
+
+[4] Mr. Bayard.
+
+[5] See the enumeration of these endowments in Gladstone's _State and
+Church_, Ch. IX.
+
+[6] See Cairnes' _Political Essays_, 49-50, 56.
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY
+
+
+The kind of interest which belongs to Irish history is curiously
+different from that which attaches to the history of England and to
+that of most of the great nations of the Continent. In very few
+histories do we find so little national unity or continuous progress,
+or such long spaces which are almost wholly occupied by perplexed,
+petty internal broils, often stained by atrocious crimes, but turning
+on no large issue and leading to no clear or stable results. Except
+during the great missionary period of the sixth and seventh centuries,
+and during a brief portion of the eighteenth century, we have little
+of the interest that arises from dramatic situations or shining
+characters, and in few countries has the highest intellect been, on
+the whole, so slightly connected with the administration of affairs.
+To a philosophical student of politics, however, Irish history
+possesses an interest of the highest order. It is an invaluable study
+of morbid anatomy. In very few histories can we trace so clearly the
+effects of political and social circumstances in forming national
+character; the calamity of missed opportunities and of fluctuating and
+procrastinating policy; the folly of attempting to govern by the same
+methods and institutions nations that are wholly different in their
+characters and their civilisation.
+
+The idea which still floats vaguely in many minds that Ireland, before
+the arrival of the Normans, was a single and independent nation, is
+wholly false. Ireland was not a nation, but a collection of separate
+tribes and kingdoms, engaged in almost constant warfare. In this
+respect, however, she resembled many countries which have since
+attained the most perfect unity, and there can be little doubt that,
+if her development had been impeded by no extraneous influences,
+Ireland would have followed the same path as England or France. Much
+stress has been justly laid on the disorganising influence of a long
+succession of Danish invasions, though it must be remembered that
+Ireland owes to the Danes the foundation of some of her most important
+cities. Roman conquest, which introduced into most of Europe
+invaluable elements of order, organisation, and respect for law, never
+extended to Ireland. The Anglo-Norman invasion and conquest produced
+consequences which were almost wholly evil. If the invaders had been
+driven from the Irish shore, the natural course of development would,
+no doubt, have been in time continued. If the invaders had completely
+conquered Ireland, a fusion might have taken place as complete and as
+healthy as in England. Neither of these two events occurred. The
+English conquest was prolonged over nearly four hundred years. A
+hostile and separate power was planted in the centre of Ireland
+sufficiently powerful to prevent the formation of another
+civilisation, yet not sufficiently powerful to impose a civilisation
+of its own. Feudalism was introduced, but the keystone of the system,
+a strong resident sovereign, was wanting, and Ireland was soon torn by
+the wars of great Anglo-Norman nobles, who were, in fact, independent
+sovereigns, much like the old Irish kings. The Scotch invasion of the
+fourteenth century added enormously to the anarchy and confusion; the
+English power as a living reality contracted to the narrow limits of
+the pale; in outlying districts the Anglo-Norman assimilated quickly
+with the Celtic element, while the English legislators in Ireland,
+alarmed at the tendency, made it the main object of their policy, in
+the words of Sir John Davies, 'to make a perpetual separation and
+enmity between the English and Irish, pretending no doubt that the
+English should in the end root out the Irish.'
+
+Such a state of things continued till the long and terrible wars of
+Henry VIII. and Elizabeth broke the power of the independent chiefs
+and of the Celtic clans, and gave Ireland, for the first time, a
+political unity. It is one of the great infelicities of Irish history
+that this result was obtained at the very period of the Reformation.
+The conquerors adopted one religion, while the conquered retained the
+other, and thus a new and most enduring barrier was raised between the
+two nations in Ireland, and a pernicious antagonism was established
+between law and religion.
+
+Another influence not less powerful than religion had at the same time
+come into play. It had become the English policy to place great bodies
+of English and Scotch settlers on the land that was confiscated in
+consequence of rebellion, and under the impulse of the strong spirit
+of adventure which grew up in the generation that followed the
+Reformation, streams of English and Scotch adventurers poured over.
+The great settlement of Ulster under James I. proved ultimately a
+success, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of that province.
+Other plantations were in time absorbed and assimilated by the Celtic
+population; but vast revolutions in the ownership of land, accompanied
+by the subversion of the old tribal customs, laid the foundation of an
+agrarian war which still continues.
+
+Religious and agrarian causes combined with the civil war in England
+to produce the great rebellion of 1641 and the eleven years of
+ghastly, exterminating war which followed. Hardly any page in human
+history is more appalling. A full third of the population of Ireland
+perished. Thirty or forty thousand of the most energetic left the
+country and took service in foreign armies. Great tracts were left
+absolutely depopulated, and after the rearrangement of land, which was
+accomplished by the Act of Settlement, the immense preponderance of
+landed property remained in the hands of the Protestant nation.
+
+New elements, however, of great energy had been planted in Ireland,
+and the field had been thrown open to their exertions. The excellence
+of Irish wool and the cheapness of Irish labour laid the foundation of
+a flourishing woollen manufacture, and with peace, mild
+administration, and much practical tolerance, the wounds of the
+country seemed gradually healing. The later Stuart reigns, which form
+a dark page in English history, were a period of considerable
+prosperity in Ireland, but that period was soon interrupted by the
+Revolution. There was no general or passionate rising in Ireland
+resembling that of 1641, but it was inevitable that the Irish
+Catholics should have adopted the side of the Catholic King, and it
+was equally inevitable that when a Catholic Parliament, consisting
+largely of sons of the men whose properties had recently been
+confiscated, had assembled at Dublin, its members should have made a
+desperate effort to reverse their fortunes and replace the land of the
+country mainly in Catholic hands. The battle of the Boyne shattered
+the Catholic hopes, and it was followed by a new confiscation, by a
+new emigration of the ablest and most energetic Catholics, by a long
+period of commercial restraints, penal laws, and complete Protestant
+ascendancy.
+
+The commercial restraints formed part of a protective policy which was
+at that time general in Europe, and which was severely felt in the
+American colonies. Though it did not absolutely originate in, it was
+greatly intensified by, the Revolution, which gave the manufacturing
+and commercial classes a new power in English government. The linen
+manufacture was spared, but the total destruction by law of the
+flourishing woollen manufacture, followed by a number of restrictions
+imposed on other branches of industry, deprived Ireland of her most
+promising sources of wealth, drove great multitudes of energetic
+Protestants out of the country, and threw the people more and more
+upon the soil as almost their sole means of support.
+
+The penal laws against the Catholics accompanied or closely followed
+the commercial restraints. The blame of them may be divided with some
+equality between the Government of England and the Parliament of
+Ireland. It was the Irish Parliament which enacted these laws, but an
+English Act first made the Irish Parliament exclusively Protestant,
+and the whole legislation was carried at a time when the Irish
+Parliament was completely dependent, and incompetent even to discuss
+any measure without the previous approbation of the English
+Government. In order to judge this legislation with equity, it must be
+remembered that in the beginning of the eighteenth century restrictive
+laws against Protestantism in Catholic countries, and against
+Catholicism in Protestant ones, almost universally prevailed. The laws
+against Irish Catholics were, on the whole, less stringent than those
+against Catholics in England. They were largely modelled after the
+French legislation against the Huguenots, but persecution in Ireland
+never approached in severity that of Louis XIV., and was absolutely
+insignificant compared with that which had extirpated Protestantism
+and Judaism from Spain. The code, however, was not mainly the product
+of religious feeling, but of policy, and in this respect it has been
+defended in its broad outlines, though not in all its details, by such
+Irishmen as Charlemont, Flood, and Parsons. They argued that at the
+close of a long period of savage civil war it was absolutely necessary
+for a small minority, who found themselves in possession of the
+government and land of the country, to deprive the conquered and
+hostile majority of every element of political and military strength.
+This was the real object of the code. It was a measure of self-defence
+justified by necessity and by the fact that it produced in Ireland for
+the space of about eighty years the most perfect tranquillity.
+
+There is much truth in these considerations, but it is also true that
+the penal code produced more pernicious moral, social, and political
+effects than many sanguinary persecutions. In other countries
+disqualifying or persecuting laws were directed against small
+fractions of the nation. In Ireland they were directed against the
+bulk of the community. Being supported by little or no genuine
+religious fanaticism or proselytising ardour, they made few
+Protestants except in the upper orders, where many conformed in order
+to keep their land or to enter professions; but they drove nearly all
+the best and most energetic Catholics to the Continent; they
+discouraged industry; closed the door of knowledge; taught the people
+to look upon law as something hostile to religion; introduced
+division and immorality into families by the rewards they offered to
+apostasy; and condemned the whole country to poverty and impotence by
+fatally depressing the great majority of its people. Under the
+influence of the penal laws the Catholics inevitably acquired the
+vices of serfs, and the Protestants the vices of monopolists. A great
+portion of the code was pronounced, with good reason, to be flagrantly
+opposed to the articles of the Treaty of Limerick, and it completed
+the work of the confiscations by making the landlord class in Ireland
+almost wholly Protestant, while the great majority of the tenantry
+were Catholics.
+
+There was a moment, however, in the beginning of the century when the
+whole current of Irish history might easily have changed. Scotland had
+suffered, like Ireland, from the protective policy that followed the
+Revolution, and her independent Parliament had retaliated by measures
+which threatened the speedy separation of the two crowns, and soon led
+to a legislative Union. In Ireland such a Union was ardently desired
+by enlightened Irishmen, and there is every reason to believe that it
+could then have been carried with universal consent. The Catholics
+were perfectly passive, and would gladly have accepted a change which
+withdrew them from the direct government of the conquerors in a recent
+civil war. The Protestants had as yet no distinctively national
+feeling, and a legislative Union would have emancipated their industry
+and added enormously to their security. Molyneux, the first great
+champion of the legislative independence of Ireland, emphatically
+declared that he and those who thought with him would gladly have
+accepted the alternative of a Union, and both the Irish Houses of
+Parliament voted addresses in favour of such a measure. If it had
+been carried, Ireland would have been at least saved from the evils
+that rose from the commercial restrictions and from the extreme
+jobbing that grew up around the local legislature, and she would,
+perhaps, have been saved from some parts of the penal code. But the
+golden opportunity was lost. The English commercial classes dreaded
+Irish competition in their markets, and the petition of the Irish
+legislature was disregarded.
+
+Nearly seventy years of quiet followed. The establishment of the
+Hanoverian dynasty, the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, the
+different wars in which England was engaged, left Ireland absolutely
+undisturbed. The House of Commons then sat for a whole reign and met
+only every second year. It was completely subservient to the English
+Privy Council, and it consisted so largely of nomination boroughs that
+a few great nobles commanded a decisive preponderance, and they
+practically conducted the government and administered the patronage of
+Ireland. There was great jobbing and corruption, but taxation, on the
+whole, was exceedingly light, and there was no tendency to throw it
+unduly on the poor, or to create in Ireland any of the many feudal
+burdens that prevailed in France and Germany. The practical evil most
+felt was the system of tithes for the support of the Protestant
+establishment, and it was aggravated by a very unfair exemption of
+pasture land, and also by the prevailing system of farming out tithes
+to a class of men known as tithe proctors. In the country districts
+all power was concentrated in the hands of the landlords, who, with
+many faults and under many difficulties, at least succeeded in
+attaining a large measure of genuine popularity.
+
+There was an Irish army of twelve thousand men, but the greater part
+of it was always sent abroad in time of war, and Ireland was then
+often left with not more than five thousand soldiers. No militia and
+no constabulary force existed, but when Whiteboy or other disturbances
+arose, the landlords put themselves at the head of their tenantry, and
+usually succeeded in suppressing them. Law was very little observed;
+industrial virtues were at the lowest ebb; there was abundance of
+drunkenness, idleness, turbulence, neglect of duty, extreme ignorance,
+and extreme poverty; but there was not much real oppression or
+religious bigotry, and there were no signs of political disturbance or
+conspiracy. After a few years the portions of the penal code which
+restricted the Catholic worship became a dead letter, and Catholic
+chapels were everywhere rising on the Protestant estates. The
+monopoly, however, of place and power continued, though the legal
+profession was full of professing converts. The theological
+temperature in both sects had greatly subsided. Land was usually let
+by the owner on long leases, and at very low rents, to tenants who
+almost invariably divided and sublet their tenancies.
+
+At a later period of the century, when population pressed closely on
+subsistence, the system of middlemen produced a fierce competition
+which raised rent in the lower grades to an enormous height, but this
+evil was less felt with a scanty population, and the hierarchy of
+tenants at least saved the landlords from the dangerous isolation
+which their circumstances tended to produce. Arthur Young, who
+examined the condition of the country very carefully between 1776 and
+1778, perceived great signs of growing prosperity, especially in the
+towns, and, although agriculture was far behind that of England, he
+found a considerable number of active, intelligent, and improving
+landlords. In the opinion of Young the rental of Ireland was unduly
+and unnaturally low, but he urged the landlords to exercise a more
+direct and controlling influence over their estates, and he
+recommended them, for this purpose, to give leases for shorter periods
+and gradually to abolish the system of middlemen and subletting.
+
+In the north there was a powerful, intelligent Protestant community,
+with a strong leaning to republicanism. They were chiefly
+Presbyterians, and they resented bitterly the commercial restrictions
+and the obligation of paying tithes to an Episcopal church. The Irish
+Parliament was so constituted that they had no political power at all
+equivalent to their importance, and, like the Presbyterians in
+England, they were burdened by the Test Act, and their marriages were
+only valid if celebrated in the Established Church. The great power of
+the bishops, both in the Privy Council and in the House of Lords,
+formed a very serious obstacle to church reform. In all classes of
+Protestants, however, in the closing years of George II., there was a
+strong resentment at the political subjection of Ireland, and a
+determination to obtain, if possible, those constitutional rights
+which the Revolution of 1688 had secured for England.
+
+It is impossible, within the narrow limits assigned to me, to give
+even a sketch of the successive stages by which the independence of
+the Irish Parliament was established. The movement began with the
+Octennial Act, limiting the duration of Parliament, and it came to
+full maturity during the war of the American Revolution. Among the
+Irish Catholics there appears to have been absolutely no sympathy with
+the American cause, but Ulster Protestantism was enthusiastically on
+the side of America. Presbyterians from Ulster bore a considerable
+part in the American armies, and under the influence of American
+example public opinion in Ireland rapidly advanced. The great
+Volunteer movement of 1778 and the following years was originated by
+the fact that the Government could supply no troops for the defence of
+Ulster at a time when it was in imminent danger of attack from France.
+The Protestant gentry called their people to arms; and a great
+Protestant force was created, which not only secured the country
+against foreign danger and maintained the most perfect internal order,
+but also exercised a decisive influence over Irish politics. Volunteer
+conventions were assembled which represented both property and
+educated Protestant opinion much more truly than the borough
+Parliament, and which loudly demanded free trade and Parliamentary
+independence. Grattan made himself the mouthpiece of the popular
+feeling; and the English Government and Parliament yielded to the
+demand. The whole system of commercial restraints, which prevented
+Ireland from developing her resources and trading with foreign
+countries and the British colonies, was abolished, leaving the
+commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland to be
+regulated by special Acts. The power of the Privy Council over
+legislation was abolished. The appellate jurisdiction of the Irish
+House of Lords was restored, and, above all, the sole competence of
+the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to legislate for Ireland was
+recognised. The Irish Parliament nearly at the same time made great
+steps towards uniting the people by relieving the Presbyterians from
+the Test Act and from the restrictions on their marriages, and the
+Catholics from those parts of the penal code which chiefly restrained
+their worship, their education, and their industry. At the same time
+the Protestant monopoly of political power and of the higher offices
+remained.
+
+Ireland thus found herself in possession of a Parliament which was, in
+name at least, perfectly independent. It was a purely Protestant
+Parliament, elected by Protestants, consisting mainly of landlords and
+great Protestant lawyers, and representing pre-eminently the property
+of the country. It was intensely and exclusively loyal, and always
+ready to adopt far more stringent coercive measures against anarchy
+and sedition than have ever been adopted by an Imperial Parliament. It
+included many men of great talents and great liberality, and through
+the county constituencies and the representatives of the chief towns
+educated public opinion was seriously felt within its walls; but the
+large majority of its members sat for nomination boroughs within the
+control of the government, and places and pensions were inordinately
+multiplied for the purpose of securing a majority.
+
+Could this constitution last? In framing the course of foreign and
+Imperial policy, in all questions of peace or war, of negotiations or
+alliances, the Irish Parliament had no voice. Yet it might in time of
+war, by withholding its concurrence, withdraw the whole weight of
+Ireland from the forces and fatally dislocate the policy of the
+Empire. It might pursue a commercial policy absolutely inconsistent
+with Imperial interests, and bring Ireland into intimate commercial
+connection with the enemies of England; and if English party spirit
+extended to Ireland and ran in opposite directions in the two
+legislatures, a collision was inevitable. The Lord Lieutenant and
+Chief Secretary, who administered the government of Ireland, were
+appointed by a British Ministry representing the dominant British
+party; the counsels of the Irish Government were framed in a British
+Cabinet; the royal consent was given to every Irish Bill under the
+Great Seal of Great Britain and upon the advice of a British Minister.
+If a machine so constituted could work as long as it was in the hands
+of a small and undoubtedly loyal and largely influenced class, could
+it work if Parliamentary reform made the Irish Parliament subject to
+the fierce and fluctuating tides of popular opinion? above all, if
+Catholic enfranchisement brought a vast, ignorant, and possibly
+seditious element into political life?
+
+It was the recorded opinion of each successive Lord Lieutenant who
+administered the Irish Government after 1782 that it could not, and
+that it must sooner or later end either in a union or a separation.
+They said this, though they fully acknowledged the perfect loyalty
+hitherto shown by the Irish Parliament; the liberality with which it
+voted its supplies; the care with which it subordinated its particular
+measures to the general interests of the Empire. The failure--not
+solely or even mainly through Irish fault--of an attempt to establish
+a fixed commercial arrangement between England and Ireland, and a
+difference between the British and Irish Parliaments on the Imperial
+question of a regency, strengthened the opinion of the English
+Government, and for many years before the Union was enacted it was in
+contemplation. On the two great and pressing questions at issue this
+policy exercised a powerful influence. The Government obstinately
+resisted every serious attempt to reform the Parliament, lest they
+should lose that controlling power which they believed to be essential
+to the permanence of the connection. On the Catholic question their
+views were more fluctuating, but their dominant impression was that
+emancipation could only be safely conceded in an Imperial Parliament,
+and that it ought to be reserved as a boon which might one day make a
+legislative Union acceptable to the Irish people.
+
+In Ireland, or at least in Protestant Ireland, the idea of a Union was
+now intensely unpopular, but the reformers in the Irish Parliament
+were seriously divided. Flood and Charlemont desired Parliamentary
+reform on a purely Protestant basis. They believed that this would
+include in political life the bulk of the property, loyalty,
+intelligence, and energy of the country, and that the Irish Catholics
+could not for a long period be safely admitted to political power.
+Grattan, on the other hand, believed that it was the first interest of
+Ireland to efface the political distinction between the two creeds and
+nations, and that an introduction of a certain proportion of Catholic
+gentry into the Irish Parliament would be in the highest degree
+beneficial. He, at the same time, always taught that Ireland was
+utterly unfit for democracy, and that under her peculiar conditions no
+policy could be more disastrous than one which would 'destroy the
+influence of landed property'; 'set population adrift from the
+influence of property'; subvert or weaken the guiding influence of the
+loyal and educated. When the United Irishmen proposed a Reform Bill
+which would have made the Irish Parliament a purely democratic body,
+Grattan denounced it with the greatest vehemence. 'This plan of
+personal representation,' he said, 'from a revolution of power, would
+speedily lead to a revolution of property, and become a plan of
+plunder as well as a scene of confusion.... Of such a representation
+the first ordinance would be robbery, accompanied with the
+circumstance incidental to robbery, murder.' He believed, however,
+that with a substantial property qualification independent
+constituencies might be formed which would safely represent the best
+elements of both creeds.
+
+The denial of parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation, and the
+refusal of the Irish Parliament to deal with the still more pressing
+question of tithes, produced much disaffection; but still the country
+was steadily improving, and no serious danger was felt till the French
+Revolution burst upon Europe. In every country it stimulated the
+smouldering elements of disorder. In few countries was its influence
+more fatal than in Ireland. I have very lately described at length the
+terrible years of growing conspiracy, anarchy, and crime; of
+fluctuating policy, and savage repression, and revived religious
+animosity, and maddening panic, deliberately and malignantly fomented,
+that preceded and prepared the rebellion. It is sufficient here to say
+that in the beginning of 1798 three provinces were organised to assist
+a French invasion. But at the last moment the leaders were betrayed
+and arrested; the French did not arrive; the rebellion was almost
+confined to a few Leinster counties, and it broke out without leaders
+and without a plan. In most places the rebels proved to be wretched
+bands of marauders intent only on plunder, and, although they
+committed many murders, they were utterly incapable of meeting the
+loyalists in the field. But in Wexford, priests put themselves at the
+head of the movement and turned it into a religious war, deriving its
+main force from religious fanaticism, and waged with desperate courage
+and ferocity. The massacre of Protestants on Vinegar Hill, in
+Scullabogue Barn, and on Wexford Bridge, and the general character
+the rebellion in Leinster assumed, at once and for ever checked all
+that tendency to rebellion which had so long existed among the
+Protestants of Ulster. Some twenty thousand persons perished before
+the flame was extinguished. The repression was as savage as the
+rebellion, and it left Ireland torn by fiercer religious animosities
+than at any period since the Restoration.
+
+It will dispel many illusions if the reader will remember that the
+great Irish rebellion was directed mainly against the Irish
+Parliament, and that it received its death-blow from Irish loyalists
+acting under that Parliament before any assistance arrived from
+England. The conspiracy began among Protestants and Deists, who aimed
+at a union of sects for the purpose of obtaining a democratic
+republic. It turned into a war which was scarcely less essentially
+religious than the wars of the Cevennes or of the Anabaptists. Yet two
+great Catholic provinces remained quiet during the struggle, and a
+great proportion of the loyalist force which crushed the rebellion
+consisted of Catholic militia.
+
+The English Government thought that the time had now come for carrying
+a legislative Union, and, in the eyes of Lord Cornwallis at least, one
+of its chief recommendations was that it would take the government of
+Ireland out of the hands of the triumphant party, and would make
+Catholic emancipation a possibility. The Catholic bishops were sounded
+and found to be very favourable. They declared their full willingness
+to accept an endowment for the priesthood and to give the English
+Government a right of veto on episcopal appointments, and they warmly,
+efficiently, and unanimously supported the Union. The great majority
+of the Catholic landed gentry and probably of the lower priests were
+on the same side; but in general the Catholic laity seem to have
+shown little interest and to have taken little part in the contest. In
+Dublin, Catholics as well as Protestants were generally hostile, but
+Catholic Cork was decidedly favourable, and an assurance that the
+Government desired to carry emancipation in an Imperial Parliament
+proved sufficient to prevent any serious Catholic opposition. The
+United Irishmen seem to have witnessed rather with pleasure than the
+reverse the dethronement of the body which had defeated them, and the
+Presbyterians showed scarcely any interest in the question.
+
+Yet outside the ranks of the Catholic clergy the measure found few
+active supporters, while the Protestants of the Established Church
+were in general ardently and passionately hostile. The great majority
+of the county members and the great preponderance of petitions were
+against the Union, and the opposition to it, which was led by Foster,
+Grattan, Parsons, and Plunket, comprised nearly all the independent
+and unbribed talent in Parliament. The very eminent ability of that
+small group of Protestant gentlemen never flashed more brightly than
+in the closing scenes, and there was a moment when the attitude of the
+Orangemen and the yeomanry was so menacing that the Government were
+seriously alarmed. But a lavish distribution of peerages and places
+purchased a majority, and the troops stationed in Ireland were too
+numerous for armed opposition to be possible. In truth, however, no
+opposition beyond the dimensions of a riot was to be feared. Outside
+Dublin, Catholic, Presbyterian, and seditious Ireland remained almost
+indifferent. Even before the measure had passed, opposition speakers
+complained bitterly that they were deserted by popular support; and it
+is a memorable fact that in the general election that followed the
+Union not a single Irish member of Parliament was defeated because he
+had voted for it.
+
+Pitt intended the Union to be immediately followed by measures
+admitting the Catholics into the Imperial Parliament, paying the
+priests, and commuting the tithes. If these three measures, or even if
+the last two (which were, in truth, the most important), had been
+promptly carried, the Union might have become popular. The Catholic
+question had, of late, been greatly mismanaged. The chief men who
+directed the government in Ireland were bitterly opposed to any
+concession of political power to the Catholics, but the views of the
+English Ministers had been materially changed. They desired above all
+things to separate the Catholics from the United Irishmen, and in 1793
+they forced upon their reluctant advisers in Ireland an Act which
+extended the suffrage to the vast ignorant Catholic masses, though it
+left the Catholic gentry still excluded from Parliament. Two years
+later Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over with instructions to postpone the
+question if possible, but with authority, as he believed, to carry
+emancipation if it could not be postponed, and he found the Irish
+Parliament perfectly prepared to pass it. But the opposition of the
+King and a question of patronage produced a fatal division and led to
+the recall of the Viceroy. The passions aroused by the rebellion
+greatly increased the difficulties of admitting Catholics to a
+separate Parliament, but there is clear evidence that at the time of
+the Union the Irish Protestants were in favour of their admission into
+the Imperial one. The dispositions of the King were well known, but it
+was believed that, if the scheme of Pitt was submitted to him as the
+matured policy of a united Cabinet, he must have yielded. It is well
+known how the plan was prematurely revealed; how Pitt resigned office
+when the King refused his consent; how the agitation of the question
+threw the King into an access of insanity; and how Pitt then promised
+that he would not again raise it during the reign. Pitt's conduct on
+this occasion is, and probably always will be, differently judged.
+There can be but one opinion of its calamitous effect upon Irish
+history.
+
+Ninety years have passed since the Union, and the conditions of
+Ireland have completely changed. The whole system of religious
+disqualification and commercial disability has long since passed away.
+Every path has been thrown open, and English professions, as well as
+the great Colonial and Indian services, are crowded with Irishmen. The
+Established Church no longer exists. Representation has been placed on
+a broadly democratic basis, giving Ireland, however, an absurdly
+disproportioned weight in the representation of the kingdom, and its
+poorest and most backward districts an absurdly disproportioned weight
+in the representation of Ireland. Finally, an attempt has been made to
+put down agrarian agitation by legislation to which there is no real
+parallel in English history, and some parts of which would have been
+impossible under the Constitution of the United States. Landlords who
+possessed by the clearest title known to English law the most absolute
+ownership of their estates have been converted into mere
+rent-chargers. Tenants who entered upon their tenancies under formal
+written contracts for limited periods have been rooted for ever on the
+soil. Rents have been reduced by judicial sentence, with complete
+disregard both to previous contracts and to market value, and the
+legal owner has had no option of refusing the change and re-entering
+on the occupation of his land. A scheme of purchase, too, based upon
+Imperial credit, has been established and will probably soon be
+largely extended, which is so extravagantly and almost grotesquely
+favorable to the tenant that it enables him by paying for the space of
+forty-nine years, instead of his reduced judicial rent, an annual sum
+which is considerably smaller, to purchase the freehold of his farm.
+It is a simple and incontestable truth that neither in the United
+States, nor in England, nor in any portion of the Continent of Europe,
+is the agricultural tenant so favoured by law as in Ireland, or
+anything of the nature of landlord oppression made so impossible. But
+though agitation has diminished, it has not ceased, and the great body
+of the poorer Catholics still follow the banner of Home Rule.
+
+About a third of the population of Ireland, on the other hand, regard
+Home Rule as the greatest catastrophe that could befall themselves,
+their country, or the Empire; and it is worthy of notice that they
+include almost all the descendants of Grattan's Parliament, and of the
+volunteers and of those classes who in the eighteenth century
+sustained the spirit of nationality in Ireland. Belfast and the
+surrounding counties, which alone in Ireland have attained the full
+height and vigour of English industrial civilisation; almost all the
+Protestants, both Episcopalian and Nonconformist; almost all the
+Catholic gentry; the decided preponderance of Catholics in the lay
+professions, and a great and guiding section of the Catholic
+middle-class are on the same side. Their conviction does not rest upon
+any abstract doctrine about the evil of federal governments or of
+local parliaments. It rests upon their firm persuasion that in the
+existing conditions of Ireland no Parliament could be established
+there which could be trusted to fulfil the most elementary conditions
+of honest government--to maintain law; to protect property; to observe
+or enforce contracts; to secure the rights and liberties of
+individuals and minorities; to act loyally in times of difficulty and
+danger in the interests of the Empire.
+
+They know that the existing Home Rule movement has grown up by the
+guidance and by the support of men who are implacable enemies to the
+British Empire; that it has been for years the steady object of its
+leaders to inspire the Irish masses with feelings of hatred to that
+Empire, contempt for contracts, defiance of law and of those who
+administer it; that, having signally failed in rousing the
+agricultural population in a national struggle, those leaders resolved
+to turn the movement into an organised attack upon landed property;
+that in the prosecution of this enterprise they have been guilty, not
+only of measures which are grossly and palpably dishonest, but also of
+an amount of intimidation, of cruelty, of systematic disregard for
+individual freedom scarcely paralleled in any country during the
+present century; and finally that, through subscriptions which are not
+drawn from Ireland, political agitation in Ireland has become a large
+and highly lucrative trade--a trade which, like most others, will no
+doubt continue as long as it pays.
+
+The nature, methods, and objects of the organisation which would
+probably exercise a dominant influence over an Irish Parliament have
+been established by overwhelming evidence and beyond all reasonable
+doubt, after a long, careful, and most impartial judicial
+investigation. The report of the late Special Commissioners[7] and the
+evidence on which it is founded have been published; and their
+conclusions have very recently been summed up in an admirable work by
+Professor Dicey, perhaps the ablest of living writers on political
+subjects. Readers may find in these works abundant evidence of the
+true character of the Irish Home Rule movement. If they read them with
+impartiality they will, I believe, have little difficulty in
+concluding that there have been few political movements in the
+nineteenth century which are less deserving of the respect or support
+of honest men.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] The Parnell Commission.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+FORMATIVE INFLUENCES
+
+
+It was about four years before the great upheaval of beliefs in
+England, which was partly caused and partly disclosed by the
+publication of the 'Essays and Reviews,' in 1860, that I entered
+Trinity College, Dublin. I had then a strong leaning toward
+theological studies and looked forward to a peaceful clerical life in
+a family living near Cork; and in addition to the ordinary university
+course, I went through that appointed for divinity students. I found
+my life at the university one of more than common intellectual
+activity, for although circumstances and temperament made me perhaps
+culpably indifferent to college ambitions and competitions, I soon
+threw myself with intense eagerness into a long course of private
+reading, chiefly relating to the formation and history of opinions.
+The great High Church wave which had a few years before been so
+powerful, had been broken when Newman and many other leaders of the
+party had passed to Catholicism. Darwin and Herbert Spencer had not
+yet risen above the horizon. Mill was in the zenith of his fame and
+influence. The intellectual atmosphere was much agitated by the recent
+discoveries of geology, by their manifest bearing on the Mosaic
+cosmogony and on the history of the Fall, and by the attempts of Hugh
+Miller, Hitchcock, and other writers to reconcile them with the
+received theology. In poetry, Tennyson and Longfellow reigned, I
+think with an approach to equality which has not continued. In
+politics, the school of orthodox political economy was almost
+unchallenged. In spite of the protests of Carlyle, all sound Liberals
+in England then desired to restrict as much as possible the functions
+of government, and to enlarge as much as possible the sphere of
+individual liberty; and they regarded unrestrained competition and
+inviolable contracts as the chief conditions of material progress.
+
+The first great intellectual influence which I experienced was, I
+believe, that of Bishop Butler, who was at that time probably studied
+more assiduously at Dublin than in any other university in the
+kingdom. There were few sermons in the college chapel in which some
+allusion to his writings might not be found, and few serious students
+whose modes of thought were not at least coloured by his influence.
+That influence now appears to me to have been not only various, but
+even in some measure contradictory. The 'Analogy' is perhaps the most
+original, if not the most powerful, book ever written in defence of
+the Christian creed; but it has probably been the parent of much
+modern Agnosticism, for its method is to parallel every difficulty in
+revealed religion by a corresponding difficulty in natural religion,
+and to argue that the two must stand or fall together. Butler's
+unrivalled sermons on human nature, on the other hand, have been
+essentially conservative and constructive, and their influence has
+been at least as strong on character as on belief. Their doctrine is
+that consciousness reveals in the inner principles of our being a
+moral hierarchy, 'a difference in nature and kind altogether distinct
+from strength'; and that among these principles conscience has, by the
+very structure of our nature, a recognised supremacy or guiding
+authority which clearly distinguishes it from all others.
+
+'The principle of reflection or conscience being compared with the
+various appetites, affections, and passions in men, the former is
+manifestly supreme and chief, without regard to strength.... From its
+very nature it manifestly claims superiority over all others, so that
+you cannot form a notion of this faculty, conscience, without taking
+in judgment, direction, superintendency. To preside and govern, from
+the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it
+strength as it has right, it would govern the world.'
+
+It was a noble philosophy, well fitted to strengthen and elevate the
+character, and it has supported many amid the dissolution of positive
+beliefs. Utilitarian theories of morals move very smoothly as long as
+their only task is to define the course which it is in the interests
+of society that each man should pursue. They are less successful in
+furnishing any firm and adequate reason why a man should pursue that
+course when individual interests and individual passion are opposed to
+it. It is the merit of the schools of Kant and of Butler, that they
+raise the idea of duty above all the calculations of self-interest,
+and make it the supreme and guiding principle of life.
+
+Among living men, the strongest intellectual influence at that time in
+Dublin was, I think, Whately, our archbishop, an original and powerful
+thinker who has scarcely obtained a place in the literary and
+intellectual history of his time commensurate with the wide and deep
+influence he undoubtedly exercised. For this there are many reasons.
+Unlike the High Church leaders who flourished with him at Oxford in
+the second quarter of the nineteenth century, he never identified
+himself with any organised party or school of thought, and he thus
+deprived himself of many echoes and of much support. It was, indeed,
+one of his first principles that there is no more fatal obstacle to
+the discovery of truth than the deflecting influence of party and
+system, and that the jealous maintenance of an independent judgment is
+the first element of intellectual honesty. Few considerable writers
+have appealed less to common passions or wide sympathies; and the only
+passion--if it can be called so--that appears strongly in his
+writings, is the love of truth for its own sake, which is the rarest
+and highest of all. He was accustomed to speculate much upon that
+strange power of intellectual magnetism which enables some men to draw
+others to their views apart from any process of definite reasoning;
+and he acknowledged with truth that he was wholly destitute of it;
+that he had never produced any effect which could not be clearly
+accounted for, or altered any judgment except by distinct reasons. As
+a writer, his style, though wholly without grace, was admirable in its
+lucidity. He had a singular felicity of illustration, and especially
+of metaphor, and a rare power of throwing his thoughts into terse and
+pithy sentences; but his many books, though full of original thinking
+and in a high degree suggestive to other writers, had always a certain
+fragmentary and occasional character, which prevented them from taking
+a place in standard literature. He was conscious of it himself, and
+was accustomed to say that it was the mission of his life to make up
+cartridges for others to fire. The little volume of 'Miscellanies,'
+including his commonplace book and his notes for his books, which was
+published by his daughter, exhibits with great clearness the character
+of his mind. Though a very candid and, in the best sense of the word,
+a very tolerant man, and an excellent scholar, he had, I think, little
+power of reproducing the modes of thought of men whose mental
+structure was widely different from his own, or of entering into the
+intellectual conditions of other ages; but he touched a large circle
+of subjects, social, political, and even scientific, as well as moral
+and religious, with an original and most independent judgment; and he
+raised greatly the moral standard of love of truth and the
+intellectual standard of severe reasoning wherever his influence
+extended. He delighted in that fine saying of Hobbes that, 'words are
+the counters of the wise man, but the money of the fool'; he believed
+that most controversies might be resolved into verbal ambiguities; and
+his hatred of vagueness, grandiloquence, affected obscurity, and
+rhetorical exaggeration exercised a very useful influence over young
+men. He was also a most attentive and sagacious observer of human
+nature, and few modern writers have written so wisely on the
+diversities and the management of character and on the science of
+life. In this respect he had a strong affinity to Bacon--the Bacon not
+of the 'Organon,' but of the 'Essays'--and perhaps still more to
+Benjamin Franklin. In theology he challenged the severest inquiry, and
+believed that if honestly pursued it would lead only to orthodox
+belief. 'A good man,' he once wrote, 'will indeed wish to find the
+evidence of the Christian religion satisfactory; but a wise man will
+not for that reason think it satisfactory, but will weigh the evidence
+the more carefully on account of the importance of the question.'
+
+His strongest antipathy was to the teaching of the Oxford 'Tracts,'
+and he wrote about them with great severity, but more from the moral
+than the intellectual side. He believed the Tractarian doctrines of
+'reserve' and 'economy' to be essentially disingenuous; he considered
+that there was good reason to conclude that leading members of the
+Oxford school had remained in the Church of England for a considerable
+time after they had adopted the Roman theology, had used language
+deliberately intended to mask their position, and had employed their
+influence as English clergymen to sap the English Church; and he
+especially denounced as the grossest dishonesty the attempt that was
+made in Tract XC. to show that a man was justified in subscribing to
+the Articles of the Church of England and at the same time holding
+everything laid down by the Council of Trent, 'though the Articles
+were expressly drawn up to condemn the authoritative teaching of the
+Roman Church, and after the Council of Trent had held 22 out of its
+whole number of 25 sessions.' The quibbling, special-pleading,
+equivocating mind which is consciously or half-consciously
+endeavouring by subtle distinctions to maintain an untenable position,
+was of all things the most abhorrent to him, and while the
+Evangelicals denounced the Tractarians as leading men to Rome,
+Whately, perhaps alone among his contemporaries, steadily predicted
+that their teachings would be followed by a great period of religious
+scepticism. This, he said, would be the result of the discredit they
+were throwing on the evidential school, of their habit of coupling
+ecclesiastical with Scripture miracles, and of their doctrine that it
+is the function of faith to supply the missing links of imperfect
+evidence and to impart the character of certainty to propositions
+which in reason rest only on probabilities. He himself was of the
+school of Grotius and Paley, and believed that simple historical
+evidence established supernatural facts. This subject long held a
+foremost place in my thoughts and studies, and I afterward wrote much
+upon it in connection with the history of witchcraft and the miracles
+of the Saints.
+
+I owed much to Whately, but I was studying concurrently with him
+teachers of very opposite schools, among others Coleridge, Newman, and
+Emerson in English; Pascal, Bossuet, Rousseau, and Voltaire in French.
+Locke's writings formed part of the college course, and I became very
+familiar with them, and fully shared Hallam's special admiration for
+the little treatise 'On the Conduct of the Understanding,' while
+Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh, and Mill opened out wide and various
+vistas in moral philosophy. The following passage from Coleridge,
+which I chose as the motto of almost my first published writing,
+exercised so great an influence over my later studies, and shows so
+happily the direction in which I was endeavoring to turn my mind, that
+I may be excused from quoting it at length:
+
+'Let it be remembered by controversialists on all subjects, that every
+speculative error which boasts a multitude of advocates has its golden
+as well as its dark side; that there is always some truth connected
+with it, the exclusive attention to which has misled the
+understanding; some moral beauty which has given it charms for the
+heart. Let it be remembered that no assailant of an error can
+reasonably hope to be listened to by its advocates, who has not proved
+to them that he has seen the disputed subject in the same point of
+view and is capable of contemplating it with the same feelings as
+themselves; for why should we abandon a cause at the persuasion of one
+who is ignorant of the reasons which have attached us to it?'
+
+Adopting an illustration which had been employed by Bossuet for
+another purpose, I came to believe that religious systems resemble
+those pictures occasionally seen in the museums of the curious, which
+appear at first to be mere incongruous assemblages of unconnected and
+unmeaning figures, till they are regarded from one particular point of
+view, when these figures immediately mass themselves into a regular
+form, and the whole picture assumes a coherent and symmetrical
+appearance. To discover in each system this point of view; to
+cultivate that peculiar form of imagination which makes it possible to
+realise how different forms of opinions are held by their more
+intelligent adherents, appeared to me the first condition of
+understanding them.
+
+In this method of inquiry I was, at a little later period, much aided
+by the writings of Bayle, a great critic who brought to the study of
+opinions an almost unrivalled knowledge, and one of the keenest and
+most detached of human intellects. Gradually, however, by a natural
+and insensible process I passed into the habit of examining opinions
+mainly from an historical point of view--investigating the
+circumstances under which they grow up; their relation to the general
+conditions of their time; the direction in which they naturally
+develop; the part, whether for good or ill, which during long spaces
+of time they have played in the world. It was first of all in
+connection with the Roman Catholic controversy, with which we were
+much occupied in Ireland, that I learnt to pursue this course. Of the
+enormous and essential difference between matured Catholicism and the
+Christianity of the New Testament, I never doubted, and my convictions
+were much deepened by long travels in Italy, France, and Spain, during
+which I endeavoured to study carefully Catholicism in its actual
+workings as a popular religion, and not as it appears clarified and
+rationalised in such books as the 'Exposition,' by Bossuet. I often
+asked myself, who could have imagined from a perusal of the New
+Testament that Christianity was intended to be a highly centralised
+monarchy, governed with supreme divine authority by the Bishop of
+Rome; that this bishop was to be connected, not with the great author
+of the Epistle to the Romans, but with St. Peter; that the figure
+which was to occupy the most prominent place in the devotions and
+imaginations of millions of Christian worshippers was to be the Virgin
+Mary, who is not so much as mentioned in the Epistles; that in the
+immediate neighbourhood, and with the full sanction of the highest
+ecclesiastical authorities, graven images were to be employed in
+devotion as conspicuously as in a pagan temple, particular images
+being singled out from all others for particular devotion by special
+indulgences and by special miracles? I soon convinced myself that
+popular Catholicism, as it exists in southern Europe and as it has
+existed through a long course of centuries, is as literally
+polytheistic and idolatrous as any form of paganism, though it has
+many beauties, and though much of its very mingled influence has been
+for good. In the teaching of my early youth, this transformation of
+Christianity was described as the great predicted apostasy, the
+mystery of iniquity, the work of Antichrist among mankind. Under the
+influence of the historic method it assumed a different aspect, and
+the mystery became very explicable. Hobbes had struck the keynote in a
+passage of profound truth as well as of admirable beauty:
+
+'If a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical
+dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the
+ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave
+thereof.'
+
+Few evolutions in history, indeed, can be more clearly traced than the
+successive stages through which Rome, by a gradual and very natural
+process, obtained the primacy of Christendom. In the condition of
+Europe, again, at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire, the
+invasion, the triumph, and the rapid conversion of the barbarians, the
+chief causes of the materialising transformation which Christian ideas
+underwent appeared abundantly evident; and it became clear to me that
+some such transformation was inevitable, and essential to their enduring
+influence. Was it possible, I asked myself, that in ages of anarchy and
+convulsion, any religion resembling Protestant Christianity could have
+prevailed among great masses of wild and ignorant barbarians, with all
+the associations and mental habits of idolaters, at a time when neither
+rag paper nor printing was invented, and when a wide diffusion of the
+Bible was absolutely impossible? But such methods of reasoning could not
+stop there. I was naturally led to consider how different are the
+measures of probability, the predispositions toward the miraculous, the
+canons of evidence and proof, the standards and ideals of morals in
+different ages, and how largely these differences affect the whole
+question of evidence. I began to realise the existence of climates of
+opinion; to observe how particular forms of belief naturally grow and
+flourish in certain stages of intellectual development, and fade when
+these conditions have changed; how much that is called apostasy and
+imposture is in reality anachronism, the survival in one age of forms of
+belief that were the appropriate product of an earlier one.
+
+A writer of extraordinary brilliancy and power was at this time
+exercising a great influence either of attraction or repulsion on all
+serious students of history. Those who are old enough to remember the
+appearance of the first volume of Buckle's 'History,' in 1857, and of
+the second volume, in 1861, will remember also how rapidly and how
+passionately it divided opinion. It was in truth a book in which
+extraordinary merits were balanced by extraordinary defects. On the
+special subject of the growth of religions, which most interested me,
+it was peculiarly deficient, for with all his great gifts Buckle was
+almost colour-blind to the devotional and reverential aspect of things,
+and he had little more power than Whately of projecting himself into
+the beliefs, ideals, and modes of thought of other men and ages. His
+unqualified, undiscriminating contempt for the ages of superstition is
+the more remarkable, because fifteen years before the appearance of his
+first volume, Comte, with whom Buckle had some affinity, and for whom
+he expressed great admiration, had been placing those ages on a
+pinnacle of extravagant eulogy. His doctrine that there is no real
+progress in moral ideas and no real history of morals, I have always
+believed to be profoundly untrue, and to have vitiated a large part of
+his conclusions; and although he rendered valuable service in showing
+by ample illustrations that the capital changes in history are much
+less due to the great men who directly effected them than to the long
+train of intellectual, political, or industrial tendencies that had
+prepared them, he pushed this, like many of his other generalisations,
+to exaggeration and even to extravagance. Individuals, and even
+accidents, have had a great modifying and deflecting influence in
+history, and sometimes the part they have played can scarcely be
+over-estimated. If, as I have elsewhere said, a stray dart had struck
+down Mohammed in one of the early skirmishes of his career, there is no
+reason to believe that the world would have seen a great military and
+monotheistic religion arise in Arabia, powerful enough to sweep over a
+large part of three continents, and to mould during many centuries the
+lives and characters of about a fifth part of the human race. In one
+respect, too, Buckle was singularly unfortunate in the time in which he
+appeared. From the days of Bacon and Locke to the days of Condillac and
+Bentham, it had been the tendency of advanced liberal thinkers to
+aggrandise as much as possible the power of circumstances and
+experience over the individual, and to reduce to the narrowest limits
+every influence that is innate, transmitted, or hereditary. They
+represented man as essentially the creature of circumstances, and his
+mind as a sheet of blank paper on which education might write what it
+pleased. Buckle pushed this habit of thought so far that he even
+questioned the reality of such an evident and well-known fact as
+hereditary insanity. But only two years after the appearance of the
+first volume of the 'History of Civilisation,' Darwin published his
+'Origin of Species,' which gradually effected a revolution in
+speculative philosophy almost as great as it effected in natural
+science; and from that time the supreme importance of inborn and
+hereditary tendencies has become the very central fact in English
+philosophy. It must be added that Buckle had many of the distinctive
+faults of a young writer; of a writer who had mixed little with men,
+and had formed his mind almost exclusively by solitary, unguided study.
+He had a very imperfect appreciation of the extreme complexity of
+social phenomena, an excessive tendency to sweeping generalisations,
+and an arrogance of assertion which provoked much hostility. His wide
+and multifarious knowledge was not always discriminating, and he
+sometimes mixed good and bad authorities with a strange indifference.
+
+This is a long catalogue of defects, but in spite of them Buckle
+opened out wider horizons than any previous writer in the field of
+history. No other English historian had sketched his plan with so bold
+a hand, or had shown so clearly the transcendent importance of
+studying not merely the actions of soldiers, politicians, and
+diplomatists, but also those great connected evolutions of
+intellectual, social, and industrial life on which the type of each
+succeeding age mainly depends. To not a few of his contemporaries he
+imparted an altogether new interest in history, and his admirable
+literary talent, the vast range of topics which he illuminated with a
+fresh significance, and the noble enthusiasm for knowledge and for
+freedom that pervades his work, made its appearance an epoch in the
+lives of many who have passed far from its definite conclusions. The
+task which he had undertaken was almost too vast for the longest life,
+and when he died at Damascus, in 1862, he had not yet completed his
+fortieth year, and his judgment was probably still far from its full
+maturity. A few lines of Pliny which I wrote on the title-page of his
+history, will suffice to show the feelings with which I heard of his
+death:
+
+'Mihi autem videtur acerba semper et immatura mors eorum qui immortale
+aliquid parant. Nam qui voluptatibus dediti quasi in diem vivunt,
+vivendi causas quotidie finiunt; qui vero posteros cogitant et
+memoriam sui operibus extendunt, his nulla mors non repentina est, ut
+quæ semper inchoatum aliquid abrumpat.'
+
+I do not purpose to pursue these recollections further. I had drifted
+far from my Cork living and very decisively into the ways of
+literature, and after I left the university I spent about four years
+on the Continent. I read much in foreign libraries, and I also derived
+great profit as well as keen pleasure from the study of Italian art,
+which throws an invaluable light on the branches of history I was then
+investigating. In its earlier phase especially, before the sense of
+beauty dominates over the idea, art represents with a singular
+fidelity not only the religious beliefs of men, but also the far more
+delicate and evanescent shades of their realisations, ideals, and
+emotions.
+
+The result of those years of study was my 'History of the Spirit of
+Rationalism in Europe,' which appeared in the early part of 1865. With
+many defects, it had at least the merit of describing with great
+sincerity the process by which the opinions of its author had been
+formed, and to this sincerity it probably owed no small part of its
+success.
+
+
+
+
+CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE.
+
+
+When Carlyle came to London in 1831, bringing with him the 'Sartor
+Resartus,' which is now perhaps the most famous of all his works, it
+is well known that he applied in turn to three of the principal
+publishers in London, and that each of them, after due deliberation,
+positively refused to print his manuscript. When at last, with great
+difficulty, he procured its admission into 'Fraser's Magazine,'
+Carlyle was accustomed to say that he only knew of two men who found
+anything to admire in it. One of them was the great American writer,
+Emerson, who afterwards superintended its publication in America. The
+other was a priest from Cork, who wrote to say that he wished to take
+in 'Fraser's Magazine' as long as anything by this writer appeared in
+it. On the other hand, several persons told Fraser that they would
+stop taking in the magazine if any more of such nonsense appeared in
+it. The editor wrote to Carlyle that the work had been received with
+'unqualified disapprobation.' Five years elapsed before it was
+reprinted as a separate book, and in order that it should be reprinted
+it was found necessary for a number of Carlyle's private friends to
+club together and guarantee the publisher from loss by engaging to
+take three hundred copies. But when, a few years before his death, a
+cheap edition of Carlyle's works was published, 'Sartor Resartus' had
+acquired such a popularity that thirty thousand copies were almost
+immediately sold, and since his death it has been reprinted in a
+sixpenny form; it has penetrated far and wide through all classes, and
+it is now, I suppose, one of the most popular and most influential of
+the books that were published in England in the second quarter of the
+century.
+
+Such a contrast between the first reception and the later judgment of
+a book is very remarkable, and it applies more or less to all
+Carlyle's earlier writings. It is a memorable fact in the literary
+history of the nineteenth century that one of the greatest and most
+industrious writers in England lived for many years in such poverty
+that he often thought of abandoning literature and emigrating to the
+colonies, and he would probably have done so if he had not found in
+public lecturing a means of supplying his frugal wants. The cause of
+this long-continued neglect is partly, no doubt, to be found in his
+style, for, like Browning, Carlyle wrote an English which was so
+contorted and sometimes so obscure that his readers had to be slowly
+educated into understanding, or at least enjoying, it. But there are
+other and deeper causes which I propose to devote the short time at my
+disposal to indicating.
+
+It has been truly said that there are two great classes among writers.
+There are those who are echoes and there are those who are voices.
+There are some writers who represent faithfully and express strongly
+the dominant tendencies, opinions, habits, characteristics of their
+age, collecting as in a focus the half-formed thoughts that are
+prevailing around them, giving them an articulate voice, and by the
+force of their advocacy greatly strengthening them. There are others
+who either start new ways of thinking for which the public around
+them are still unprepared, or who throw themselves in opposition to
+the dominant tendencies of their times, pointing out the evils and
+dangers connected with them, and dwelling specially on neglected
+truths. It is not surprising that the first class are by far the most
+popular. The public is much like Narcissus in the fable, who fell in
+love with his own reflection in the water. All men like to find their
+own opinions expressed with a power and eloquence they cannot
+themselves attain, and most men dislike a writer who, in the first
+flush of a great enthusiasm, points out all that can be said on the
+other side. But when the first enthusiasm is over--when the prevailing
+tendency has fully triumphed and the evils and defects connected with
+it are disclosed--the words of this unpopular or neglected teacher
+will begin to gather weight. It will be found that although he may not
+have been wiser than those who advocated the other side, yet his words
+contained exactly that kind of truth which was most needed or most
+generally forgotten, and his reputation will steadily rise.
+
+This appears to me to have been very much the position which Carlyle
+occupied towards the chief questions of his day, and it explains, I
+think, in a great degree the growth of his influence. It is
+remarkable, indeed, how many things there are in his writings which
+appeared paradoxes when he wrote, and which now seem almost truisms.
+Thus at a time when the political and intellectual ascendency of
+France over the Continent was at its height, Carlyle was one of the
+few men who clearly recognised the essential greatness that lay hid in
+Germany, and especially in Prussia--a greatness which after the wars
+of 1866 and 1870 became very evident to the world. He was one of the
+first men in England to recognise the importance of German
+literature, and especially the supreme greatness of Goethe. His
+translation of 'Wilhelm Meister' was published in 1824, and his noble
+essay on Goethe in 1832; but at first it seemed to find scarcely any
+echo. The editor for whom he wrote it reported that all the opinions
+he could gather about this essay were 'eminently unfavourable.' De
+Quincey, who of all English critics was believed to know Germany best,
+and Jeffrey, who exercised the greatest influence on English literary
+opinion, combined to depreciate or ridicule Goethe. But there is now
+no educated man who disputes that Carlyle in this matter was
+essentially right, and that his critics were wholly wrong. And to turn
+to subjects more directly connected with England, Carlyle wrote at a
+time when the whole school of what was called advanced thought rested
+upon the theory that the province of Government ought to be made as
+small as possible, and that all the relations of classes should be
+reduced to simple, temporary contracts founded on mutual interest.
+According to this theory, it was the one duty of Government to keep
+order. For the rest it should stand aside, and not attempt to meddle
+in social or industrial questions. The most complete liberty of
+thought and action should be established, and everything should be
+left to unrestricted competition--to the free play of unprivileged,
+untrammelled, unguided social forces. This was the theory which was
+called orthodox political economy--the _laisser-faire_ system--the
+philosophy of competition or supply and demand, and it was incessantly
+denounced by Carlyle as Mammon worship, as 'devil take the hindmost,'
+as 'pure egoism'; 'the shabbiest gospel that had been taught among
+men.' He declared that in the long run no society could flourish, or
+even permanently cohere, if the only relation between man and man was
+a mere money tie. He maintained that what he called the condition of
+England question, or, in other words, the great mass of struggling,
+anarchical poverty that was growing up in the chief centres of
+population, was a question which imperiously demanded the most
+strenuous Government intervention--which was, in fact, far more
+important than any of the purely political questions. The whole system
+of factory legislation, the whole system of legislation about working
+men's dwellings, which has taken place in this century, has been a
+realisation of the ideas of Carlyle. When Carlyle first wrote, it was
+the received opinion that the education of the people was a matter in
+which the Government should in no degree interfere, and that it ought
+to be left altogether to individuals, or Churches, or societies. In
+his work on Chartism, which was published as early as 1834, Carlyle
+argued that the 'universal education of the people' was an
+indispensable duty of the Government. It was not until about twenty
+years ago that this duty was fully recognised in England. In the same
+work he maintained that State-aided, State-organised, State-directed
+emigration must one day be undertaken on a large scale, as the only
+efficient agent in coping with the great masses of growing pauperism.
+In his 'Past and Present,' which was published in 1843, he threw out
+another idea which has proved very prolific, and which is probably
+destined to become still more so. It is that it may become both
+possible and needful for the master worker 'to grant his workers
+permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs.'
+
+It is evident how much less strange those ideas appear now than they
+did when they were first put out some fifty years ago. One of the
+most remarkable changes that has taken place during the lives of men
+who are still of middle age has been in the opinion of advanced
+thinkers about the function of Government. In the early days of
+Carlyle the whole set, or lie, of opinion in England was towards
+cutting in all directions the bands of Government control, diminishing
+as much as possible the sphere of Government functions or
+interference. It was a revolt against the old Tory system of paternal
+Government, against the system of Guilds, against the State
+regulations which once prevailed in all departments of industrial
+life. In the present generation it is not too much to say that the
+current has been absolutely reversed. The constantly increasing
+tendency, whenever any abuse of any kind is discovered, is to call
+upon Parliament to make a law to remedy it. Every year the network of
+regulation is strengthened; every year there is an increasing
+disposition to enlarge and multiply the functions, powers, and
+responsibilities of Government. I should not be dealing sincerely with
+you if I did not express my own opinion that this tendency carries
+with it dangers even more serious than those of the opposite
+exaggerations of a past century: dangers to character by sapping the
+spirit of self-reliance and independence; dangers to liberty by
+accustoming men to the constant interference of authority, and
+abridging in innumerable ways the freedom of action and choice. I wish
+I could persuade those who form their estimate of the province of
+Government from Carlyle's 'Past and Present' and 'Latter-day
+Pamphlets' to study also the admirable little treatise of Herbert
+Spencer, called 'The Man and the State,' in which the opposite side is
+argued. What I have said however, is sufficient to show how
+remarkably Carlyle, in some of the parts of his teaching that were
+once the most unpopular, anticipated tendencies which only became very
+apparent in practical politics when he was an old man or after his
+death.
+
+The main and fundamental part of his teaching is the supreme sanctity
+of work; the duty imposed on every human being, be he rich or be he
+poor, to find a life-purpose and to follow it out strenuously and
+honestly. 'All true work,' he said, 'is religion'; and the essence of
+every sound religion is, 'Know thy work and do it.' In his conception
+of life all true dignity and nobility grows out of the honest
+discharge of practical duty. He had always a strong sympathy with the
+feudal system which annexed indissolubly the idea of public function
+with the possession of property. The great landlord who is wisely
+governing large districts and using all his influence to diffuse
+order, comfort, education, and civilisation among his tenantry; the
+captain of industry who is faithfully and honestly organising the
+labour of thousands, and regarding his task as a moral duty; the rich
+man who, with all the means of enjoyment at his feet, devotes his
+energies 'to make some nook of God's creation a little fruitfuller,
+better, more worthy of God--to make some human hearts a little wiser,
+manfuller, happier, more blessed,' always received his admiration and
+applause. No one, on the other hand, spoke with more contempt of a
+governing class which had ceased to govern; of titles which had lost
+their original meaning, and no longer implied or expressed duties
+performed; of wealth that was employed solely or mainly in selfish
+enjoyment or in idle show. It was Carlyle's deep conviction that the
+best test of the moral worth of every nation, class, and individual,
+is to be found in their standard of work and in their dislike to a
+useless and idle life. As is well known, he had no sympathy with the
+prevailing political ideas. He believed that men were not only not
+equal, but were profoundly unequal; that it was the first interest of
+society that the wisest men should be selected as its leaders, and
+that the popular methods of finding the wisest were by no means those
+which were most likely to succeed. 'No British man,' he complained,
+'can attain to be a statesman or chief of workers till he has first
+proved himself a chief of talkers.' 'The two greatest nations in the
+world, the English and American, are all going to wind and tongue.' He
+believed much more than his contemporaries did that there was need and
+room in our modern English life for strong Government organisation,
+guidance, discipline, reverence, obedience, and control. 'Wise
+command, wise obedience,' he wrote in one of his 'Latter-day
+Pamphlets,' 'the capability of these two is the best measure of
+culture and human virtue in every man.'
+
+There is another class of workers to which he himself belonged--the
+men who are the teachers of mankind. He taught them by his example as
+well as by his precepts. Whatever else may be said about Carlyle, no
+one can question that he took his literary vocation most seriously. He
+was for a long time a very poor man, but he never sought wealth by
+advocating popular opinions, by pandering to common prejudices, or by
+veiling most unpalatable beliefs. In the vast mass of literature which
+he has bequeathed to us there is no scamped work, and every competent
+judge has recognised the untiring and conscientious accuracy with
+which he verified and sifted the minutest fact. His standard of
+truthfulness was extremely high, and one of his great quarrels with
+his age was that it was an age of half-beliefs and insincere
+professions. He maintained that religious beliefs which had once been
+living realities had too often degenerated into mere formulas, untruly
+professed or mechanically repeated with the lips only, and without any
+genuine or heartfelt conviction. He often repeated a saying of
+Coleridge: 'They do not believe--they only believe that they believe.'
+He used to speak of men who 'played false with their intellects'; or,
+in other words, turned away their minds from unwelcome truths and by
+allowing their wishes or interests to sway their judgments, persuaded
+or half-persuaded themselves to believe whatever they wished. A firm
+grasp of facts, he maintained, was the first characteristic of an
+honest mind; the main element in all honest, intellectual work. His
+own special talent was the gift of insight, the power of looking into
+the heart of things, piercing to essential facts, discerning the real
+characters of men, their true measure of genuine, solid worth. Creeds,
+professions, opinions, circumstances, all these are the externals or
+clothes of men. It is necessary to look behind them and beyond them if
+we would reach the genuine human heart. One of the reasons why he
+detested what he called stump oratory was because he believed it to be
+a great school of insincerity. Its end was not truth, but
+plausibility. It was the effort of interested men to throw opinions
+into such forms as might most captivate uninstructed men; to keep back
+every unpopular side; to magnify everything in them that was
+seductive. He once said to me that two great curses seemed to him
+eating away the heart and worth of the English people. One was drink.
+The other was stump oratory, which accustomed men to say without
+shame what they did not in their hearts believe to be true, and
+accustomed their hearers to accept such a proceeding as perfectly
+natural. And the same strong passion for veracity he carried into his
+judgment of other forms of work. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that
+the standard of conscientious work had been lowered in England through
+the feverish competition of modern times, and under the system of what
+he called 'cheap and nasty'; that English work had lost something of
+its old solidity and worth, and was now made rather to captivate than
+to wear. Carlyle saw in this much more than an industrial change. He
+maintained that the love and pride of thorough work had long been a
+pre-eminently English quality, that it was the very tap-root of the
+moral worth of the English character, and that anything that tended to
+weaken it was a grave moral evil.
+
+It is worth while trying to understand what truth underlay those parts
+of his teaching which seem most repulsive. The worship of force, which
+is so apparent in many of his writings, is a striking example. He was
+often accused of teaching that might is right. He always answered that
+he had not done so--that what he taught was that right is might; that
+by the providential constitution of the Universe truth in the long run
+is sure to be stronger than falsehood; that good will prevail over
+evil, and that right and might, though they differ widely in short
+periods of time, would in long spaces prove to be identical. Nothing,
+he was accustomed to say, seemed weaker than the Christian religion
+when the disciples assembled in the upper room; yet it was in truth
+the strongest thing in the world, and it accordingly prevailed. It was
+one of his favourite sayings 'that the soul of the Universe is just,'
+and he believed therefore that the ultimate fate of nations, whether
+it be good or bad, was very much what they deserved. It is curious to
+observe the analogy between this teaching and the doctrine of the
+survival of the fittest, which a very different teacher--Charles
+Darwin--has made so conspicuous.
+
+He scandalised--and I think with a good deal of reason--most of his
+contemporaries by the ridicule which he threw upon the career of
+Howard, and upon the great movement for prison reform which was so
+actively pursued in his time. Much of what he wrote on this subject
+is, to me at least, very repulsive; but you will generally find in the
+most extravagant utterances of Carlyle that there is some true meaning
+at bottom. He maintained that the passion for reforming and improving
+prisons and prison-life had been carried in England to such a point
+that the lot of a convicted criminal was often much better than that
+of an honest and struggling artisan. He believed that a just and wise
+distribution of compassion is a most important element of national
+well-being, and that the English people are very apt to be indifferent
+to great masses of unobtrusive, struggling, honourable, unsensational
+poverty at their very doors, while they fall into paroxysms of emotion
+about the actors in some sensational crime, about some seductive
+murderess, about the wrongs of some far-off and often half-savage
+race. 'In one of these Lancashire weavers dying with hunger there is
+more thought and heart, a greater arithmetical amount of misery and
+desperation, than in whole gangs of Quashees.' He maintained, too,
+that a strain of sentiment about criminals was very prevalent in his
+day, which tended seriously to obliterate or diminish the real
+difference between right and wrong. He hated with an intense hatred
+that whole system of philosophy which denied that there was a deep,
+essential, fundamental difference between right and wrong, and turned
+the whole matter into a mere calculation of interests. He was
+accustomed to say that one of the chief merits of Christianity was
+that it taught that right and wrong were as far apart as Heaven and
+Hell, and that no greater calamity can befall a nation than a
+weakening of the righteous hatred of evil.
+
+The parts of Carlyle's teaching on which I have dwelt to-day will be
+chiefly found in his 'Past and Present,' his 'Heroes and Hero
+Worship,' his 'Latter-day Pamphlets,' his 'Chartism,' and in the two
+admirable essays called 'Signs of the Times' and 'Characteristics.' In
+my own opinion, though Carlyle teaches much, his writings are most
+valuable as a moral force. Very few great writers have maintained more
+steadily that the moral element is the deepest and most important part
+of our being, deeper and stronger than all intellectual
+considerations. In his writings, amid much that has imperishable
+value, there is, I think, much that is exaggerated, much that is
+one-sided, much that is unwise. But no one can be imbued with his
+teaching without finding it a great moral tonic, and deriving from it
+a nobler, braver, and more unworldly conception of human life.
+
+
+
+
+ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS[8]
+
+
+Among the strange and unforeseen developments that have characterised
+the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, few are likely to be
+regarded by the future historian with a deeper or more melancholy
+interest than the anti-Semite movement, which has swept with such a
+portentous rapidity over a great part of Europe. It has produced in
+Russia by far the most serious religious persecution of the century.
+It has raged fiercely in Roumania, the other great centre of the
+Oriental Jews. In enlightened Germany it has become a considerable
+parliamentary force. In Austria it counts among its adherents men of
+the highest social station. Even France, which from the days of the
+Revolution has been specially distinguished for its liberality to the
+Jews, has not escaped the contagion. General Boulanger found the
+anti-Jewish sentiment sufficiently powerful to make an appeal to it
+one of the articles of his programme, and the extraordinary popularity
+of the writings of Drumont shows that Boulanger had not altogether
+miscalculated its force.
+
+It is this movement which has been the occasion of the very valuable
+work of M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu on 'Israel among the Nations.' The
+author, who is universally recognised as one of the greatest of living
+political writers, has special qualifications for his task. With an
+exceedingly wide knowledge of the literature relating to his subject
+he combines much personal knowledge of the Jews in Palestine and in
+many other countries, and especially in those countries where the
+persecution has most furiously raged.
+
+That persecution, he justly says, unites in different degrees three of
+the most powerful elements that can move mankind--the spirit of
+religious intolerance; the spirit of exclusive nationality; and the
+jealousy which springs from trade or mercantile competition. Of these
+elements M. Leroy-Beaulieu considers the first to be on the whole the
+weakest. In that hideous Russian Persecution which 'the New Exodus' of
+Frederic has made familiar to the English reader, the religious
+element certainly occupies a very leading place. Pobedonosteff, who
+shared with his master the chief guilt and infamy of this atrocious
+crime, belonged to the same type as the Torquemadas of the past, and
+the spirit that animated him has entered largely into the anti-Semite
+movement in other lands. The 'Gloria' of Galdos, perhaps the most
+powerful religious novel of our time, describes the conflict in modern
+Spain of the fanaticism of Catholicism with the fanaticism of Judaism.
+Even the old calumny that the Jews are accustomed at Easter to murder
+Christian children in order to mix their blood with the passover
+bread, is still living in many parts of Europe. M. Leroy-Beaulieu has
+collected much curious evidence on the subject. It is a calumny which
+appears first to have become popular about 1100 A.D. It is
+embodied in a well-known tale of Chaucer. It is the subject of one of
+the great frescoes that were painted around the Cathedral of Toledo to
+commemorate the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Two Popes of the
+thirteenth century, to their great honour, declared its falsehood,
+and by the order of Benedict XIV. Ganganelli wrote a full memoir
+examining and refuting it. But in spite of all condemnations, in spite
+of many exposures in the law courts, it is still a popular belief in
+Russia, Poland, Roumania, Hungary, and Bohemia, and even within the
+last ten years it has been the direct cause of many outrages against
+the Jews.
+
+Another element to which M. Leroy-Beaulieu attaches considerable
+importance is the Kultur Kampf in Germany. When the German Government
+was engaged in its fierce struggle with the Catholics, these
+endeavoured to effect a diversion and to avenge themselves on papers,
+which were largely in the hands of Jews, by raising a new cry. They
+declared that a Kultur Kampf was indeed needed, but that it should be
+directed against the alien people who were undermining the moral
+foundations of Christian societies; who were the implacable enemies of
+the Christian creed and of Christian ideals. The cry was soon taken up
+by a large body of Evangelical Protestants. The 'Germania' and the
+'Civiltà Cattolica,' which were the chief organs of Ultramontanism in
+Germany and Italy, and the 'Kreuz Zeitung,' which represented the
+strictest forms of German Protestantism, agreed in fomenting it.
+
+Still more powerful, in the opinion of our author, has been the spirit
+of intense and exclusive nationality which has in the present
+generation arisen in so many countries and which seeks to expel all
+alien or heterogeneous elements, and to mould the whole national being
+into a single definite type. The movement has been still further
+strengthened by the greater keenness of trade competition. In the
+midst of many idle, drunken, and ignorant populations the shrewd,
+thrifty, and sober Jew stands conspicuous as the most successful
+trader. His rare power of judging, influencing, and managing men, his
+fertility of resource, his indomitable perseverance and industry,
+continually force him into the foremost rank, and he is prominent in
+occupations which excite much animosity. The tax-gatherer, the agent,
+the middleman, and the moneylender are very commonly of Jewish race,
+and great Jewish capitalists largely control the money markets of
+Europe at a time when capital is the special object of socialistic
+attacks.
+
+The most valuable portion of this work is, I think, that examining the
+part which the Jewish race is now playing in the world, and tracing
+the action of historical causes on the formation of their character.
+On the old problem of the continued existence of the race through so
+many ages M. Leroy-Beaulieu has much to say. He reminds us that in the
+East the idea of nationality is habitually absorbed in the idea of
+religion, and that there are many examples of the long survival of
+peoples or tribes which have lost their political individuality. He
+instances the Copts of Egypt, the Maronites and Druses of Lebanon, the
+Parsees of India, the Armenians and Greeks of Asia as displaying,
+though in a less degree, the same phenomenon as the Jews. He
+attributes the long continuance of the Jews as a separate people
+mainly to two causes. One of them is Christian hatred, which compelled
+the Jews for many centuries to remain a separate people, unmixed with
+surrounding nations; living in a separate quarter; marrying among
+themselves; strengthened and disciplined in the struggle of life by
+enormous difficulties and by the constant elimination through
+persecution of the weaker elements. The other is the very elaborate
+Jewish ritual extending to all departments of life, which has stamped
+upon them an intensely distinctive character.
+
+The force of these causes is undoubted, but they are not, I think, the
+only elements to be considered. M. Leroy-Beaulieu appears to me to
+have somewhat underrated the physiological force and tenacity of the
+Jewish race-type. Following the line of reasoning of a remarkable
+essay of Renan, he shows very clearly that the modern Jews are far
+from being pure Semites. He proves from Josephus and from other
+sources that there was a considerable period, both before and after
+the Christian era, when great numbers of Greeks, Latins, and Egyptians
+adopted the Jewish faith; that much alien blood afterward poured into
+the race through conversions among the barbarians and through the
+circumcision of the slaves of Jewish masters, and that there is even
+reason to believe that, in some periods of history, marriages with
+Christians were not infrequent. It is probable, however, that most
+alien elements that were introduced into the race sooner or later
+mingled with the old stock, and no fact is more clearly shown than the
+extraordinary power of the Jewish type to survive and dominate in a
+mixed race. A single instance of a marriage with a Jewess will be
+sufficient to perpetuate it in a family for many generations. In this
+fact the Jews possess an element of stability which is wholly
+independent of all considerations of creed and ritual. Few things are
+more curious than the effect of persecution on the Jewish element in
+Spain and Portugal. Tens of thousands of Jews in those countries were
+burned at the stake or driven into exile, but great numbers also
+conformed. They mixed in a few generations with the old Christian
+population, and Spain and Portugal, M. Leroy-Beaulieu truly says, are
+now among the countries in which the Jewish blood is most evidently
+and most widely diffused.
+
+Another consideration, which M. Leroy-Beaulieu has omitted to mention,
+but which appears to me to have much weight, is the condemnation of
+lending money at interest by the Church. This condemnation, which
+lasted many centuries, had two important consequences. One of them was
+that the Jews became almost the only moneylenders in Europe. The trade
+was deemed sinful for a Christian, but it was found to be a very
+necessary one; and the Jews (as some Catholic theologians observed)
+being already damned, were allowed to practise it. The other
+consequence was that on account of the stigma which the Church
+attached to moneylending, the amount of money to be lent was greatly
+diminished, or in other words, the rate of interest was enormously and
+artificially raised. At a time, therefore, when Catholic intolerance
+made it impossible for the Jews to mingle with and be absorbed in
+surrounding nations they acquired one of the greatest elements of
+power and stability that a race can possess--a monopoly of the most
+lucrative trade in the world.
+
+The physical characteristics of the race are very remarkable and they
+are especially displayed among the Eastern Jews, who still maintain
+scrupulously amid poverty and persecution the religious observances of
+their ancestors. It is now clearly shown that the Levitical code was
+in a high degree hygienic, and even anticipates some of the
+discoveries of modern physiology. Prescriptions about forbidden kinds
+of food and about the mode of cooking food, which only excited the
+ridicule of Voltaire, have a real hygienic value in the eyes of Claude
+Bernard and of Pasteur. The Jews have never adopted the Catholic
+notions about the sanctity of celibacy and virginity, but they lay
+great stress on the purity of marriage. Although they live chiefly in
+towns, illegitimate births are proportionately rarer among them than
+among either Protestants or Catholics. They have been as a rule
+singularly free from the kinds of vice that do most to enfeeble and
+corrode a race. They are distinguished for their domestic virtues,
+especially for care of their children, and they are nearly everywhere
+less addicted than Christian nations to intoxicating drinks. These
+things help to explain the curious fact that in nearly all countries
+the average duration of life is considerably longer among Jews than
+among Christians. This superiority is general, but, as M.
+Leroy-Beaulieu observes, it tends to diminish in Western countries
+where Jews, being freed from disabilities, are more assimilated to the
+surrounding populations. They now usually marry later than Christians;
+they have on the whole fewer children, but a proportionately larger
+number of Jewish than of Christian infants attain adult age. M.
+Leroy-Beaulieu mentions two curious facts which are less easy to
+explain. Still-born births are very rare among Jews, and there is
+among them a wholly abnormal preponderance of male births over female
+ones.
+
+It might be supposed from these facts that the Jews were a robust
+race, but no one who has come much in contact with them will share
+this delusion. Nothing is more conspicuous among them than their
+unhealthy colouring, their frail, bent, and feeble bodies. They
+develop early, but they have very little of the spring and buoyancy of
+youth and they have everywhere a low average of physical strength.
+Malformations and deformities are common among them; their nervous
+organisation is extremely sensitive, and though they are as a race
+distinguished for their sound, clear, and practical judgment, they are
+very liable to insanity and to other nervous and brain disorders.
+Physical beauty as well as physical strength is much rarer among them
+than among Christians.
+
+The causes of this inferiority may be easily explained. Life pursued
+during many generations in the crowded Ghetto; the sordid habits that
+grow out of extreme poverty and out of the assumption of the
+appearance of poverty, which is natural in a persecuted and plundered
+race, go far to explain it; but there is another and, I think, a more
+important cause which M. Leroy-Beaulieu has rather strangely
+neglected. Physical strength and beauty can be maintained at a high
+level in crowded town populations only by a constant influx from the
+country. The pure air and the healthy labour of the fields are their
+main source. This great school of health the Jews have never known.
+For many centuries it would have been impossible for them to have
+lived in peace as farmers or agricultural labourers among a Christian
+peasantry, and if they ever possessed any aptitude or taste for
+agricultural pursuits they have long since wholly lost it.
+
+Their moral like their physical characteristics present strange
+contrasts. No natural want of moral elevation or tenderness or grace
+can be ascribed to the nation that has produced both the Old Testament
+and the Gospels, and has most largely shaped and inspired the moral
+life of the civilised world. In Christian times no race has maintained
+its faith with a more devoted courage, and it has encountered and
+survived persecutions before which the persecutions of other creeds
+dwindle almost into insignificance. M. Leroy-Beaulieu quotes the
+statement of the grand Rabbi Lehmann, that it is a clearly attested
+fact that in two months of the year 1096 twelve thousand Jews, whose
+names have been preserved, were massacred in the towns of the Rhine
+alone, because they refused to accept a Christian baptism. The Spanish
+Jews who perished by one of the most excruciating deaths rather than
+forswear their faith may be numbered by thousands, and those who
+preferred exile and spoliation to apostasy, by hundreds of thousands.
+Even in our own sceptical and materialising age the conduct of the
+Russian Jews under the recent savage persecution shows that the old
+spirit is not extinct. In the face of the long and splendid roll of
+Jewish heroism, it is idle to dwell on the fact that in each great
+persecution some Jews have yielded to the fear of death and consented
+to perform the rites of a faith which they inwardly abhorred, or on
+the fact that a few Rabbis have under such circumstances justified
+these feigned conversions.
+
+Prolonged persecution, however, has had a profound influence on their
+character, and its influence in some respects has been very
+pernicious. Hatred naturally provokes hatred, and violent oppression
+against which there is no redress is naturally encountered by
+subterfuge and fraud. A race who were for centuries playing their part
+in life against overwhelming obstacles learned to avail themselves of
+every advantage. Adulation, servility, falsehood, and deception became
+common among them. They became at once hard, wily, and rapacious, and
+ready instruments in ignoble and oppressive callings. Shut out from
+open paths and honourable ambitions they haunted the obscurer byways
+of industry; they were to be found in many occupations which sharpen
+the intellect but blunt the moral sense, and they threw themselves
+passionately into the acquisition of wealth and of secret power.
+Exposed for generations, even in lands where they were not more
+seriously persecuted, to constant insult and contempt, they often lost
+their self-respect and learned to acquiesce tamely in what another
+race would resent. Slavish conditions produced, as they always do,
+slavish characteristics, and, as is always the case, those
+characteristics did not at once disappear when the conditions that
+produced them had altered.
+
+M. Leroy-Beaulieu has dwelt with much force on this subject, and he
+ascribes considerable weight to the fact that the Jews have been
+wholly outside the system of feudalism and chivalry in which the
+modern conception of honour was chiefly formed. Perhaps the Jew might
+retort with some justice, that he has had at least the compensating
+moral advantage of having derived no part of his notions of right and
+wrong from a Church in which such an institution as the Spanish
+Inquisition was deemed a holy thing.
+
+Defects of another kind have contributed largely to his unpopularity.
+Great as is the power of assimilation which the Jewish race possesses,
+the charm and grace of manner seem to have been among the qualities
+they most slowly and most imperfectly acquire. It is natural that men
+who have been excluded from honours but not from wealth should value
+money and the ostentatious display of riches more than their
+neighbours. In the professions in which the Jews chiefly excel, men
+rise most rapidly from low origin and culture to conspicuous wealth.
+Direct money-making has some tendency to materialise and lower the
+character, and Jews have been for generations prominent in occupations
+which do much to impair those delicacies of feeling on which the charm
+of manner largely depends. Besides this, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu truly
+remarks, though the oldest of the cultured races they are a race of
+_parvenus_ in the good society of Europe. In nearly all countries they
+have till very recently been excluded from the kind of society and
+from the kind of education in which the best manners are formed. The
+exaggerations of bad taste; the love of the loud, the gaudy, the
+ostentatious, and the meretricious; the awkwardness of men who are ill
+at ease in an unaccustomed sphere, who have not yet mastered the happy
+mean between arrogance and obsequiousness and who are therefore
+somewhat prone to both extremes, still frequently characterise them.
+Few persons who know Germany will doubt that the tone of manners of
+the German Jews has contributed quite as much as any other cause to
+their unpopularity.
+
+It is probable that these defects will gradually diminish, and it
+would be a grave error to regard the Jewish race as wholly devoted to
+material ends. The multitude of their martyrs is a sufficient answer
+to the charge, and no people cherish more strongly the ideals of their
+past and have more of the pride both of race and of creed. They have
+at all times, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu observes, been distinguished for
+their reverence for learning, and it is an undoubted fact that Jewish
+families and families mixed with Jewish blood have produced an amount
+and variety of ability that far exceed the average of men. The ability
+goes rather with the race than with the religion. Spinosa, Heine,
+Ricardo, and Disraeli--to quote but a few of the most illustrious
+names--were not believers in the synagogue. Some of the forms in which
+the Jews have most excelled are such as might have been expected from
+their past. It is natural that the descendants of the most nomadic
+and cosmopolitan of races should have been great masters of language
+and in the foremost rank of philologists, and it is not surprising
+that the descendants of the chief moneylenders and calculators of the
+world should have produced great financiers, and have shown a very
+eminent aptitude for mathematics. Medicine more than most professions
+depends on individual ability, and has been exercised independently of
+the favour of Churches and Governments, and in medicine the Jews were
+for a long period pre-eminent. Their marked taste and turn for music
+may appear more surprising. It is universally recognised and is
+sufficiently evident to anyone who will look at the faces of the chief
+orchestras of Europe. Besides a crowd of lesser names they have
+produced among composers Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and Halévy, and among
+contemporary performers Rubinstein, Joachim, Hermann Levy, and Lucca.
+A Jewess is the most popular tragic actress on the contemporary stage,
+and another Jewess was probably the greatest tragic actress of the
+century. M. Leroy-Beaulieu notices that in painting and sculpture the
+Jews have been less conspicuous, and he attributes this to their
+horror of idolatry. I should rather ascribe it to the fact that
+European art in its best period was mainly devoted to depicting
+Christian subjects for Christian churches. At all events several
+considerable Jewish names may be cited in contemporary art, and the
+Dutch painter who bears the name of Israels is perhaps the greatest
+living master of the pathetic in painting. In Western Europe, wherever
+public life has been opened to them, Jews have thrown themselves into
+almost all the great movements of their time and have distinguished
+themselves in nearly all. Crémieux, who was a leading figure in the
+French Republic of 1848, was a Jew both by birth and by creed. David
+Manin and Léon Gambetta had Jewish blood in their veins. Lassalle and
+Marx, the chief names in German socialism, as well as great numbers of
+their followers belong to the same race, and more than one English
+example of political eminence will occur to the reader. In both German
+and Dutch literature Jewish names are frequent and they are nearly
+everywhere prominent in journalism. In the army they have been much
+less distinguished. Many Jews no doubt serve in the great continental
+armies with honour, but the Jew is naturally a pacific being, hating
+violence and recoiling with a peculiar horror from blood. The
+beneficence of the Jew was for a long time very naturally confined to
+his own race, but since the hand of persecution has been withdrawn,
+and wherever the Jews have been suffered to mingle freely with the
+Christian population, it has taken a wider range and Jewish names are
+conspicuous in some of the best forms of unsectarian philanthropy.
+
+It is the evident tendency of modern political life to split up into a
+number of distinct groups representing distinct interests or forms of
+thought. We find a Catholic party, a Nonconformist party, a Labour
+party, a Socialist party, a Temperance party, and many others. But in
+spite of the crusade that has arisen in so many countries against the
+Jews, we nowhere find a distinct and clearly defined Jewish party. The
+tendency of the race is rather to throw themselves ardently into
+existing movements, and their power of assimilation is one of their
+most remarkable gifts. As M. Leroy-Beaulieu shows by many
+illustrations, they are apt in most Western nations even to exaggerate
+the national characteristics, though they usually combine with them a
+certain flexibility of adaptation and a certain cosmopolitanism of
+view which is essentially their own.
+
+It was inevitable that with such tendencies the old rigidity of creed
+should be impaired and that the observances which completely severed
+the Jew from other people should be discarded. There can be little
+doubt that the dissolution of old beliefs which has been such a marked
+and ominous characteristic of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century has been even more common among the Western Jews than in
+Christian nations, and it appears to have spread quite as rapidly
+among the women as among the men. Many Jews have passed into complete
+religious indifference--into absolute and often very cynical negation.
+They have become, as Sheridan wittily said, like the blank page
+between the Old and the New Testament. Others have taken refuge in a
+kind of highly rationalised Judaism little different from pure Theism.
+Some of the most independent, scientific, and trenchant criticism of
+the Old Testament writings has proceeded from members of the race
+which was once distinguished for the most complete and superstitious
+worship of the letter of the law. Spinoza in his 'Tractatus
+Theologico-Politicus' led the way in this path, and in our own day I
+need only mention the writings of Salvador, Kalisch, and Darmesteter
+and the remarkable Hibbert Lectures of Mr. Montefiore.
+
+This movement, however, is chiefly confined to the Western Jews. The
+Oriental Jews have retained in a far greater measure their old creed
+and ritual, their old fanaticism and aspirations. To them Palestine is
+still the land of promise, and they still dream that it is destined to
+become once more a Jewish State. Few persons who consider the
+conditions of the East and the power of the Jewish race will
+pronounce the realisation of this dream to be impossible or even in a
+very high degree improbable. Perhaps the most formidable obstacle is
+the poverty of the land and the total absence among the Jews of
+agricultural tastes and aptitudes. One thing, however, may be safely
+predicted. If Palestine is ever again to become a Jewish land, this
+will be effected only through the wealth and energy of the Western
+Jews, and it is not those Jews who are likely to inhabit it.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Mr. Lecky had made various notes with the intention of bringing this
+essay up to date, but failing health prevented him from accomplishing
+it.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+MADAME DE STAËL
+
+
+Among the many important works which have lately been published on the
+Continent, reconstructing the history of France during the struggle of
+the Revolution and during the periods that immediately preceded and
+followed it, scarcely any have been so comprehensive, and not many
+have been so valuable, as 'The History of the Life and Times of Madame
+de Staël,' by Lady Blennerhassett. The author--a Bavarian lady who was
+an intimate friend and favourite pupil of Dr. Döllinger--has brought
+to her task a knowledge, which is scarcely rivalled in its
+completeness, of the French, German, English, and Italian literatures
+relating to the period; and she has produced a work of which it is in
+one sense the merit, but in another the defect, that it sweeps over a
+far wider field than might be expected from its title. It is seldom, I
+think, a judicious thing to confuse the provinces of history and
+biography by turning the life of an individual into an elaborate
+history of his time; and in the few cases in which this method has
+been successfully pursued, the biographer has selected as his subject
+some man like Cromwell, or Frederick the Great, or Napoleon, who was
+indisputably the chief mover of his age. When figures of less
+prominence are chosen, both the history and the biography are apt to
+suffer. The true perspective, or relative magnitude, of events is
+impaired, and the book is almost sure to lose something of its
+artistic charm and of its popularity. Mr. Masson, as it seems to me,
+committed a mistake of this kind in his 'Life of Milton,' when he
+grouped around the great Puritan poet--who, however illustrious, was
+certainly not the central figure of his time--a full and valuable
+history of the Commonwealth, and of large sections of the reigns of
+Charles I. and Charles II.
+
+In like manner, a great part of the work of Lady Blennerhassett is not
+biography, but history, and history of a very high order. Madame de
+Staël was so closely connected in her own person, and still more
+through her father, with the early events of the French Revolution,
+that we accept with gratitude the admirable sketch of that period
+which Lady Blennerhassett has given us; but we should scarcely expect
+to find in a work primarily devoted to Madame de Staël full and
+masterly accounts of the Ministry of Turgot, of the rise and teaching
+of the Economists, of the rival influence of the writings of
+Montesquieu and Rousseau on the French political character, of the
+effect of English influence and American example in preparing the
+Revolution, and of the part played by Germans and Swedes in French
+politics. At the same time, the pictures of the social and
+intellectual life prevailing in the different countries with which
+Madame de Staël was connected, and the full accounts given of a crowd
+of persons with whom she came into casual contact, though in
+themselves both interesting and valuable, often tend to divert the
+reader from the main subject of the book. In truth, Lady
+Blennerhassett has not been able to resist the temptation of a very
+full mind to pour out all its knowledge, and, while possessing many
+rare and brilliant literary gifts, she appears to me to want that
+restraining sense of literary perspective which gives biography its
+true proportion and symmetry. This defect has, I fear, diminished the
+popularity of a most valuable book. In the original German, and in an
+excellent French translation which was revised by the author and which
+I especially commend to my readers, the work consists of three very
+substantial volumes.[9] A hasty reader will readily conclude that, in
+this short and crowded life, such a space is far more than should be
+allotted to a long-vanished figure which, though interesting and
+brilliant, was not of the first magnitude. But if he has the courage
+to persevere, he will soon discover that few modern books have lighted
+up in so many directions the political, social, moral, and
+intellectual history of a momentous period, and have exhibited at once
+so many kinds of talent and so wide a range of sympathies and
+knowledge. The complete competence, the firm, sober, and--if I may use
+the expression--masculine judgment with which Lady Blennerhassett has
+grasped the great political problems of the period of the Revolution,
+is not less conspicuous than the truly feminine delicacy of
+observation and touch with which she has delineated social life in
+many different countries, and painted the finer shades of many widely
+dissimilar characters.
+
+Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born in Paris on April 22, 1766. Her
+father was at that time known only as a Swiss banker of high character
+and reputation, who had amassed a vast fortune and had come to Paris
+for his private affairs; but about two years after the birth of his
+daughter he was appointed to represent the interests of Geneva at
+Paris, and when she was ten years old he rose, for the first time, to
+a leading place in the Ministry of France. Her mother had been the
+Mademoiselle Curchod whose charms and accomplishments had captivated
+Gibbon when he was a young man at Lausanne. Every reader of his
+autobiography will remember the famous passage in which he describes
+his engagement, the opposition of his father, and the resignation with
+which he 'sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son.' M. d'Haussonville
+has published from the archives at Coppet some melancholy letters
+which show clearly that Gibbon exhibited more heartlessness and
+inflicted more suffering than might be gathered from his own stately
+narrative. But no lasting scar remained. After a few years of poverty
+and hardship, during which she was obliged to earn a livelihood as a
+schoolmistress, Mademoiselle Curchod found in Necker a husband who
+realised her fondest wishes; and when, soon after, she became the
+centre of a brilliant salon at Paris, her former lover, then in the
+zenith of his fame, was often among her guests. Madame Necker did not
+always abstain from slightly veiled allusions to the past, but it is
+pleasant to see that a warm and solid friendship seems to have grown
+up between Gibbon and both his host and hostess. A pretty anecdote is
+related of how, on one occasion, after he had left the house, they
+agreed in expressing the deep regret with which they looked forward to
+his approaching departure for England; when their little daughter, who
+was then just ten years old, gravely offered to prevent the
+catastrophe by marrying the illustrious, but by no means
+prepossessing, historian.
+
+It was a saying of Talleyrand that he who had not lived before 1789
+had never known the full charm of life. Germaine Necker grew up in the
+last bright flush of a society which had, perhaps, as many
+fascinations as any that the world has known. Her mother, however,
+though she occupied a prominent position in this brilliant world, was
+never altogether of it. She shared fully, indeed, its intellectual
+tastes, and had herself won some small place in literature. She threw
+herself ardently into its philanthropic movements, and especially into
+that for the reform of the hospitals. She formed a warm and true
+friendship with Buffon and Thomas. She corresponded with Voltaire, and
+attracted to her house most of the best writers of the age. But to the
+last she remained eminently and characteristically Swiss, and she
+never acquired the light touch, or the easy, pliant grace, of the true
+Parisian. She was a little cold, a little prim, a little pedantic, a
+little self-conscious. Neither her reserved manners nor her strong
+domestic tastes, nor the vein of Puritanism that ran through her
+opinions, harmonised with the lax and sceptical society around her,
+and it was no sacrifice to her to exchange the splendours and the
+gaieties of Paris for her peaceful retreat on the Lake of Geneva.
+
+In this, as in most respects, her daughter was very different. In her
+the Swiss element had altogether disappeared, and, as is often the
+case with the eminent child of eminent parents, her character shot out
+in directions wholly unlike both that of her father and that of her
+mother. She was not beautiful, though her dark and eminently lustrous
+eyes, beaming with intelligence, and her rich brown tint, gave some
+charm to her large and rather coarse features; while her massive
+shoulders, arms, and breast, her full lips and the firm grasp of her
+vigorous hand, indicated a strong, frank, ruling, and passionate
+nature, overflowing with life and with many forms of energy. Her
+education was somewhat fitfully conducted, but she threw herself
+eagerly into literary enthusiasms. At fifteen we find her annotating
+Montesquieu. Raynal and Richardson were among her idols, but, like
+most of the more ardent spirits of her generation, her ideas and
+character were moulded chiefly by the genius of Rousseau. Her first
+work of importance was an exposition of his doctrines, and his
+influence left deep traces on both 'Corinne' and 'Delphine.' Her
+strong sane judgment, however, her genuine humanity, and the
+moderating influence of her father, saved her from being swept away,
+like Madame Roland and most of the disciples of Rousseau, by the
+sanguinary torrent of revolutionary enthusiasm; and in times of wild
+passion and exaggeration she usually exhibited a singular soundness
+and sobriety of political judgment. She was sometimes mistaken, but on
+the whole it may well be doubted whether there is any other French
+writer or politician of the period of the Revolution whose
+contemporary judgments of men and events have been more frequently
+ratified by posterity.
+
+In this respect she was not of the school of Rousseau. In another and
+less admirable way she was curiously untouched by his spirit, for few
+superior intellects have been so openly, so utterly, insensible to the
+charms of nature. She once spoke of 'the infernal peace' of her Swiss
+home, and she candidly acknowledged that if it were not for respect
+for the opinions of others she would not open her window to look for
+the first time on the Bay of Naples, though she would gladly travel
+five hundred leagues to make the acquaintance of a man of talent. On
+the borders of the Lake of Geneva, with one of the fairest scenes on
+earth expanding before her, she was incessantly pining for 'le
+ruisseau de la Rue du Bac'--for the interest and the excitement of a
+society which had become the passion of her life.
+
+Her gifts of conversation were very wonderful, and she had a wide
+range of sympathies, keen insight into character, and great power of
+describing it by a few vivid words. She had, however, no reticence or
+reserve, she made many enemies by her unbounded frankness, and she
+often fatigued or overwhelmed by her exuberant animal spirits and by
+the torrent of her words. At the same time, unlike most great talkers,
+she possessed to a very eminent degree the gifts of learning from
+others, of grasping the characteristic features of their teaching, of
+awakening sympathies, of dispelling bashfulness, and of kindling
+latent intellect into a flame. Few women combined so remarkably a
+sound and moderate judgment with extreme vividness and impetuosity of
+emotion. She admired deeply, and she generally admired wisely; her
+first judgments and impulses were almost always generous; and,
+although she was subject to violent gusts of passion, she could be
+very patient with those she loved. Through her whole life she was the
+warmest and most self-sacrificing of friends, and her few antipathies
+were singularly devoid of rancour. One of those who knew her best
+pronounced her to be 'absolutely incapable of hatred.'
+
+She soon became the most attractive figure in the salon of Madame
+Necker, and as the health of her mother declined she became its
+central figure. Her rare accomplishments and her position as a great
+heiress naturally would have drawn many suitors around her, but in
+that age the determined Protestantism of her family was a formidable
+barrier. It appears from something that she wrote late in life to a
+German correspondent that, when a mere girl, she had come under the
+spell of Louis de Narbonne, who asked her hand, and with whom, in
+after years, she had relations which caused much scandal and which
+greatly coloured her political life. The story that her parents at one
+time contemplated a marriage between her and William Pitt, on the
+occasion of his visit to France in 1783, was discredited by Lord
+Stanhope; but M. d'Haussonville pronounces it to be quite true, though
+there is no clear evidence that Pitt was apprised of the wish of the
+Neckers. She was then only seventeen, and her vehement protest against
+an English marriage nipped the project in the bud. In 1786, however, a
+marriage was negotiated for her with the Swedish ambassador, the Baron
+de Staël, who was at that time a special favourite of Gustavus III. It
+was a marriage into which but little affection entered, and twelve
+years later it ended in a separation. There was afterward, it is true,
+a partial reconciliation, and she was present with her husband when he
+died, in 1802, on the way from Paris to Coppet.
+
+Her marriage gave her an independent position, and she mixed much in
+the politics of the early days of the Revolution. She corresponded
+regularly with the Swedish King, and formed intimate friendships with
+great numbers of the guiding politicians. The proudest moment of her
+life was in August 1788, when, amid a transport of transient
+enthusiasm and extravagant hopefulness, her father was for the second
+time called to the helm. Her devotion to him amounted almost to
+adoration, and she would never acknowledge, what the rest of the world
+soon perceived, that, though excellently adapted to be Minister in
+quiet, regular times, he had neither the daring nor the insight, nor
+the commanding power, that was needed to guide the bark of State
+through the fierce storms of the Revolution. She fully shared the
+enthusiasm with which the opening of the States General was received.
+She mentions that on that occasion she was watching the procession
+from a window with Madame de Montmorin, wife of the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs, and that as she expressed her delight, her companion
+said: 'You are wrong in rejoicing; great calamities will follow from
+this to France and to us.' The words were truly prophetic. Madame de
+Montmorin perished on the scaffold with one of her sons; the other was
+drowned. Her husband was murdered in prison during the massacre of the
+second of September. Her eldest daughter died in the prison hospital.
+Her youngest daughter withered away when not yet thirty,
+broken-hearted by the calamities of her family.
+
+Madame de Staël, too, soon discovered that no millennium was at hand.
+She was an eye-witness of the terrible scenes of the fifth and sixth
+of October, when Versailles was invaded by a half-famished mob, when
+the guards were cut down and beheaded, and when the royal family were
+brought captive to Paris. She clearly saw that all power was passing
+from the Government to the clubs, and that the mob violence which
+reigned was either instigated or deliberately connived at by the very
+men whose first duty was to repress it. 'These gentlemen,' she once
+said, 'are like the rainbow; they always appear when the storm is
+over.' Under her influence the Swedish Embassy became the chief centre
+in which the 'Constitutional Party' was organised. Narbonne and
+Talleyrand were then completely devoted to her. Ségur, Choiseul, the
+Prince de Broglie, and other members of the party were constantly at
+her house; and at what were called her 'coalition dinners' she brought
+them in contact with leading men of other groups. She had a
+conspicuous talent for inspiring, encouraging, conciliating, and
+organising a party; and for some months she exercised a very real
+political influence. Her aim was a constitutional monarchy of the
+English type; but she came gradually to believe that a republic, or at
+least a change of Sovereigns, had become inevitable. She never wavered
+in her devotion to liberty, order, and justice; but on minor questions
+she always exhibited a spirit of compromise which was very rare in her
+age and in her country. 'The true line of conduct in politics,' she
+once said, 'is always to be ready to rally to the least obnoxious
+party among your adversaries, even though it is far from representing
+exactly your own point of view.' At the end of 1791 she had a moment
+of delicious triumph, when her favourite Narbonne became Minister of
+War. Marie Antoinette, who disliked her, clearly recognised her hand.
+'Count Louis de Narbonne,' she wrote to Fersen, 'has been Minister of
+War since yesterday. What a glory for Madame de Staël and what a
+pleasure for her to have the whole army at her disposal!'
+
+The triumphs of Madame de Staël, however, were very fleeting. Her
+father had fallen irretrievably, and in September 1790 he passed
+almost unnoticed out of the country where, but little more than a year
+before, he had been welcomed with such enthusiasm. The Ministry of
+Narbonne, to which she had attached her most ardent hopes, ended in
+four months, and before its conclusion her husband, whose views on
+French politics had been for some time diverging from those of his
+Sovereign, was recalled. He was not, however, replaced, and Madame de
+Staël remained alone in Paris till September 1792. Her position there
+was an extremely dangerous one. She had long been an object of
+incessant abuse in the Royalist press, and now the red waves of
+Jacobinism were rising higher and higher, surging fiercely around
+those to whom she was most attached. Nothing in her life is so
+admirable as the courage with which, in this period of the Revolution,
+she devoted herself to saving the lives of the proscribed. Her purse
+was always open, and she often risked not only her fortune, but her
+life. The royal family had always disliked her; but she was filled
+with horror at the fate that was impending over them, and she herself
+organised a plan for their escape, in which, if it had been accepted,
+she would have borne a leading part, at the imminent risk of her head;
+and she afterward wrote an earnest and eloquent pamphlet in the hope
+of saving the life of the Queen. Sometimes by interceding with those
+in power, sometimes by concealing fugitives in the Swedish Embassy,
+very often by large and timely gifts of money, she saved many. Her own
+life, at the time of the September massacres, was in extreme danger,
+and she at last fled to Switzerland. Coppet then became a great centre
+of refugees, and many of them owed their lives to her help. Among
+others, Narbonne appears to have owed his escape, in part at least, to
+her assistance, and she chiefly managed the escape of his daughter.
+She was for a long time completely under his charm; but he is said to
+have been irritated by her often tactless impetuosity, and especially
+by the manner in which public opinion regarded him as her creature,
+and he seems to have treated her with much ingratitude. There was no
+violent breach, but there was a separation, and a wound which was long
+and bitterly felt. Many years later, Madame de Staël, when praising
+the Prince de Ligne, said of him: 'He had the manners of Monsieur de
+Narbonne--and a heart.'
+
+A short visit to England, in 1793, the death of her mother in May
+1794, and the publication of her first purely political work,
+'Reflections on Peace, addressed to Mr. Pitt and to the French,' were
+the chief events of her life during the next few months. In this work
+she dwelt with much force on the absurdity of supposing that any
+foreign intervention could restore what the Revolution had destroyed,
+and she predicted that the inevitable effect of the prolongation or
+extension of the war would be to strengthen that militant Jacobinism
+which was now the greatest danger to Europe. In this year, too, she
+first came in contact with Benjamin Constant, and her acquaintance
+soon developed into a connection which gave her a new and powerful
+instrument for acting on French politics, but which also brought with
+it much suffering, many reproaches, and long and lasting discredit. In
+May 1795 we find her again in Paris, with her husband, who had once
+more been sent on a mission to France; again eagerly engaged in French
+politics; again largely occupied in defending the interests of her
+proscribed friends. Among others, Talleyrand appears to have owed his
+recall to her influence. As usual, she excited many antipathies, she
+was denounced in the Convention by Legendre for her political
+intrigues and especially for her efforts in favour of the emigrants,
+and she was obliged to leave Paris for about eighteen months. Her pen
+was at this time very active, and to this period belong her 'Essay on
+Novels' and her 'Treatise on the Passions.'
+
+The star of Bonaparte was now rapidly rising, and it profoundly
+affected the last years of her life. The pages in her 'Considerations
+on the French Revolution' in which she describes her first interview
+with him, after the peace of Campo Formio, are among the most graphic
+she ever wrote, though something of the shadow of the picture was, no
+doubt, drawn from later experience and antipathy. She was at first
+dazzled; she was at all times profoundly impressed by his genius, but
+she soon came to perceive that his nature was wholly unlike that of
+other men. She had seen, she said, men worthy of all respect, and she
+had seen men noted for their ferocity; but the impression produced on
+her by Bonaparte was generically different from that produced by
+either of these classes. She found that such epithets as 'good,'
+'violent,' 'gentle,' and 'cruel' could not be applied to him in their
+ordinary senses. He was in truth a being who stood self-centred, and
+apart from the sympathies, passions, and enthusiasms of his kind,
+habitually regarding men, not as fellow-creatures, but as mere
+counters in a game; a will of colossal strength; an intellect of
+clear, cold, transcendent power, solely governed by the imperturbable
+calculation of the strictest egotism, and never drawn aside by love or
+hatred, by pity or religion, or by attachment to any cause. It was
+impossible, she found, to exaggerate his contempt for human nature and
+his disbelief in the reality of human virtue. A perfectly honest man
+was the only kind of man he never could understand. Such a man
+perplexed and baffled his calculations, acting on them as the sign of
+the cross acts on the machinations of a demon. The superiority which
+so clearly shone in his conversation was not that of a mind cultivated
+by study and by society; it was the supreme insight into the
+circumstances of life possessed by a mighty hunter of men. There was
+something in him, she said, like a cold and trenchant sword, which at
+the same moment could wound and chill.
+
+Such was the estimate she formed of the man who, nearly at the same
+time, was presented by Talleyrand to the Directory as 'the pacificator
+of Europe,' as a hero 'who despised luxury and pomp--the wretched
+ambition of common souls--and who loved the poems of Ossian,
+especially because they detach men from the earth'! That two such
+different natures should come into collision was very natural.
+Bonaparte always hated superior women, and especially women who
+meddled in politics. He well knew that the circle of Madame de Staël
+was the centre of ideas about freedom and constitutional government
+irreconcilably opposed to his ambition, and that the world of good
+society and good taste, of independent thought and independent
+characters, in which she played so great a part, remained unsubdued
+and undazzled by his power. Benjamin Constant had been placed in 'the
+Tribunate,' and in the beginning of 1800 he made a speech there,
+indicating a desire to establish in that body an opposition like the
+opposition in the English Parliament. Bonaparte was furious at his
+attitude, and at once ascribed it to the inspiration of Madame de
+Staël. A year later the last work of her father appeared, and it
+contained an earnest warning against growing despotism in France and a
+strong argument for the establishment of a republican constitution.
+The sayings of Madame de Staël that were repeated from lip to lip, and
+the atmosphere of thought that grew up around her, irritated and
+disquieted Bonaparte. 'She is moving the minds of men,' he said, 'in a
+direction that does not suit me.' 'They pretend that she does not
+speak of politics or of me, but somehow it always happens that those
+who have been with her become less attached to me.' Soon her salon was
+emptied by an emphatic intimation that those who entered it would
+incur the displeasure of the First Consul. Official scribes were
+busily employed in depreciating her, and these measures were speedily
+followed by the long exile which darkened the later years of her life.
+
+It is impossible for me in this article to relate, even in outline,
+the story of this exile, and of her travels in England, Italy,
+Austria, Russia, and, above all, in Germany. Madame de Staël has
+herself described this period of her life in her 'Ten Years of Exile,'
+and all the details have been collected by Lady Blennerhassett with an
+industry that leaves nothing to be desired. A woman of a more heroic
+type would have borne with less repining an exclusion from Paris life
+which was mitigated by wealth, and fame, and abundant occupation, and
+a family that adored her, and troops of admiring friends. A woman who
+was less essentially noble would have assuredly accepted the overtures
+that were more than once made to her, and would have purchased her
+peace with Napoleon by burning a few grains of literary incense on his
+altar. But though, in a life of more than common vicissitude and
+temptation, Madame de Staël was betrayed into great weaknesses and
+into some serious faults, she never lost her sense of the dignity and
+integrity of literature, and her works are singularly free from
+unworthy flattery as well as from unworthy resentments and jealousies.
+The homage which Napoleon desired was never received, and in her great
+work on Italy and her still greater one on Germany there was no trace
+of his victories, influence, or animosities. 'In France,' he once
+said, 'there is a small literature and a great literature; the small
+literature is on my side, but the great literature is not for me.'
+
+The disfavour which thrust Madame de Staël out of political
+influence, and then drove her into exile, proved a blessing in
+disguise, for it turned her mind decisively from political intrigues
+to those forms of literature in which she was most fitted to excel.
+Her treatise on 'Literature,' which was published in 1800, was
+conceived upon a scale too large for her own knowledge, and though she
+herself attributed to it the great and general favour that she enjoyed
+for a time in Paris society, it has not taken an enduring place in
+French literature. 'Delphine,' the most personal, and also the most
+censured, of her novels, had a still wider success, and made a deeper
+and more lasting impression. It appeared in 1802, and it was followed
+by a long interval, during which she appears to have published nothing
+except a short but admirable notice of her father, who died in the
+spring of 1804; but in 1807 'Corinne' burst upon the world, and at
+once obtained a European fame equalled by that of no French novel
+since 'La Nouvelle Héloise.' In this great work of imagination she
+embodied, in a highly poetic form, the impressions she had derived
+from her journeys in England and Italy, and its immense and
+instantaneous success placed her on the very pinnacle of fame. It is
+worthy of notice that a bitter attack upon 'Corinne' appeared in 'Le
+Moniteur,' based chiefly upon the fact that its hero was an
+Englishman; and there is good reason to believe that this attack was
+from the pen of Napoleon himself.
+
+A book of larger scope and of more serious influence soon followed.
+Germany at this time presented the singular spectacle of a people who
+had been reduced to the lowest depths of political depression, but
+who, at the same time, could boast of a contemporary literature that
+was the first in the world. In France a translation of 'Werther' had
+attained great popularity; some of the plays of Schiller, the idylls
+of Gessner, and a few other German works were well known; but scarcely
+any Frenchman had a conception of the magnitude and importance of the
+intellectual activity which was growing up beyond the Rhine, or of the
+vast place which Goethe, Schiller, and Kant were destined to take in
+European thought. It was one of the chief pleasures and occupations of
+Madame de Staël, during her exile, to explore this almost unknown
+field. It would scarcely have been thought that she was well fitted
+for the task. She learned the language late in life, and her
+characteristically French mind seemed very little in harmony with
+either the strength or the weakness of the Teutonic intellect. There
+was nothing very profound, or very subtle, or very poetical in her
+nature, and she had all that instinctive dislike to the vague, the
+disproportioned, the exaggerated, and the ambiguous, to fantastic and
+far-fetched conjecture, and to imposing edifices of speculation based
+upon scanty or shadowy materials, that pre-eminently distinguishes the
+best French thought. Very wisely, however, she placed herself in
+direct communication with the great writers of Germany, and a wholly
+new world of thought and sentiment gradually opened upon her mind. It
+is not too much to say that it was her pen that first revealed to the
+Latin world the intellectual greatness of Germany. In England,
+Coleridge had already laboured in the same field, and his admirable
+translation of 'Wallenstein' had appeared as early as 1800; but it had
+been completely still-born, and in England also it was reserved for
+the great Frenchwoman to give the first considerable impulse to the
+study of German literature. For the history, the merits, and the
+defects of her work on Germany, I cannot do better than to refer to
+the admirable pages which Lady Blennerhassett has devoted to the
+subject. With the doubtful exception of 'Le Génie du Christianisme,'
+it was by far the most important French work which appeared during the
+reign of Napoleon. It is a characteristic fact that the whole of the
+first edition was confiscated by order of his Government. Happily the
+manuscript was saved, and about three years later it was printed in
+England.
+
+After some discreditable scenes, on which a recently published
+correspondence has thrown a painful though somewhat doubtful light,
+the connection of Madame de Staël with Benjamin Constant was broken.
+The two continued occasionally to correspond, and as late as 1815 we
+find her lending him a large sum of money; but their relations were
+never again what they had been, and on the side of Constant there
+appears to have been a large amount of positive malevolence. 'O
+Benjamin,' she wrote to him in one of her later letters, 'you have
+destroyed my life! For ten years not a day has passed that my heart
+has not suffered for you--and yet I loved you so much!' A strong
+affection, such as she had not found in her marriage with the Baron de
+Staël, was an imperious necessity of her existence, and after her
+breach with Constant she soon found an object in a young officer from
+Geneva named Rocca, who had returned to his native town badly wounded
+after brilliant service in Spain. When they first met, in 1810, Madame
+de Staël was forty-four and Rocca about twenty-three; but a genuine
+and honourable affection seems to have grown up on both sides, and in
+the following year they were married. Madame de Staël, however, either
+clinging to her name or dreading the ridicule of such a strangely
+assorted marriage, insisted upon its concealment, and Rocca generally
+passed in society as her lover. A child was born in 1812, but it was
+only after the death of Madame de Staël that the legitimacy of the
+connection was established. It proved much more productive of
+happiness than might have been expected, and greatly brightened her
+closing years. Nearly at the same time an important change passed over
+her religious views, and the vague deism of her youth deepened into a
+positive, definite, and earnest Christianity, but without mysticism
+and without intolerance. Some beautiful lines that are cited by Lady
+Blennerhassett very faithfully express the spirit of her belief: 'Il
+faut avoir soin, si l'on peut, que le déclin de cette vie soit la
+jeunesse de l'autre. Se désintéresser de soi, sans cesser de
+s'intéresser aux autres, met quelque chose de divin dans l'âme.'
+
+She lived to see the downfall of perhaps the only man she really
+hated, his return from Elba, his final defeat at Waterloo, and the
+restoration of the Bourbons. But, though she detested Napoleon and his
+system, these things gave her no pleasure. The spectacle of an invaded
+and a dismembered France aroused her strongest feelings of patriotism,
+and she loved liberty too truly and too ardently to rejoice in the
+influences that triumphed in 1815. Her last years were chiefly spent
+in the composition of her 'Considerations on the French Revolution,'
+in which she sums up the convictions of her life. It is one of her
+most valuable and most lasting books. The disproportioned prominence
+which is naturally assigned in it to Necker, and the manifest personal
+element in her antipathy to Napoleon, impair its weight, indeed, as a
+history; but few writers have criticised with more justice the
+successive stages of the Revolution, and few books of its generation
+are so rich in political wisdom. The concluding chapters, in which, in
+a strain of noble eloquence, she pleads the cause of moderate and
+constitutional freedom, show how steadily and how strongly, in an age
+of many disenchantments, she clung to the belief of her youth.
+
+The 'Considerations on the French Revolution' had a vast and an
+immediate success, and in a few days sixty thousand copies were sold.
+Madame de Staël, however, did not live to witness her triumph. In
+February 1817 she was struck down by a paralytic illness, and on July
+14, after a long period of complete prostration, she passed away
+tranquilly in her sleep. It was a peaceful ending to an agitated and
+chequered career. She had enjoyed much and suffered much. She had
+committed grave faults, and had met with her full share of
+disappointment and ingratitude; but few women have left such an
+enduring monument behind them, or have touched human life on so many
+sides and with so many sympathies.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] There is also an English, and somewhat abridged, translation.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL
+
+
+There is probably no other English public man of the present century
+whose career has attracted in so large a measure the interest both of
+politicians and of men of letters as Sir Robert Peel. In addition to a
+crowd of industrious but not very distinguished compilers, it has been
+discussed with great skill by Guizot, by Lord Dalling, by Mr. Goldwin
+Smith, and by Mr. Spencer Walpole; and in that great literature of
+monographs which has grown up with such remarkable rapidity in England
+within the last decade, no less than three have been devoted to the
+life of Peel. The interest that attaches to him is, indeed, of a very
+peculiar character. He was almost wholly destitute of the power of
+imagination that is so conspicuous in the careers or speeches of
+Chatham and Burke, of Canning and Beaconsfield. Except during a few
+years that followed the Reform Bill of 1832, he never exhibited the
+spectacle of a leader struggling successfully against enormous odds.
+He was not one of those statesmen who see further than their
+contemporaries, and who, after years of failure and struggle, are
+proved by their ultimate triumph to have most truly read the
+tendencies of their age. Though he was three times Prime Minister of
+England, and though he was for a time deemed the most brilliant of
+party leaders, he left the great and powerful party which trusted him
+almost hopelessly shattered. Twice in his life he carried measures of
+transcendent importance which he had not only persistently opposed,
+but had been specially placed in power for the purpose of resisting.
+The most striking incidents in his career are incidents of failure
+rather than of success, and history has pronounced that, on the most
+important questions of his time, he was disastrously wrong. The long
+delay in the inevitable emancipation of the Catholics, which was
+largely due to him, and the circumstances under which he ultimately
+carried the measure, produced evils that are in full activity at the
+present hour. His persistent opposition to parliamentary reform
+contributed to bring England to the very verge of revolution; though
+when the Reform Bill had been carried he nobly retrieved his error by
+the frankness with which he accepted, and the skill with which he
+used, the new conditions of English politics. His abolition of the
+Corn Laws at the head of a Government which had been pledged to
+maintain them gave a great shock to public confidence, and for a long
+period most seriously dislocated the machinery of party government.
+But, in spite of all this, there are few statesmen who have carried so
+large a number of measures of great and acknowledged importance, who
+have impressed so deeply the sense of their superiority on the minds
+of their contemporaries, or who were followed to the grave by a more
+widespread and genuine regret.
+
+It is this contrast between the leading incidents of Peel's life and
+the impression which he made on the world that constitutes the great
+interest of his career. The explanation is not difficult to discover.
+It is the common story of extraordinary qualities balanced by
+striking defects. He was not a great statesman, but he was a
+supremely great administrator, a supremely great master of
+parliamentary management and of parliamentary legislation. He had
+little prescience; he often grossly misread the signs of the times, or
+only recognised them when it was too late; but when he was once
+convinced, he acted on his conviction with frankness and courage, and
+when a thing had to be done, no one could do it like him. As Disraeli
+said: 'In the course of time the method which was natural to Sir
+Robert Peel matured into a habit of such expertness that no one in the
+despatch of affairs ever adapted the means more fitly to the end.'[10]
+In the words of Sir Cornewall Lewis: 'For concocting, producing,
+explaining, and defending measures, he had no equal, or anything like
+an equal.'[11]
+
+In the interesting volumes which were published by Lord Mahon and Mr.
+Cardwell in 1856 we have Peel's own explanation of his conduct
+relating to the removal of the Catholic disabilities in 1829, and to
+the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846; but the publication of his
+confidential correspondence has been long delayed, and the volume
+before us only carries the work down to 1827. It has been edited by
+Mr. Parker with great care and accuracy, and with undeviating good
+sense and good taste, and it throws much curious light upon a corner
+of history which has been but little explored.
+
+Peel started in life with great advantages. The eldest son of a very
+wealthy manufacturer who had long occupied a respectable place in
+Parliament, and who was closely attached to the dominant party in the
+State, he was from his earliest youth destined by his father to be a
+statesman. Under such circumstances he was certain in the pre-Reform
+period to have not only all the advantages which the best school and
+university education could give, but also the still greater advantages
+of an early introduction into both parliamentary and official life;
+provided always that no aberration of character, or taste, or
+imagination, or opinion drew him aside from the plain path that lay
+before him. He grew up in an atmosphere of the best middle-class
+virtues. Decorum, good sense, industry, strict morality; a sober
+religious orthodoxy; much simplicity of life, preserved in the midst
+of great wealth; ideals which, if not very lofty, were at least
+eminently practical and perfectly honourable, prevailed around him,
+and their influence imbued his whole nature. He accepted cordially the
+destiny that was before him, and threw himself into it with untiring
+industry. His opinions changed during his life much more than his
+character, and the shy, sensitive, industrious, somewhat
+self-conscious, somewhat awkward Harrow boy, prefigured very
+faithfully the future statesman. He is described as wandering when a
+schoolboy by himself among the hedges, knocking down birds with
+stones, a practice in which he was very skilful, and which eventually
+developed into a strong passion for shooting. He was quiet,
+good-natured, studious, scarcely ever in scrapes, and it was not until
+the last year of his school life that he threw himself with any
+keenness into the amusements of his comrades. He had good natural
+abilities; but probably the one point in which he greatly exceeded the
+average of intelligent boys was his memory, which was of extraordinary
+retentiveness, and which he carefully cultivated. During a few months
+which elapsed between leaving Harrow and going to Oxford he constantly
+attended the House of Commons, under the Gallery; and he also
+attended some natural history lectures at the Royal Institution. His
+Oxford career was very successful. He is said to have worked before
+his degree examination for no less than eighteen hours, through the
+day and night. He gained a double-first, and in the first class of
+mathematics he stood alone. Such a success at once stamped him as a
+youth of extraordinary promise, and the impression it made was
+especially great because, the examination system having been very
+recently reorganised, he was the first Oxford man who had attained it.
+
+He was brought into Parliament in April 1809, almost immediately after
+he came of age, for the borough of Cashel. No special significance
+attaches to the fact of his having entered Parliament for an Irish
+constituency, for his father had simply bought the seat, and the young
+member appears to have never gone over to his constituents or held any
+communication with them.
+
+'When I sat for Cashel,' he afterwards wrote, 'and was not in office,
+having made those sacrifices which could then legally be made, but now
+cannot, I did not consider myself at all pledged to the support of
+Government.'[12] Perceval, who represented in its extreme form the
+Tory reaction that followed the Revolution, was then Prime Minister,
+and Peel at once took his place among his followers. He first spoke in
+seconding the Address in 1810, and in the partial judgment of his
+father his speech was considered, 'by men the best qualified to form a
+correct opinion of public speaking, the best first speech since that
+of Mr. Pitt.'[13]
+
+It was not, perhaps, an unmixed advantage to Peel that while he was
+still a mere boy his father had somewhat ostentatiously destined him
+to be one day a Tory statesman. Such an education could hardly fail to
+strengthen the self-consciousness which was never wanting in Peel's
+character, and to give a decided bias to his judgment. At the same
+time, the distinctive merits of his career would have probably never
+been fully developed without the early administrative training which
+his opinions made possible for him, and there is nothing in his early
+history to give the least countenance to the belief that his adherence
+to the extreme type of Tory politics imposed the slightest strain upon
+his judgment. His immediate interests and his sentiments appear at
+this time to have perfectly concurred. He came into Parliament with
+the party which was dominant, and with the section of the party which
+was most poor in able men. Had he adopted on the Catholic question the
+liberal opinions of Canning and Castlereagh, he must have held a
+position altogether subordinate to them; and the same causes that in
+the preceding Ministry had raised Perceval to be leader of the House
+of Commons over the heads of Castlereagh and Canning, marked out for
+Peel the future leadership of the party of resistance to concession.
+It has been said, on the authority of Sir Lawrence Peel, that his
+first appointment was that of private secretary to Lord Liverpool, but
+Mr. Parker has found no trace of this in the papers either of Peel or
+of Lord Liverpool. In 1810, however, when he was but just twenty-two,
+he entered administrative life as Under-Secretary of State for War and
+the Colonies, and he held that place till August 1812, when he
+obtained the far more important post of Chief Secretary for Ireland,
+and became for the next six years virtual governor of that country.
+
+It was a post requiring not only great administrative skill, but also
+great gifts of original statesmanship. During the last five years of
+the eighteenth century, and especially during the rebellion of 1798,
+religious passions in Ireland, which had for more than a generation
+been steadily subsiding, had been kindled into a flame, and the urgent
+necessity of settling the Catholic question had begun to press with
+irresistible force on the minds of the more intelligent statesmen.
+Pitt had intended to complete the Union by measures for admitting
+Catholics into Parliament, for commuting tithes, and for paying the
+Catholic clergy. Through the instrumentality of Lord Castlereagh
+assurances of the disposition of the Cabinet had been conveyed to the
+Catholic bishops and the leading Catholic laymen in 1799, which were
+sufficient to secure their active support for the Union and to prevent
+any serious opposition among the Catholic laity. The bishops met the
+wishes of the English Government by drawing up a series of
+resolutions, in which they declared their readiness to accept with
+gratitude an endowment for the priesthood, to confer upon the English
+Government a power of veto over the appointment of Catholic bishops
+which would prevent the introduction into that body of any disloyal
+men, and to certify to the Government the nomination of all Catholic
+parish priests, as well as the fact that they had taken the oath of
+allegiance. But the King had not been informed of the negotiations
+that had taken place, and it is well known how his uncompromising
+opposition produced the resignation of Pitt in 1801, how the agitation
+caused by the question threw the King into a temporary fit of
+insanity, and how Pitt at once promised that he would not move the
+question again during the reign. In the spring of 1804 Pitt resumed
+office, on the express understanding that he would not permit Catholic
+Emancipation; when the question was introduced in 1805 by Lord
+Grenville in the Lords, and by Fox in the Commons, it was defeated in
+both Houses by immense majorities, and Pitt declared that though he
+was still of opinion that there was no danger in the concession, yet,
+as long as the circumstances which prevented him from bringing it
+forward continued, he would be no party to agitating the question.
+
+In 1806 Pitt died, and Fox and Grenville were themselves in power, but
+the Catholics were again disappointed. The prejudice of the King, the
+feeling of the country, the recent vote of the House of Commons, the
+presence of Lord Sidmouth in the Ministry, proved insuperable
+obstacles, and Fox could only urge the Catholic leaders to postpone
+the question. Fox died in September 1806, and the Government presided
+over by Lord Grenville met a new Parliament in the following December.
+Grenville had been Pitt's colleague during the negotiations with the
+Catholics that preceded the Union; he had strongly urged upon Pitt the
+necessity of resigning in 1801, and he never forgave him for having so
+lightly abandoned the cause. Grenville did not attempt to carry
+emancipation, but he resolved to take at least one serious step in the
+direction of concession, by throwing open to the Catholics all the
+posts in the army and navy. An Irish Act of 1793 had enabled them to
+hold in Ireland commissions in the army, and to attain any rank except
+commander-in-chief, master-general of the ordnance, and general of the
+staff; but if the regiments in which they served were sent to England,
+they were disqualified by law from remaining in the service. The
+original Bill of Grenville's Government was intended to remove this
+anomaly, and assimilate the law in the two countries; but in the
+course of the discussions it was agreed that the Catholics should be
+freed from the exceptions to which they were subjected by the Irish
+Act, that all posts in the army and navy should be thrown open to men
+of all religious persuasions, subject only to the obligation of taking
+an oath which was prescribed, and that Catholic soldiers should be
+guaranteed by law the free exercise of their religion. The King had
+been informed of this, and was understood to have given a distinct,
+though a reluctant, assent; but a strong Protestant party, headed by
+Perceval, fiercely opposed it. The King withdrew his assent from the
+added clauses, and expressed his disapprobation of the whole measure.
+At last, after much discussion, the Ministers agreed for the present
+to withdraw their Bill, reserving to themselves by a Cabinet minute,
+which was submitted to the King, the right to renew it, or to propose
+any other measure on the subject which they desired. But the King was
+determined to push his victory to the end. He demanded from his
+Ministers a promise in writing that they would never again propose to
+him any measure connected with Catholic emancipation, and as the
+Ministers refused to give this unconstitutional pledge, the King
+dismissed them from office, and called the Duke of Portland to the
+head of affairs.
+
+It was the second time that the King had broken up a Ministry on the
+Catholic question, and his conduct was especially significant, as his
+refusal to grant military promotion to Catholics was announced in the
+midst of a great war, and at a time when thousands of Catholics were
+fighting in his armies. It at once appeared that there were two
+entirely distinct schools of Tories. Pitt, to the very close of his
+life, had declared that his opinions on the Catholic question were
+unchanged, though he would not force them against the inclination of
+the King; and his views were adopted by Canning, Castlereagh, and
+Wellesley. Perceval, on the other hand, emphatically declared that he
+'could not conceive a time or any change of circumstances which could
+render further concession to the Catholics consistent with the safety
+of the State.'[14] With the exception of Eldon, scarcely any man of
+real ability adopted this view until Peel entered Parliament as the
+follower of Perceval. It is sufficiently evident from this fact how
+little truth there is in the theory that attributes Peel's early
+Toryism to a blind admiration for Pitt.
+
+The party of the King triumphed. Parliament was dissolved on the 'No
+Popery' cry, and on the first great party division that followed the
+election the Ministers in the House of Commons had a majority of 195.
+Canning and Castlereagh, though they had no sympathy with that cry,
+availed themselves of the current that ran so strongly against the
+Whigs. In the Ministry of the Duke of Portland they held the seals for
+the Foreign and War Departments, but the leadership of the Commons and
+the virtual leadership of the Ministry was given to Perceval, who,
+though entirely without brilliant parts, exhibited unexpected talents,
+both as a practical debater and as a manager of men, and who had the
+advantage of representing fully the dominant party. Several
+circumstances, however, other than a conviction of the danger of the
+Catholic claims, contributed to the triumph of the anti-Catholic
+party. The Whigs, already broken by their policy towards France in the
+first stages of the Revolution and of the war, had become still more
+unpopular through their opposition to the seizure of the Danish fleet
+and to the Peninsular War. They were divided among themselves, for
+there was little sympathy between the more aristocratic Whigs, who
+were represented by Grenville and Lord Howick, and the more Radical
+party of Sir F. Burdett and Whitbread. A strong personal as well as
+political dislike already existed between Howick and Canning, and
+prevented their hearty co-operation on the one great question on which
+they were agreed. Above all, there was a general conviction among
+statesmen that the King's mind was trembling on the verge of insanity,
+and that a renewal of the Catholic complications of 1801 would produce
+a catastrophe.
+
+The question was debated in both the Lords and Commons in 1808. In the
+former it was lost by a majority of 87, and in the latter by a
+majority of 153. Grattan on this occasion introduced the Catholic
+petition in a speech of consummate power; but both Castlereagh and
+Canning opposed the reception of the petition, on the ground that the
+time was unsuited for the agitation of the question; and the spirit of
+the ruling part of the Ministry was sufficiently shown by the
+reduction of the Maynooth grant from 13,000_l._ to 9,250_l._ When the
+Portland Government was broken up in September 1809 by the quarrel,
+duel, and resignation of Canning and Castlereagh, Perceval became the
+head of the new Ministry, Lord Wellesley occupying the place of
+Canning, and Lord Hawkesbury that of Castlereagh; and an intensely
+anti-Catholic ministry continued to the death of Perceval. In 1809 the
+Catholic question was not introduced into Parliament. In the spring of
+1810 it was introduced into both Houses, but was defeated by
+majorities of 86 and 104; but in October 1810 an event occurred which
+profoundly changed the aspect of affairs. The King's insanity broke
+out anew in a form which gave little hope of recovery, and the Prince
+of Wales was appointed Regent. For a year the regency was subject to
+restrictions similar to those which had been adopted in 1788, but on
+February 1, 1812, these restrictions were to cease, and the Regent was
+to enter into full fruition of the royal power.
+
+The hopes of the Catholics were now raised to the highest point. With
+the confirmed insanity of George III. the most serious of all the
+obstacles to their claims was removed. During the year of the
+restricted regency, while there was still some chance of the recovery
+of the King, the Prince of Wales declined to remove the existing
+Ministry from office, though even this decision was not taken without
+some hesitation and some negotiations with the Whigs. The Catholics,
+however, fully expected that the royal influence would now be exerted
+in their favour, and that the Whig Ministry would speedily come. The
+Prince of Wales had long been in close connection with the Whigs. As
+early as 1797 he had expressed a desire to go over to Ireland as
+Lord-Lieutenant, carrying with him a policy of conciliation to the
+Catholics. In 1805, when Fox and Grenville had introduced the Catholic
+question into the Imperial Parliament, the Prince, while stating that
+considerations of obvious delicacy prevented him from taking an
+immediate and open part in its favour, had given the Whig leaders the
+fullest authority to assure the Catholics of Ireland that he would
+never forsake their interests, the 'most distinct and authentic
+pledge' of his wish to relieve them from the disabilities of which
+they complained, and to exert himself in their favour as soon as he
+was constitutionally able to do so. It is easy therefore to imagine
+the consternation and the indignation with which, in 1812, the
+Catholics found that the Prince Regent had changed his principles and
+his policy; that, after a short and perhaps insincere negotiation with
+the Whigs, he had resolved to maintain in power a Ministry which was
+constructed for the main purpose of maintaining the Catholic
+disabilities; and that his own opinions were rapidly verging towards
+this policy.
+
+The situation in Ireland was becoming very dangerous. For some years
+after the Union a great apathy prevailed, and there is no reasonable
+doubt that, if events in England had been favourable, Catholic
+emancipation would have met with no serious opposition in Ireland, and
+could have been carried with every reasonable limitation and
+safeguard. The most competent English officials calculated that at
+least sixty-four of the hundred Irish representatives would vote for
+it, and that a decided preponderance of Irish Protestant opinion was
+in its favour. On the other hand, the Catholic bishops and aristocracy
+had fully accepted the policy of an endowment for the priests and a
+veto on the appointment of bishops, and the most Conservative elements
+in the Catholic body still exercised an ascendancy over their
+co-religionists. The question of the veto had been mentioned in the
+Commons, by Sir J. Hippisley, in 1805, and in 1808 Grattan and
+Ponsonby formally announced, on the authority of the Catholic bishops,
+their readiness to accept it. A letter from Bishop Milner was read to
+the House, which very clearly stated their position:
+
+'The Catholic prelates of Ireland,' he wrote, 'are willing to give a
+direct negative power to his Majesty's Government with respect to the
+nomination of their titular bishoprics, in such manner that when they
+have among themselves resolved who is the fittest person for the
+vacant see, they will transmit his name to his Majesty's Ministers;
+and if the latter should object to that name, they will transmit
+another and another, until a name is presented to which no objection
+is made; and (which is never likely to be the case) should the Pope
+refuse to give those essentially necessary spiritual powers, of which
+he is the depository, to the person so presented by the Catholic
+bishops and so approved by the Government, they will continue to
+propose names till one occurs which is agreeable to both
+parties--namely, the Crown and Apostolic See.'
+
+The prelates also engaged to nominate no persons who had not
+previously taken the oath of allegiance.[15] But a democratic party
+had now arisen among the Catholics, which utterly repudiated the
+restrictions of the veto, which sought emancipation by violent and
+democratic agitation, and which was rapidly drawing the most dangerous
+elements in the country into its channel. The bishops, pushed on by
+the strong force that was behind them, speedily retraced their steps
+and passed resolutions against the restrictions they had accepted, and
+there were evident signs that the Catholic body was passing away from
+the guidance of Grattan and of the gentry. This was not surprising in
+a country where many elements of anarchy subsisted; and the democratic
+party had already found in O'Connell a leader of consummate skill, and
+of untiring industry, energy, and ambition. But the chief cause of the
+great change that was passing over the Irish Catholics was to be
+found in the disappointment of their hopes in 1801, in 1804, in 1806,
+and 1812; in the desertion of their cause by Pitt; in the proved
+impotence of the Whigs; in the failure of 'the securities' even to
+mitigate the hostility of Perceval and his followers; in the profound
+consternation and exasperation that were produced by the attitude of
+the Regent. The formation of the General Committee of Catholic
+Delegates was speedily followed by its suppression under the
+Convention Act. But the influence of O'Connell was rapidly growing;
+there were already ominous signs of a possible agitation for the
+repeal of the Union, and the indignation of the Catholics was
+significantly shown by the famous 'witchery resolutions,' which were
+unanimously carried by the aggregate meeting of the Catholics in the
+June of 1812, reflecting on the influence which Lady Hertford was
+believed to exercise over the Prince. After calling for the 'total and
+unqualified repeal of the penal laws which aggrieve the Catholics,'
+they proceeded to use the following language: 'That from authentic
+documents now before us we hear, with deep disappointment and anguish,
+how cruelly the promised boon of Catholic freedom has been interrupted
+by the fatal witchery of an unworthy secret influence.... To this
+impure source we trace but too distinctly our baffled hopes and
+protracted servitude.' Such language was not calculated to conciliate
+the Prince, and he was only confirmed in his hostility to the
+Catholics. As early as September 1813 the Duke of Richmond wrote to
+Peel: 'I was delighted to find H.R.H. as steady a Protestant as the
+Attorney-General.'
+
+The commencement, however, of what was virtually a new reign had given
+a new activity to the question. It was brought forward in different
+forms in the first months of 1812 by Lord Wellesley and Lord
+Donoughmore in one House, and by Lord Morpeth and Grattan in the
+other; and although it was still defeated, the diminished majorities,
+the evident signs of an increased Catholic party in the country, and
+the language of some of the most distinguished men in Parliament,
+clearly indicated the progress of the measure. Canning especially now
+strenuously urged that the time had come when the Catholic question
+must be fully dealt with. The assassination of Perceval on May 11,
+1812, again changed the situation and led to a long series of feeble
+and abortive negotiations. An attempt was made to continue the
+existing Ministry under the lead of Lord Liverpool, with the addition
+of Canning and Lord Wellesley; but these statesmen declined the offer,
+on the ground that the other Ministers refused to carry Catholic
+emancipation, and Lord Wellesley on the additional ground of their
+languor in prosecuting the Spanish war. The Regent then authorised
+Lord Wellesley to construct a Ministry, with the assistance of
+Canning, and an offer was made to Lords Grey and Grenville to join it,
+promising an immediate consideration of the Catholic claims with a
+view to a conciliatory settlement; while, on the other hand, attempts
+were made to retain the services of the leading members of Perceval's
+Ministry. But the Whig leaders refused to take part in a coalition
+Ministry, in which they would probably be outvoted, and the former
+Cabinet was reconstructed, under the leadership of Lord Liverpool, but
+on the principle of leaving the Catholic question an open one.
+Liverpool himself was opposed to concession, but his opposition was by
+no means of the unqualified kind which had been shown by Perceval; and
+a large proportion of his colleagues, including Castlereagh, who led
+the House of Commons, were in favour of Catholic emancipation. If
+Canning had consented to join the Ministry, Lord Wellesley would
+probably have been Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, and under these
+circumstances the Catholic side could scarcely have failed to acquire
+a decisive preponderance. If, on the other hand, Castlereagh had
+followed the example of Canning, and refused to take part in a
+Ministry which declined to settle the Catholic question, or if the
+Whigs had consented to co-operate with Canning, the settlement of this
+great question could scarcely have been deferred. Unfortunately, none
+of these things happened. Castlereagh remained the leader of the
+House. Canning refused to follow his leadership, and two years later
+accepted the embassy to Lisbon. The Whig leaders stood aloof from all
+Ministerial combinations. The Duke of Richmond, who was violently
+anti-Catholic, continued to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; the post of
+Chief Secretary was given to Peel, and Ireland was destined to undergo
+fifteen more years of demoralising and disorganising agitation before
+the Catholic question was settled.
+
+Canning, however, as an independent member, brought forward a
+resolution pledging the House to an early consideration of the laws
+affecting his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, with a view to their
+final conciliatory adjustment, and the conditions of the question had
+so profoundly changed that it was carried by a majority of 129; while
+a similar motion by Lord Wellesley in the House of Lords was met by
+the previous question, which was carried by a majority of only one.
+
+Peel, though he had come into Parliament as a special follower of
+Perceval, had not yet pledged himself decisively against the
+Catholics. He had voted silently against Canning's motion in June, and
+although he had spoken against a previous motion of Grattan, he had
+done so mainly on the ground that the time was not opportune, and had
+expressly guarded himself against giving any positive pledge. He was
+now, however, obliged to take a more prominent part, and for the next
+six years he was the chief support of the anti-Catholic party in
+Parliament. His part was a very difficult one, for he had to encounter
+Grattan, Plunket, Canning, and the Whig leaders, and he had scarcely
+any real supporters. Saurin, the Attorney-General, it is true, was
+strongly opposed to all concession. He was a lawyer of high character
+and attainments, of Huguenot descent and strong Huguenot principles,
+and he had borne a distinguished part in opposition to the Union; but
+Saurin refused to go to London. Bushe, who was Solicitor-General,
+leaned to the Catholic side; and, to the great indignation and
+consternation of the Government, Wellesley Pole, who had preceded Peel
+as Chief Secretary and who was the brother of Lord Wellesley, now
+pronounced himself strongly in Parliament in favour of the Catholics.
+This speech was entirely unexpected, for Pole had hitherto been
+regarded as a staunch adherent of the Protestant party, and as late as
+the last day of 1811 he had sent a memorandum on the Catholic question
+to the Secretary of State in England, which was intended to be laid
+before the Cabinet, and which maintained the impossibility of safely
+satisfying the Catholic claims, and the expediency of the Prince
+Regent's taking a decided part against them. A general election had
+taken place in September, and it is evident from the letters of Lord
+Liverpool and Peel that they at this time looked upon Canning and his
+followers with even more hostility than the regular Opposition.
+
+In the new Parliament the Catholic question at once assumed a great
+prominence. A motion for the immediate consideration of the laws
+affecting the Catholics was introduced by Grattan, supported by
+Castlereagh, opposed by Peel, and ultimately carried by a majority of
+40. A resolution of Grattan's for removing laws imposing civil and
+military disabilities on the Catholics, with such regulations and
+exceptions as might provide for the security of the Protestant
+succession and of the Established Church, was next introduced. Peel
+opposed it bitterly, but was beaten by a majority of 67.
+
+'We were terribly beaten,' he wrote to his Under-Secretary, 'but we
+are sad cowards, I am afraid; at least, we are shamefully used. Poor
+Duigenan could not get a hearing, and the general impression seemed
+against the Protestants. We will fight them out, however, to the last.
+I am sure it is better than to give way.' 'Your defence of the
+Protestant cause,' wrote Saurin, 'was not only by far the ablest and
+best, but the only one which did not seem to strengthen the cause of
+the adversary by some concession of principle. I really fear the
+Protestant cause is lost in the Commons. There can be no rally now but
+on the securities.'[16]
+
+Grattan at once brought in a Bill in accordance with the terms of the
+Resolution that had been carried; but the Protestant party now rallied
+around a motion of Sir John Hippisley, for a committee to inquire into
+the state and tenets of the Roman Catholics, and the laws affecting
+them. Canning pointed out with great force that a committee of inquiry
+was exactly what the Protestant party had for so many years
+strenuously resisted; but, as Peel wrote to the Duke of Richmond,
+there was no inconsistency in their conduct: 'When the question was
+whether we should consider the claims of the Catholics and the laws
+affecting them, or should resist their claims, we voted for resistance
+without inquiry; the question now is, whether we shall consider or
+concede, and we prefer inquiry to concession.'[17]
+
+The motion for delay, however, was defeated by 187 to 235, and the
+second reading of Grattan's Bill was carried by 245 to 203. But a
+sudden change now occurred in the prospects of the cause. Canning and
+Castlereagh, with the full assent of Grattan, introduced clauses for
+the securities which had been before intimated, giving the Crown a
+control over the nomination of the Catholic bishops. But the bishops
+unanimously condemned the proposal, and the large majority of the
+Catholic Board supported them. It became evident that the Bill before
+Parliament would fail to satisfy the Catholics, and after a long
+discussion the clause admitting Catholics to Parliament was rejected
+by 251 to 247.
+
+Peel had triumphed. The profound division which had broken out among
+the supporters of Catholic emancipation threw back for many years a
+cause which had been almost gained, though in 1817 an Act was passed
+without opposition throwing open to the Catholics the military and
+naval positions which Grenville had vainly attempted to open in 1807.
+Few things could have been eventually more disastrous both to Ireland
+and to the Empire than the defeat of the influence represented by
+Grattan and by the Catholic gentry, and the growing ascendancy of
+O'Connell and the democratic and sacerdotal party in Irish popular
+politics. Grattan had long predicted that, if concession was not
+speedily and wisely made, population in Ireland would drift away from
+the guiding and moderating influence of property; that seditious and
+anarchical men would gain an ascendancy which would make the whole
+problem of Irish Government incalculably difficult; that a priesthood
+unconnected with the English Government would lead to a 'Catholic
+laity discorporated from the people of England.' In the Irish
+Parliament the strong bias of Conservatism in his policy had been
+repeatedly displayed, and it was equally apparent in the Imperial
+Parliament. In 1807 he had supported the Insurrection Act, in
+opposition to many of his friends, on the ground that there was a real
+and dangerous French party in Ireland, which the common law was
+insufficient to suppress. In 1814 he expressed his full approval of
+the proclamation suppressing the Catholic Board. He steadily and
+earnestly maintained that, although it was vitally necessary that
+Catholic emancipation should be speedily carried, it should be
+accompanied by measures for securing, as far as possible, the loyalty
+of the higher Catholic clergy, and uniting them in interest and
+sentiment with the British Government. He looked with bitter hostility
+on the rise and policy of O'Connell. He accused him of 'setting afloat
+the bad passions of the people,' making grievances instruments of
+power without any honest wish to redress them, treating politics as a
+trade to serve a desperate and interested purpose.
+
+But the influence of Grattan was now manifestly declining, and Peel
+watched the decline with a short-sighted and not very generous
+pleasure. In Parliament, though numbers were against the Catholics,
+the overwhelming preponderance of ability was still in favour of the
+principle of emancipation, and it was in leading the anti-Catholic
+party that Peel chiefly acquired his almost unrivalled parliamentary
+skill. He had, indeed, all the qualities of a great debater: courage,
+fluency, self-possession, complete command of every subject he
+treated, unfailing lucidity both in statement and reasoning; admirable
+skill in marshalling and disentangling great masses of facts, in
+meeting, evading, or retorting arguments, and detecting the weak
+points of the case of an opponent, in veiling, by plausible language,
+extreme or unpalatable views, in extricating himself by subtle
+distinctions and qualifications from embarrassing situations. He can
+scarcely, it is true, be called a great orator. His style was formal,
+cumbrous, extremely verbose, without sparkle and without fire. He had
+little or no power of moving the passions, nothing of the flexibility
+that can adapt itself to very different audiences, nothing of the
+philosophic insight that can impart a perennial interest to transient
+discussions. But few men have ever understood the House of Commons
+like him, or have possessed in so high a degree the qualities that are
+most fitted to command and influence it. The great mass of
+anti-Catholic sentiment in the country rallied around him as its most
+powerful champion, and in 1817 he attained one of the chief objects of
+his ambition in being elected member for Oxford University. It is well
+known that his older and more brilliant rival had long aspired to this
+honour. It was mainly through the Catholic question that Canning
+missed and Peel won the prize.
+
+The nickname 'Orange Peel,' which was given to him in Ireland, was
+not wholly deserved. His letters abundantly show that he had no
+sympathy with the ribbons, the anniversaries, the party tunes, the
+insulting processions and insulting language of the Orangemen; and,
+although he believed that in Ireland anti-Catholicism and loyalty were
+very closely connected, he viewed with much dislike the growth of any
+political confederacies unconnected with the Government. Declamation
+and boastfulness and needless provocation were, indeed, wholly alien
+to his nature; and even when defending extreme causes he rarely or
+never used the language of a fanatic. He resisted Catholic concession
+mainly on the ground that the admission of the Catholics to political
+power would prove incompatible with the existence of the Established
+Church in Ireland, with the security of property in a country where
+property was mainly in Protestant hands, and ultimately with the
+connection between the two countries. His arguments were not based on
+religion, but on political expediency; but it was an expediency which
+he believed to be permanent.
+
+'I see,' he wrote to the Duke of Richmond, 'one of the papers reports
+me as having said that I was not an advocate for perpetual exclusion.
+It might be inferred that I objected only to the time of discussing
+the question. That is not the case.... There are certain anomalies in
+the system which I would wish to remove, but the main principles of it
+I would retain untouched.... At no time, and under no circumstances,
+so long as the Catholic admits the supremacy in spirituals of a
+foreign earthly potentate, and will not tell us what supremacy in
+spirituals means--so long as he will not give us voluntarily the
+security which every despotic Sovereign in Europe has by the
+concession of the Pope himself--will I consent to admit them.'[18]
+
+The letters before us show clearly that his political sympathy was
+with Saurin, with Duigenan, with Lord Eldon, and even with Lord
+Norbury. O'Connell early perceived in Peel his most dangerous
+opponent, and a strong personal enmity, which was as much due to
+profound differences of character as to differences of policy, grew up
+between them. A scurrilous attack of O'Connell on Peel in 1815 was
+followed by a challenge, and a duel was prevented only by the arrest
+of O'Connell. The antipathy between the two men was never mitigated.
+O'Connell said of Peel that 'his smile was like the silver plate on a
+coffin.' Peel, in his confidential letters, expressed the utmost
+dislike and contempt for the character of O'Connell, and when he was
+at length compelled by the Clare election to concede Catholic
+emancipation, his feeling towards him was significantly and
+characteristically shown. He enumerated in a brilliant passage the men
+to whom the triumph of Catholic emancipation was really due. He spoke
+of Fox and Grattan, of Plunket and of Canning, but he made no mention
+of O'Connell.
+
+The administrative side of Peel's Chief Secretaryship is much more
+creditable to him than the political side. The vivid picture which his
+letters present of the manner in which Ireland was governed more than
+fifteen years after the Union will probably strike the reader with
+some surprise, when he remembers that the Union had extinguished about
+seventy small boroughs, and had at the same time greatly diminished
+the importance of the Irish representatives, and therefore the
+necessities for corruption. Peel noticed that while 'the pension list
+of Great Britain was limited to 90,000_l._ per annum, the pension list
+of Ireland may amount to 80,000_l._ a year; and he found almost all
+Irish patronage still employed for political purposes, and almost
+every office honeycombed with abuses and peculations. A few extracts
+will give the reader some notion of the nature and extent of the evil,
+and of the efforts of Peel to reduce it:--
+
+'How is it possible,' he wrote, 'to propose that a shilling should be
+granted to a general officer on the staff in Ireland when sixpence is
+granted in England? This is called a modification in official phrase,
+but it ought to be called doubling the allowance. Set your face
+steadily against all increase of salary, all extra allowances, all
+plausible claims for additional emolument. Economy must be the order
+of the day--rigid economy.'[19] 'When English members hear that the
+sheriff appoints the grand jury, that the grand jury tax the county,
+that the sheriff has a considerable influence at elections, and that
+the sheriff is appointed openly on the recommendation of the member
+supporting the Government, they are startled not a little.... I know
+that this is a most convenient patronage to the Government, but I know
+also that I cannot hint in the House of Commons at such a source of
+patronage, and I confess I have great doubts on the legitimacy of
+it.... After Lord Redesdale's declaration ... that the mode of
+appointing sheriffs "poisons the sources of justice," and witnessing
+the general feeling among the English against making the nomination of
+a most important officer in the execution of justice dependent on the
+will of the county member, I thought it highly expedient to give a
+positive assurance that the Government would revert to the ancient
+and legal practice of appointing sheriffs in Ireland.... With a pure
+Bench--and time will, I hope, purify it--the change would be an
+essential change for the better.'[20] 'Foster says that the abuses
+discovered in the office [of Clerk of the Pleas] are enormous, that
+the amount of fees exacted from suitors is not less than 30,000_l._
+per annum, of which the principal clerk did not receive more than
+one-third. A Mr. Pollock, the first deputy, is in receipt of 8,000_l._
+or 9,000_l._ a year as his own share of the profits; other deputies
+and persons unnecessarily employed have profits amounting to 1,200_l._
+or 1,400_l._ a year each. Foster thinks that every possible difficulty
+will be thrown in the way of an early decision in the Irish Courts....
+In the meantime, the Chief Baron is receiving the enormous profits
+arising from these enormous abuses.'[21]
+
+The practice of buying and selling public offices, and the practice of
+dividing the salaries of a single office between a principal and
+deputies, still continued; but Peel did his utmost to eradicate them.
+If it were permitted in one case, he said, 'every officer in every
+department who purchased on corrupt terms and is now living may claim
+a right to sell the office so purchased.'
+
+'With respect to a payment out of the salary to R., I can have no
+scruple in giving you my opinion that it would not be right. I have
+never been, and cannot conscientiously be, a party to an arrangement
+of that kind, because I think this is quite clear, that if the salary
+of the office is disproportionate to the labour of it, and can bear to
+be taxed to the amount of 200_l._, the public should benefit, and the
+emoluments of the office be reduced.'[22]
+
+One of Peel's first tasks was to conduct a general election, and he
+had ample opportunities of judging how these things were managed in
+Ireland. A law known as Curwen's Act had been recently passed,
+condemning to a heavy fine in the event of failure, and to the loss of
+his seat in the event of success, any person giving, or promising to
+give, or consenting to give either money or office for a seat in
+Parliament. The law was not a little embarrassing to Peel, as his own
+seat of Cashel had been purchased, and he thought it safer to transfer
+himself to the English seat of Chippenham, where his return was
+managed by his father without any intervention on his own part. At the
+same time, the elections in Ireland went on much as if Curwen's Act
+had never passed.
+
+'I am placed in a delicate situation enough here,' he wrote to his
+friend Croker: 'bound to secure the Government interests, if possible,
+from dilapidation, but still more bound to faint with horror at the
+mention of money transactions, to threaten the unfortunate culprits
+with impeachment if they hint at an impure return, and yet to prevent
+those strongholds, Cashel, Mallow, and Tralee, from surrendering to
+the enemies who besiege them.'
+
+Croker himself furnished an admirable illustration of the manner in
+which these principles were carried out. 'I find the borough' [Down],
+he writes, 'extremely well disposed to me. Of the respectable and
+steady people I have a decided majority, not less than twenty; but
+there are sixty-two persons who are extremely doubtful.... I have the
+greatest repugnance to bribery, ... but my agent informs me that many
+voters will require money.... The return absolutely depends upon
+pounds sterling. The best computation which my agents can make is
+that a sum of 2,000_l._ will be necessary. The natural expenses will
+be 500_l._ These, I think, I am bound to make good. But with regard to
+the money for votes, that I expect from Government.'
+
+Peel replied that he could not answer for the Government in England,
+and that the Irish Government possessed no funds for this purpose; he
+would himself have been ready to send Croker '1,000_l._ as a private
+concern between ourselves with no reference whatever to Government';
+but he had it not. 'If you think proper,' he added, 'to take the
+chance whether it [the Government] will assist you, you can promise.'
+For about six years Peel was constantly receiving from Croker requests
+for places, in order to discharge 'debts of gratitude' incurred at
+this election; and in 1816 we find the Government very nearly beaten
+in the House of Commons in an attempt to raise Croker's own salary.
+
+'Could you tell me,' writes Lord Palmerston to Peel, 'whether you
+think there is any probability of a contest for the county of Sligo at
+the next election? I could at the present moment make from 280 to 290
+voters by giving leases to tenants who are now holding at will. If
+there is any chance of their being of use next year, I will do so
+forthwith, and register them in time. If not, I should perhaps
+postpone giving twenty-one years' leases till matters look a little
+more propitious to the payment of rents.'
+
+'Lord Lorton wrote yesterday to his agent to make all the freeholders
+he can on his small Queen's County property. He says he is sorry he
+can't make more than twenty, but that those shall go against Pole.'
+
+A few illustrations of the minor details of patronage may be added.
+One gentleman called upon Peel about an election in Clare, but 'said
+that he would make no promise of his interest unless he received a
+pledge from me that his two brothers should be provided for--one in
+the Church, and the other advanced in the profession of the law.'
+
+Lord C. 'wanted, long since, to make terms with me for his support in
+Cork, ... and wished to be one of a committee for superintending the
+patronage of the county.'
+
+'When G. wants a baronetcy, he is very rich; and when he wants a
+place, he is very poor. I think we may fairly turn the tables on him,
+and when he asks to be a baronet, make his poverty the objection, and
+his wealth when he asks for an office.'
+
+'Pole is constantly pressing K., of the Navigation Board, for
+promotion.... I am told he entirely neglects his duty. Pole readily
+admits his hopeless stupidity and unfitness for office.'
+
+'I do not think your son,' Peel wrote to his Under-Secretary, 'can
+make a more inefficient member of the Board of Stamps than Mr. T. has
+done. I am perfectly ready, therefore, to acquiesce in the exchange.'
+'I make a great sacrifice,' he wrote to Lord Whitworth, 'when I say
+that I doubt whether O.'s habits would qualify him for such practical
+duties as the Collector of Belfast at least ought to perform. Belfast
+is so flourishing a town, and contributes so much to the revenue, that
+I fear the Collectorship of it is too prominent a situation to place
+in it a young man ... we must admit to be a ruined man by gambling.
+Considering how careless he has been of his own money, perhaps some
+office not connected with the collection of the public money ... would
+be more suited to him.... What do you think of the following
+arrangement? Make J. collector for this very bad and very good reason,
+that he is the most inefficient Commissioner, and therefore the public
+service will suffer least from his appointment. Make Colonel H. a
+Commissioner. He will be about as inefficient as J. Make R.M. junior,
+the most inefficient of the three, Surveyor of Lands, _vice_ H., which
+(though he will lose 200_l._ a year) will greatly oblige his father,
+the member; and, lastly, fulfil your good intentions towards O. by
+making him a Commissioner of Accounts, _vice_ M.'
+
+Many other characteristic pictures pass before us. There were officers
+of the revenue who were recommended to 'the marked favour' of the
+Government because they had shown what Peel somewhat rashly called
+'the common honesty' of refusing bribes. There was an official who
+scandalously connived at an abuse of justice by which innocent women
+were condemned to transportation, though taking measures that the
+Government should indirectly hear of the transaction. There were
+shameful abuses in the sale of the office of gaoler, shameful frauds
+in the collection of taxes, in the Customs, in the barrack charges.
+
+'My most decided opinion,' Peel wrote about one of these culprits, 'is
+in favour of his dismissal. I am quite tired of, and disgusted with,
+the shameful corruptions which every Irish inquiry brings to
+light.'[23]
+
+Much trouble was given by newspapers which were subsidised by the
+Government, and at the same time conducted in a manner which no honest
+Government could approve of.[24] Another evil is disclosed in the
+following very creditable letter written by Peel to one of his
+successors:
+
+'I found in Ireland that every official man, not content with the
+favour of Government to himself, thought he had a right to quarter his
+family on the patronage of Government. I took the course that you have
+done in order to enable me to resist with effect such extravagant
+pretensions. I determined never to gratify any private wish of my own
+by the smallest Irish appointment. There is nothing half so disgusting
+as the personal monopoly of honours and offices by those to whom the
+distribution of them is entrusted.'[25]
+
+In the Irish Pension List there had been enormous abuses, but Peel
+took credit for having effectually stopped them. 'No member of
+Parliament,' he wrote, 'has benefited by it. No vote has been
+influenced by it.... I do not think there are any three years in the
+whole period of the Irish history during which so honest a use has
+been made of it.'[26]
+
+As might have been expected, blunders arising from extreme
+inefficiency were very numerous. In one case, by negligent drafting,
+the Insurrection Bill was made to extend to three instead of two
+years, while a simple mistake in one of the Revenue Bills was believed
+to have cost the Revenue not less than 40,000_l._[27]
+
+In all this dreary field the great administrative ability of Peel and
+the essential integrity of his character produced much real
+improvement, though it is very possible to exaggerate his merits. No
+one who has read the Hardwicke and Colchester papers will question
+that some of his predecessors, and especially the Chancellor, Lord
+Redesdale, had laboured with at least equal earnestness to purify
+Irish administration; and the energy with which Lord Redesdale,
+though out of office, still recurred to the subject, was extremely
+displeasing to Peel.[28] His own patronage, as we have already seen,
+was by no means ideal, and he was very anxious to stifle parliamentary
+inquiries.
+
+'I believe,' he wrote, 'an honest, despotic government would be by far
+the fittest government for Ireland'; but as this could not be attained
+he wished no essential alteration. 'I think the present system on
+which the government of Ireland is conducted is the best, but I am
+terribly afraid that Englishmen, who know nothing of Ireland, would
+not concur with me if they inquired into detail. It is very difficult
+to manage even the most limited inquiry. How could we prevent the
+introduction of tithes, magistracy, the Catholic question itself?'[29]
+
+Whatever might be the case in the future, he believed that in the
+present it was impossible for the Irish Government to receive adequate
+support unless it made up its mind to purchase it. 'It would be good
+policy,' he says in one of his letters, 'to direct the channel of
+patronage as plentifully as we can towards those who are adhering to
+us on these pressing questions of army establishments and property
+tax.' He refused in very lofty tones applications for peerages as
+rewards for political support; but the merit of this refusal belongs
+mainly to Lord Liverpool, who, at the beginning of the Chief
+Secretaryship, took on this subject a very firm and honourable line,
+both in England and Ireland, and maintained it at the sacrifice of
+many votes. For Irish honours unaccompanied by endowments there appear
+to have been few applicants. Peel disliked the bestowal of
+ecclesiastical dignities as rewards for political services; but if he
+did not practise it quite as much as his predecessors, this appears to
+have been much more due to nature than to policy.
+
+'There is nothing so extraordinary,' he wrote, 'in natural history as
+the longevity of all bishops, priests, and deacons in Ireland. During
+the last five years there has been literally no Church preferment to
+dispose of, to the infinite disappointment of many expectants.'
+
+In the higher legal appointments, however, while insisting that
+'attachment to the Government on principle' was very material, Peel
+cordially agreed with Saurin that it was vitally necessary to select
+men 'for character, and not for politics or connection'; and he added,
+that those were not likely to be the least fit for high office who
+were too proud to solicit it. 'It is a species of pride which
+occasions very little practical inconvenience in Ireland.'
+
+His letters show clearly the terrible evils of Irish life. He speaks
+of 'the enormous and overgrown population,' with no employment except
+agriculture; of a poverty so extreme that in many districts widespread
+starvation was averted only by prompt Government intervention; of
+'that infernal curse, the forty shilling freeholds'; of the evil
+system of employing the military in distraining for rent and in the
+collection of tithes; of juries, through fear or sympathy, acquitting
+prisoners in the face of the clearest evidence; of the gross perjury
+in the law courts; of the almost universal disaffection of the lower
+orders, fostered by a seditious press; of the growing spirit of
+animosity in the north of Ireland between the lower orders of
+Protestants and Catholics, which was breaking out in constant riots,
+and had already cost many lives. This last evil, it might be truly
+said, was very largely due to the policy of his own party, who had
+protracted through so many years the Catholic question, which ought
+to have been settled at the Union. There was extreme and chronic
+ignorance, poverty, and anarchy; the payment of tithes was constantly
+resisted; and a failure of the potato crop, and a sudden and terrible
+fall in the price of agricultural products after the peace, added
+enormously to the difficulties of the situation. It is remarkable,
+indeed, that there appears to have been in 1816 and 1817 less
+disturbance of the public peace in Ireland than in England; Peel found
+it even possible to reduce the military establishments, and in Dublin
+extreme distress was borne with remarkable patience; but in many parts
+of the country crimes of combination were frequent, and almost
+incredibly savage. Peel mentions one case of a family of eight persons
+who were deliberately burnt in their house by a party of armed men,
+because the owner of the house had prosecuted to conviction three men,
+on a capital charge, at the Louth assizes. In another case a farmer,
+who had shot two men who attacked his house, was himself shot dead on
+a Sunday morning, after Mass, at the chapel door, in the presence of
+hundreds of men, not one of whom attempted to arrest the culprit.
+
+These things filled Peel with a not unnatural horror, and his letters
+showed clearly his intense dislike both of the Irish character and of
+the Irish religion.[30] By far the most valuable contribution he made
+to the improvement of Ireland during his Chief Secretaryship was the
+formation, in 1814, of an efficient police force, which has ever since
+been popularly associated with his name, and which was the nucleus
+from which the present admirable constabulary force was developed in
+1822 and in 1835. 'We ought to be crucified,' he wrote, 'if we make
+the measure a job, and select our constables from the servants of our
+parliamentary friends.' He attempted also, though without much
+success, to institute a system of popular education on a perfectly
+unsectarian basis, and with Catholics among the commissioners.[31] He
+appears to have met with little encouragement, and at least one
+Catholic bishop lost no time in cursing 'these nefarious deistical
+schools'; but some schools were established, and Peel has the merit of
+being one of the earliest advocates of a general system of unsectarian
+national education for Ireland, which many years after was
+accomplished. His measures for the relief of distress appear to have
+been skilful and judicious, supporting and stimulating, but not
+superseding private benevolence.[32] For the rest, he relied chiefly
+on Insurrection Acts strengthening the Executive and giving a greater
+efficiency to the administration of justice, and on strong protective
+legislation encouraging the corn and the manufactures of Ireland.
+
+'I have always,' he wrote, 'been, and always shall be, as strong an
+advocate for giving that preference to the productions of Ireland,
+natural or artificial, which will best promote the industry of the
+people, as I am for instructing the lower orders.'[33]
+
+To the tithe system he would do nothing, and this is one of the fatal
+blots on his reputation as a statesman. There was no single source of
+crime, agitation, and disaffection in Ireland which was so prolific as
+this, and there was no subject on which the wisest statesmen had been
+more agreed than on the supreme importance of meeting this evil by a
+judicious system of commutation. Pitt had clearly expressed his
+opinion of the necessity of such a commutation to the Duke of Rutland
+as early as 1786, and it was one of the measures which he intended to
+have followed the Union. Grattan had brought schemes of commutation in
+three successive years before the Irish Parliament. Lord Loughborough,
+who was the chief cause of the failure of Catholic emancipation after
+the Union, had himself drawn up a Tithe Commutation Bill. Lord
+Redesdale, who represented the extreme Toryism of the ministry of
+Addington, strongly urged the absolute necessity of speedy legislation
+on the subject. The Duke of Bedford, in 1807, dwelt on the importance
+of commuting tithes into a land-tax, and ultimately into land. Parnell
+and Grattan had brought the subject before the Imperial Parliament in
+1810, and it was again and again insisted on by the Whig writers, and
+nowhere more strongly than in Sydney Smith's admirable letters to
+Peter Plymley and in some of the pages of the 'Edinburgh Review.' But
+nothing was done till the evil had become intolerable, and had brought
+the country to a state of anarchy and demoralisation that can scarcely
+be exaggerated. The connection of Peel with the question of Irish
+tithes is a very remarkable one. The Tithe Commutation Act, which was
+carried by a Whig Government in 1838, is one of the few instances of
+perfectly successful legislation in Irish history, and it is well
+known that the chief credit of this measure does not belong to the
+Ministers who carried it. It was the very measure which Sir Robert
+Peel had introduced in 1835, which the Whig party when in opposition
+defeated by connecting it with the Appropriation clause, and which the
+Whig party when in power were compelled to carry without that clause.
+But if the chief credit of the final settlement of this momentous
+question justly belongs to Peel, it must not be forgotten that in the
+eleven years during which, as Chief Secretary or as Home Secretary, he
+was directly responsible for the government of Ireland, he had allowed
+this monster curse to grow and strengthen without making any serious
+effort to mitigate it.
+
+Peel was Chief Secretary during the concluding part of the viceroyalty
+of the Duke of Richmond, during the whole of that of Lord Whitworth,
+and during part of that of Lord Talbot. He had grown very tired of his
+position, but agreed to postpone his departure till after a general
+election, and he at last left Ireland, as he says, with 'undiminished
+and unqualified satisfaction,' in August 1818. He remained out of
+office until January 1822; but the interval was not spent in idleness,
+and in 1819 he took the leading part in the great Act for resuming
+cash payments, which, as it has been truly said, attaches to his name
+'the same meed of praise which he had quoted as inscribed on the tomb
+of Queen Elizabeth: "Moneta in justum valorem redacta."' It is one of
+his greatest legislative achievements; it is also the first of that
+series of recantations which forms one of the most distinctive
+features of his career, for it was based upon the policy which Horner
+had advocated in 1811, and against which Peel had then voted. He still
+took, on the Catholic question, the leading part in opposition to
+emancipation, declaring his determination to offer 'a most sincere and
+uncompromising,' though he now feared unavailing, resistance to
+Catholic concession. The last time the question was brought forward,
+by Grattan, was in 1819, and he was defeated by a majority of only
+two. In 1821, after the death of Grattan, and in a new Parliament,
+Plunket carried a Bill for Catholic emancipation successfully through
+all its stages in the House of Commons, though it was afterwards
+rejected in the Lords. In the ensuing session a similar fate befel a
+Bill of Canning's to relieve Catholic peers of their disabilities.
+Some considerable change, however, was introduced into the spirit of
+the Irish Government by the appointment of Lord Wellesley, who was in
+favour of the Catholics, to the viceroyalty. One of its most important
+results was the removal of Saurin from the office of Attorney-General
+and the appointment of Plunket in his place. Lord Wellesley described
+this measure to Lady Blessington as the removal of 'an old Orangeman'
+who, though 'Attorney-General by title, had really been
+Lord-Lieutenant for fifteen years'; but it is evident from the letters
+of Peel that his warm sympathies, both personal and political, were
+with Saurin.
+
+The accession of George IV. to the throne in the beginning of 1820
+brought to a crisis the quarrel between the new King and his wife, and
+led to the resignation of Canning in the last days of the year, and
+Lord Liverpool then tried to induce Peel to enter the Cabinet in the
+vacant post of President of the Board of Control. Peel, however,
+refused the office, declaring that he differed from some of the
+proceedings of the Ministry about the Queen. In the summer of 1821 he
+again declined a similar offer, chiefly, as it appears, on the ground
+of uncertain health and of a dislike to official life which his recent
+marriage had produced. But when Lord Sidmouth resigned the Home
+Office, Peel proved less inflexible, and on January 17, 1822, he
+accepted the seals, which he held till 1827. In August Castlereagh,
+or, as he now was, Lord Londonderry, committed suicide. Lord
+Liverpool saw the necessity of recalling Canning to the Cabinet as
+Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Canning would accept the post only as
+leader of the House of Commons. The King hated Canning, and would
+gladly have excluded him altogether from the Ministry, and Eldon and
+the Duke of Newcastle greatly desired that the leadership of the House
+of Commons should be given to Peel. Canning, however, who had been
+sixteen years longer in Parliament than Peel, had both the right and
+the power to insist upon the leadership, and Peel acquiesced in his
+claim with honourable frankness. Except on the Catholic question they
+appear to have cordially agreed, and something of the success of
+Canning's brilliant foreign policy is due to the loyalty with which he
+was supported by Peel in the Cabinet and at Court.
+
+Space will not permit us to relate at length the history of Peel's
+conduct as home Minister. The Catholic question was rapidly advancing
+to a crisis, and the system of a divided Ministry in which it was an
+open question, and in which the leading Ministers took opposite sides,
+was becoming plainly impossible. Ireland was again in a state of
+anarchy bordering on civil war, and the foundation, in 1823, of the
+Catholic Association by O'Connell and Sheil gave a new impulse to the
+agitation. The Duke of Wellington, who knew the country well and was
+not liable to panic, predicted that the new association if it
+continued would lead to civil war, and declared that the organisation
+of the disaffected in Ireland was much more perfect than in 1798.[34]
+At the same time the long-protracted and increasing violence of the
+conflict had aroused fierce Orange passions both in the North and in
+Dublin, while in England the King was embarrassing even his
+'anti-Catholic' Ministers by the vehemence of his hostility to
+concession. He described Peel as 'the King's Protestant Minister' and
+Lord Wellesley as an 'enemy in the camp.' He assured Peel that,
+whether the Cabinet wished it or not, he would never consent to give
+letters of precedence to a Roman Catholic barrister, and he wrote Peel
+a formal letter in which he said, 'the sentiments of the King upon
+Catholic emancipation are those of his revered and excellent father;
+from those sentiments the King never can and never will deviate.'[35]
+
+Peel, while maintaining his unflinching hostility to important
+concessions, tried to moderate all parties. He implored the King to
+make no public declaration. He wrote to Ireland strongly discouraging
+the violence of the Orangemen and urging that 'in this age of liberal
+doctrine, when prescription is no longer even a presumption in favour
+of what is established, it will be a work of desperate difficulty to
+contend against "emancipation," as they call it, unless we can fight
+with the advantage on our side of great discretion, forbearance, and
+moderation on the part of the Irish Protestants.' He recurred to his
+old idea of establishing a system of unsectarian national education,
+and he readily abandoned the corrupt and proselytising charter
+schools. He supported a measure of Lord Nugent, which Lord Eldon
+succeeded in defeating in the Lords, for extending to the English
+Catholics such privileges as were already possessed by Catholics in
+Ireland, and he fully approved of a letter written on behalf of the
+Cabinet to the Lord-Lieutenant urging 'that a disposition should be
+manifested to admit the Roman Catholics of Ireland to a fair
+proportion of the emoluments and honours to which they are eligible by
+law,' but without issuing patents of precedence.[36]
+
+On matters unconnected with the Catholic question his administration
+was skilful and, on the whole, enlightened; and in 1823 he introduced
+the first of a series of important measures diminishing the enormous
+number of capital offences that disgraced the English criminal code,
+and, at the same time, doing much to simplify and consolidate that
+code. In this, as in most respects, there was little original in his
+legislation. He followed, at some distance, in the steps of Romilly
+and Mackintosh, and he left very much to be done, which was chiefly
+accomplished during the Whig ascendancy that followed the Reform Bill
+of 1832. It appears, from some remarkable letters in this volume,
+that, before Peel took up the question of criminal reform, George IV.
+was exceedingly sensible of the enormity of executing very young men
+for secondary offences, and that he was continually pressing on his
+Ministers a more merciful administration of the law. He sometimes
+found Peel by no means ready to yield. In one case Peel invoked the
+aid of the Cabinet to overrule the wish of the King, who desired to
+save two culprits from the gallows; and, in another case, he
+threatened to resign his office if the King persisted in commuting the
+sentence of a youth who had been found guilty of uttering forged
+notes.[37] But Peel had at least the merit of recognising an
+intolerable abuse, and his legislation on the subject was skilfully
+framed and still more skilfully introduced and carried. In his
+patronage in this, as in later periods of his life, he cared much more
+than most English Ministers for the interests of science, literature,
+and art. He was by no means indifferent to the opportunities his
+position gave him of advancing his own family and friends; but he
+never, in his English patronage, forgot the character of those whom he
+recommended for promotion, and he brought forward or assisted many men
+of ability and learning with whom he had no connection and no
+political sympathy. The letters in this volume between Peel and his
+very intimate Oxford friend Dr. Lloyd are especially interesting and
+characteristic. They are in general very honourable to Peel; but Mr.
+Parker is much too indulgent when he describes the intensely worldly
+letters in which Dr. Lloyd urged his own merits and his claims to the
+bishopric of Oxford as merely 'frank, and free from affectation of the
+traditional _nolo episcopari_.' Both Peel and Lord Liverpool appear to
+have had a much stronger sense than most of their predecessors of the
+responsibilities attaching to Church patronage and of the duty of
+administering it in the public interest, and in this respect they were
+broadly distinguished from Lord Eldon.
+
+'It is really a cruel thing,' Lord Liverpool wrote to Peel, 'that the
+patronage of the Crown as to Church matters should be divided between
+the Minister and the Chancellor, and that all the public claims should
+fall upon the former. The Chancellor has nine livings to the
+Minister's one. With respect to these he does occasionally attend to
+local claims, but he has besides four cathedrals, and to no one of
+these cathedrals has any man of distinguished learning or merit been
+promoted.'
+
+In the beginning of 1825 the Irish Government, having without
+consulting Peel undertaken a foolish prosecution of O'Connell for a
+not very dangerous speech, received a heavy rebuff, for the Grand
+Jury threw out the Bill, and the prosecution of an Orange leader was
+equally unsuccessful. A Bill was about the same time brought in and
+carried, suppressing the new association; but it could not suppress
+the spirit which it had aroused. O'Connell, however, was thoroughly
+alarmed at the state of the country, and as far as possible from
+desiring a rebellion, and he was at this time in a very conciliatory
+mood. He was perfectly ready to accept an endowment for the
+priesthood, which would attach them to the Government, and also a
+considerable raising of the Irish franchise. This was the last
+occasion on which his party and the Catholic gentry very cordially
+concurred, and it was the last occasion on which the Catholic question
+could have been settled on a basis that would have given real strength
+to the Empire. A Relief Bill passed through all its stages in the
+Commons by considerable majorities, and it was followed by a Bill for
+raising the qualifications of Irish electors, and by a resolution for
+endowing the priesthood. O'Connell fully believed that Catholic
+emancipation would definitely pass in this session,[38] and he
+appeared to have excellent reasons for his belief. In Ireland it
+generally prevailed, and it exercised an immediate pacifying
+influence. Lord Fingall and other Catholic noblemen, in presenting an
+address at this time to the King, were able to say 'the whole of
+Ireland reposes in profound tranquillity, and the law, without the aid
+of any extraordinary power, everywhere receives voluntary obedience.'
+It was afterwards stated by Lord George Bentinck that Peel had changed
+his opinions about Catholic emancipation in 1825, and had communicated
+this change to Lord Liverpool. The letters before us, however,
+conclusively prove that if Peel was shaken, it was not about the
+merits of emancipation, but about the practicability of resisting it.
+Having been four times defeated in the Commons on the Catholic
+question, he tendered his resignation, and Lord Liverpool at once
+declared that without his assistance he could not continue the
+struggle. Peel was the only Minister in the House of Commons opposed
+to the Catholic cause, differing on the question from all his
+colleagues in the House. If he had resigned, and if Lord Liverpool had
+followed his example, there is good reason to believe that a
+Government might have been formed which would have carried the measure
+safely and speedily with the securities that had been accepted. Most
+unfortunately for the Empire, the 'Protestant' party persuaded Peel to
+withdraw his resignation in order to avert this surrender. In the
+House of Lords the Duke of York, who was the heir-presumptive to the
+throne, stood up and declared his unalterable opposition to the
+Catholic claims, 'whatever might be his situation in life, so help him
+God,' and the Lords rejected the Bill by a majority of 48.
+
+The conscientious views of George III. obtained some measure of
+respect even from those who believed them to be most unfounded; but no
+halo of sanctity dignified the scruples of George IV. or of the Duke
+of York. The Irish Catholics, exasperated at the present
+disappointment of their hopes, and at the prospect of another hostile
+King, flung themselves into a furious agitation, and in a few months
+all the progress which had been made towards pacifying the country was
+undone, while in England Peel had to meet a terrible commercial
+crisis. Seventy county banks stopped in less than a week. In dealing
+with questions of commerce and currency Peel was always in his
+element, and his measures appear to have been wise and skilful. A
+general election took place, and he was again returned by the
+University of Oxford as the uncompromising opponent of Catholic
+emancipation. In England the anti-Catholic party gained some seats,
+and the increasing violence in Ireland had produced some reaction. In
+Ireland it was soon apparent that what Grattan had feared had come to
+pass, and that the tie which had hitherto attached the people to their
+landlords was completely broken. The priests everywhere appeared at
+the head of their people, and it was at once seen that a new and
+terrible power was dominating Irish politics. In Waterford, where the
+Beresfords had long been omnipotent, they were totally defeated, and
+Leslie Foster sent Peel a vivid description of his own defeat in the
+Louth election. At the outset of the contest, upwards of five-sixths
+of the votes were promised to him; but the whole priesthood turned
+themselves into electioneering agents against him. In every chapel
+there were political sermons; the priests menaced all who voted for
+him with eternal damnation; they were present at every polling-booth
+to overawe their parishioners; and their efforts were seconded by
+savage mobs who waylaid and beat all opponents, and forced multitudes
+of Protestants, by threats of assassination or of the burning of their
+houses, to vote against their promises and their convictions. 'In the
+county town the studied violence and intimidation were such that it
+was only by locking up my voters in enclosed yards that their lives
+were preserved.' By these means the election was won. What, asked
+Foster, will be the end of this? 'The landlords are exasperated to the
+utmost, the priests swaggering in their triumph, the tenantry sullen
+and insolent. Men who, a month ago, were all civility and submission
+now hardly suppress their curses when a gentleman passes by. The text
+of every village orator is, "Boys, you have put down three lords;
+stick to your priests, and you will carry all before you."'
+
+The letters of Goulburn, the Chief Secretary, show that the picture
+was not overcharged.
+
+'Never,' he wrote, 'were Roman Catholic and Protestant so decidedly
+opposed. Never did the former act with so general a concert, or place
+themselves so completely under the command of the priesthood.' 'The
+priests exercise on all matters a dominion perfectly uncontrolled and
+uncontrollable. In many parts of the country their sermons are purely
+political, and the altars in the several chapels are the rostra from
+which they declaim on the subject of Roman Catholic grievances, exhort
+to the collection of rent, or denounce their Protestant neighbours in
+a mode perfectly intelligible and effective, but not within the grasp
+of the law. In several towns no Roman Catholic will now deal with a
+Protestant shop-keeper, in consequence of the priest's interdiction,
+and this species of interference, stirring up enmity on one hand and
+feelings of resentment on the other, is mainly conducive to outrage
+and disorder.... The first vacancy on the Roman Catholic bench is to
+be supplied by Dr. England from America, a man of all others most
+decidedly hostile to British interests and the most active in
+fomenting the discord of this country.... With such leaders it is
+reasonable to anticipate the worst. It is impossible to detail in a
+letter the various modes in which the Roman Catholic priesthood now
+interfere in every transaction of every description, how they rule the
+mob, the gentry, and the magistracy, and how they impede the
+administration of justice.' Their power is greater than any other in
+the State, 'and they love to display it, and omit no opportunity of
+taunting their adversaries.' 'The state of society here is so
+disorganised, and the Government has so inferior an authority to other
+powers acting on the people, that the opinion formed to-day may be
+quite changed to-morrow.'[39]
+
+The election of 1826 virtually carried Catholic emancipation, for it
+reduced Ireland to a state in which it was impossible long to resist
+it. Clear-sighted men had no difficulty in perceiving that the policy
+of Peel had failed to avert it, though it had succeeded in making
+impossible the securities which Grattan and the wisest men of his
+generation had pronounced indispensable for its safe working, in
+kindling religious hatreds as intense as in the darkest period of the
+eighteenth century, in breaking down that healthy relation and
+subordination of classes on which beyond all other things the future
+well-being of Ireland depended. Peel was not wholly blind to what was
+happening. 'A darker cloud than ever,' he wrote, 'seems to me to
+impend over Ireland, that is if one of the remaining bonds of society,
+the friendly connection between landlord and tenant, is
+dissolved.'[40] He still persuaded himself, however, that the
+political power of the priests was transient, and that a reaction
+would set in that might destroy it. The defeat of the Catholic
+question in the new Parliament by a majority of four encouraged him in
+his resistance. In January 1827 the death of the Duke of York removed
+one serious obstacle to the Catholic cause, and six weeks later Lord
+Liverpool, who had so long held together the divided Ministry, was
+struck down by apoplexy. Peel would gladly have continued in his
+present position if a peer of real weight who held his opinions on the
+Catholic question was appointed to the vacant place. But there was no
+such peer, except Wellington, to be found, and under Wellington
+Canning refused to serve. Canning had, indeed, now fully resolved to
+be at the head of the Administration, and Peel refused to serve under
+him.
+
+With his opinions on the Catholic question it is impossible to blame
+him, and the letters which passed between the two statesmen are very
+honourable to both, and show clearly that in spite of great divergence
+of opinion, character, and interests, each could recognise the good
+faith of the other. In a letter written to one of his brothers Peel
+describes his position with complete frankness:
+
+'I am content with my position in the Government, and willing to
+retain it--willing to see Mr. Canning leader of the House of Commons,
+as he has been. But giving him credit for honesty and sincerity, if he
+is at the head of the Government, and has all the patronage of the
+Government, he must exert himself as an honest man to carry the
+Catholic question; and to the carrying of that question, to the
+preparation for its being carried, I never can be a party. Still less
+can I be a party to it for the sake of office.'
+
+These words were written little more than a year before Peel
+undertook, as Minister of the Crown, to introduce a measure of
+Catholic emancipation. But if they do little credit to his prescience,
+no one can mistake the accent of sincerity in what follows:
+
+'I do not choose to see new lights on the Catholic question precisely
+at that conjuncture when the Duke of York has been laid in his grave
+and Lord Liverpool struck dumb by the palsy. Would any man, woman, or
+child believe that after nineteen years' stubborn unbelief I was
+converted, at the very moment Mr. Canning was Prime Minister, out of
+pure conscience and the force of truth?'[41]
+
+With the resignation of Peel and the other anti-Catholic members of
+Lord Liverpool's Government, and the formation of the short Canning
+Ministry, this instalment of Peel's letters comes to an end.[42] We
+rejoice that the publication of this very interesting correspondence
+has been entrusted to an editor who is at once so competent and so
+judicious.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] _Life of Lord George Bentinck_, p. 304.
+
+[11] Lewis's _Letters_, p. 226.
+
+[12] _Private Correspondence of Sir R. Peel, 1788-1827_. Ed. by C.S.
+Parker, M.P., 1891, p. 24.
+
+[13] _Ibid._ p. 27.
+
+[14] _Hansard_, First Ser. xxi. 663.
+
+[15] Butler's _Hist. Memoirs_, ii. 177.
+
+[16] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 80.
+
+[17] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 83.
+
+[18] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 76.
+
+[19] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 217, 218.
+
+[20] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 222-224.
+
+[21] _Ibid._ p. 212.
+
+[22] _Ibid._ p. 284.
+
+[23] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 282.
+
+[24] _Ibid._ pp. 114-116, 211, 218.
+
+[25] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 60.
+
+[26] _Ibid._ p. 275.
+
+[27] _Ibid._ p. 96.
+
+[28] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 211.
+
+[29] _Ibid._ pp. 215, 219, 220.
+
+[30] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 207, 231, 235, 236.
+
+[31] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 87-92.
+
+[32] _Ibid._ pp. 244, 265.
+
+[33] _Ibid._ pp. 167, 233.
+
+[34] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 348.
+
+[35] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 349, 358, 359, 370-371.
+
+[36] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 358.
+
+[37] _Ibid._ pp. 315-317.
+
+[38] Fitzpatrick's _Correspondence of O'Connell_, i. p. 108.
+
+[39] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 416, 418, 419, 422.
+
+[40] _Ibid._ pp. 413, 420.
+
+[41] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 485.
+
+[42] Two more volumes have been published since this Essay was
+written.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD HENRY, FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY
+
+
+The time has not yet arrived for the publication of a full life of the
+late Lord Derby, but in submitting to the public a collection of his
+more important speeches outside Parliament, a short sketch of the
+chief features of his life and character may not be out of place.
+
+Edward Henry, fifteenth Earl of Derby, was born July 21, 1826, and was
+educated at Rugby, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a
+First Class in classics. In March 1848 he unsuccessfully contested
+Lancaster, and soon after started for a long and instructive journey
+in America and the West Indies. During his absence from England he was
+elected Member for Lynn Regis upon the death of Lord George Bentinck
+in September 1848, and he held this seat without interruption till his
+accession to the earldom in October 1869. His first speech in the
+House of Commons was delivered on May 31, 1850, on the sugar duties.
+The effect on the West Indies of the abolition of the preferential
+duty on sugar was a subject which he had specially studied during his
+journey, and he had published a pamphlet upon it. Sir Robert Peel
+greatly praised his maiden speech, and Greville describes the great
+impression which it made--an impression which a further knowledge of
+the speaker speedily confirmed.
+
+The appearance in Parliament of the eldest son of one of the most
+brilliant party leaders of the age could scarcely fail to be a
+considerable political event, and it was soon found that the new
+member was not only a man of rare ability, but was also in nearly all
+respects very unlike his illustrious father. Never was there a more
+striking instance of that strange freak of heredity by which an able
+son is sometimes much less the continuation than the complement of an
+able father, exhibiting in strongly contrasted lights both opposite
+qualities and opposite defects. The fourteenth Earl was a great
+orator. He was one of the greatest debaters who have ever lived. He
+was a party leader of extraordinary power, delighting in political
+conflict; throwing into it much of the fire and passion which he
+displayed in his sporting contests; little fitted to conciliate
+opponents, but eminently fitted to win the enthusiastic loyalty of his
+followers, to rally a dispirited minority, to lead a party attack. His
+keen and rapid judgment; his perfect command of pure and lucid
+English; his unfailing readiness in argument, invective, sarcasm, and
+repartee; his indomitable courage, and the somewhat imperious dignity
+of his manner, all marked him out for the position which he held. If
+there was some truth in the common taunt that he was more a party
+leader than a statesman, it must at least be remembered that he has
+identified his name with several important measures, and that during
+most of his career he was in a hopeless minority. His enemies accused
+him of rashness, arrogance, and some superficiality, both of thought
+and knowledge. They alleged that he carried too much of the sporting
+spirit into politics; that his naturally excellent judgment was often
+deflected by the passions of the fray; that he was accustomed to
+judge measures more by their party advantages than by their intrinsic
+merits, and to care more for an immediate triumph than for ultimate
+results.
+
+His son was made in a very different mould. Though like most able and
+clear-headed men he acquired by much practice a respectable facility
+in purely extemporaneous argument, he was never a great debater. His
+speeches were very carefully prepared, and they possessed conspicuous
+merits of form as well as of matter, but they were not the speeches of
+a brilliant orator. No one could reason more clearly, more powerfully,
+or more persuasively. He was a supreme master of terse, luminous,
+weighty, and accurate English. He had much skill in bringing into
+vivid relief the salient points of an obscure and complicated subject,
+condensing an argument into a phrase, and illustrating it by graphic
+felicities of language that clung to the memory. But he hated
+rhetoric. His enunciation was faulty and unimpressive. He appealed
+solely to the reason, and never to passion or to prejudice, and he had
+nothing of the fire and temperament of a party orator. Very few
+politicians mastered so thoroughly the subjects with which they dealt.
+No politician of his time retained so remarkably, amid party
+conflicts, the power of judging questions from all their sides; of
+balancing judicially opposing considerations; of looking beyond the
+passions and interests of the hour; of realising the points of view of
+those to whom he was opposed. Declamation, clap-trap, evasion,
+ambiguities of thought and expression, empty plausibilities, unfair,
+partial, and exaggerated statements, were all essentially repugnant to
+that clear and sceptical intellect, to that sound, cautious, practical
+judgment. His business talents were very great, and they were
+assiduously cultivated. His appetite for work was insatiable. No one
+knew better how to administer a great department or preside over a
+Parliamentary Committee, or arbitrate in a difficult controversy, or
+give wise and timely advice to an inexperienced organisation. It was
+in these fields that his influence was, perhaps, most deeply felt. His
+success in them did not depend merely on his unflagging industry and
+his excellent judgment, it was also largely due to his eminently
+conciliatory character. The uniform courtesy which he displayed to men
+of all ranks and opinions is happily no rare thing among his class,
+but everyone who was brought in contact with Lord Derby soon felt that
+he was in the presence of one who tried to understand his position, to
+estimate his arguments at their full worth, to find some common ground
+of agreement. If it were possible in a bitter controversy to arrive at
+reasonable compromise, Lord Derby was most likely to effect it. He had
+a curious talent of making speeches with which everyone must agree,
+and which at the same time were never commonplace. Their secret lay in
+the habit of mind that led him always to seek out the common grounds
+of principle or fact that underlie every controversy, and which in the
+heat of the conflict the disputants had often failed to recognise.
+
+It was not difficult to forecast the place which a statesman of this
+kind was likely to fill in English politics. He was plainly wanting in
+many of the qualities of a party leader, and in most of the qualities
+of a parliamentary gladiator, and he was not likely to succeed in all
+forms of statesmanship. He would certainly not prove
+
+    A daring pilot in extremity,
+    Pleased with the danger when the waves went high.
+
+
+
+His clear perception of the objections to any course, combined with a
+very deep sense of responsibility, not unfrequently enfeebled his will
+in moments when bold and decisive action was required, and there were
+times when the love of compromise which was so useful an element in
+his character seemed to his best friends too closely allied to
+weakness. But he probably saved every party with which he acted from
+many mistakes. He brought to every Government which he joined a very
+eminent administrative capacity. He defended every policy that he
+espoused with a persuasive reasoning that few men could equal. He was
+a supremely skilful detector of false weights and of false measures.
+Every fad, every new-born enthusiasm, every crude ill-digested theory,
+found in him the calmest and most penetrating of critics, and he
+inspired the great body of moderate men of all parties with a deep
+confidence in his patriotism and in his judgment.
+
+His political position was marked out by the fact that his father had
+recently broken away from the Whig connection which had hitherto been
+that of his family, and was now the leader of the Conservative party.
+The son naturally took his place under his father's banner, but I much
+question whether he would have done so if no family influence had
+interfered. It was not that he at any time changed considerably his
+views. As Macaulay has truly said--while the extremes of the two
+English parties are separated by a wide chasm, there is a frontier
+line where they almost blend; and Lord Derby when a Conservative
+always represented the Liberal, and when a Liberal the Conservative
+wing of his party. But his mind had much of the Whig character; his
+judgment was very independent; and on Church questions especially he
+was never fully in harmony with his party. He was appointed
+Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his father's first
+short Ministry in March 1852, at a time when he was travelling in
+India, and he left office with his father in December of the same
+year. In 1853 he made a remarkable speech on Indian affairs, in some
+degree foreshadowing the Indian policy which he was afterwards
+destined to take such a large part in carrying into effect. During the
+next few years he spoke frequently on Indian and Colonial questions,
+on questions connected with education, factories, and other
+working-class interests, and he supported--often in opposition to the
+majority of his party--a large number of reforms which have since been
+accomplished. He advocated the introduction of competitive
+examinations, first of all into the Diplomatic, and then into most
+branches of the Civil Service. He spoke against the system of purchase
+in the army, and served on a Royal Commission on the subject. He
+supported a motion for securing to married women their property and
+earnings. He took a decided part in opposition to Church rates. He
+voted for the emancipation of the Jews. He voted and spoke in favour
+of the Maynooth grant. He was an early advocate of the opening of
+museums on Sundays, and of a conscience clause to be enforced in all
+schools receiving State assistance. He supported the establishment of
+the Divorce Court, and clearly showed that preference for social as
+distinguished from political questions which he retained through his
+whole life. He delighted in placing himself in touch with working men.
+Mechanics' institutes, free libraries, almost every movement for the
+education and improvement of the working class, found in him a steady
+friend. He once wrote to Lord Shaftesbury: 'We are both public men
+deeply interested in the condition of the working class, and for my
+own part I would rather look back on services such as you have
+performed for that class than receive the highest honours in the
+employment of the State.' On working-class questions he was often
+accused of Radicalism, but it was Radicalism of the old school, which
+relied mainly for reform on spontaneous effort, on moral improvement,
+and extended education, and was very jealous of State interference,
+compulsion, and control. He had a great admiration for Mill's
+writings, and especially for his treatise on Liberty, which he
+described as 'one of the wisest books of our time.' Mill fully
+reciprocated the feeling. He once spoke of Lord Stanley as 'one of the
+very few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions
+ought to be founded on principles.'
+
+'Our party,' wrote Lord Malmesbury in 1853, 'are angry with Disraeli,
+which is constantly the case, and they are also displeased with Lord
+Stanley, suspecting him to be coquetting with the Manchester party.'
+Greville, nearly at the same time, expressed his belief that Lord
+Stanley was taking 'a wise and liberal line,' and that he was 'pretty
+sure to act a conspicuous part.' In November 1855 there was a critical
+moment in his career, when Lord Palmerston, on the death of Sir
+William Molesworth, offered Lord Stanley the post of Secretary of
+State for the Colonies. He at once went down to Knowsley to consult
+his father, who put a strong veto on the proposal, and the offer was
+refused, but in terms which showed that it had been far from
+unacceptable. It is probable that the refusal was a wise one, for
+although on many home questions Lord Stanley would have found himself
+more in harmony with moderate Liberals than with his own party, he
+would certainly have dissented from Lord Palmerston's foreign policy.
+During the Crimean war he seems to have sympathised with the views of
+Bright and Cobden. He took an active part in an able but now nearly
+forgotten Tory paper called 'The Press,' which was opposed to the war,
+and his extreme horror of war and of every policy which could possibly
+lead to war was one of his strongest characteristics. Responsibility
+in office never weighed lightly upon him, but responsibility for
+measures which led or might lead to bloodshed was more than he could
+bear.
+
+At the time when this offer of Lord Palmerston was made, Lord Stanley
+was little more than twenty-nine. Greville considered that he had
+acted wisely in refusing, and he has given us an interesting account
+of the light in which the young statesman then appeared to experienced
+political judges. 'His position and abilities,' he said, 'are certain
+before long to make him conspicuous, and to enable him to play a very
+considerable part. He is exceedingly ambitious, of an independent turn
+of mind, very industrious, and has acquired a vast amount of
+information. Not long ago Disraeli gave me an account of him and of
+his curious opinions--exceedingly curious in a man in his condition of
+life and with his prospects. Last night Lord Strangford (George
+Smythe) talked to me about him, expressed the highest opinion of his
+capacity and acquirements, and confirmed what Disraeli had told me of
+his notions and views even more, for he says that he is a real and
+sincere democrat, and that he would like if he could to prove his
+sincerity by divesting himself of his aristocratic character, and even
+of the wealth he is heir to. How far this may be true I know not....
+Nothing appears to me certain but that he will play a considerable
+part for good or for evil, but I cannot pretend to guess what it will
+be. At present he seems to be more allied with Bright than with any
+other public man, and as his disposition about the war and its
+continuance is very much that of Bright it would have been difficult
+for him to take office with Palmerston.'
+
+Lord Stanley had not long to wait for high office. His father formed
+his second Administration in February 1858, and Lord Stanley was made
+Colonial Secretary. He appears to have accepted the office with some
+reluctance, and only because Sir E. Bulwer, for whom it was at first
+intended, found that he could not secure his re-election. The
+Government was a very weak one, and it opened with the worst
+prospects. It was a Government in a minority. Its very existence
+depended on the dissensions between Lord Palmerston and Lord John
+Russell, and its first steps met with little favour either in the
+House or in the country. The Indian Mutiny was now nearly suppressed,
+and Lord Palmerston shortly before quitting office had pledged the
+House of Commons to the policy of withdrawing the Government of India
+from the East India Company and placing it directly under the Crown.
+To carry this policy into effect was the first task of the new
+Government. They introduced an Indian Bill which they were compelled
+to withdraw, and then substituted for it a new Bill founded on
+resolutions which were carried through the House of Commons. In May
+the Government almost fell on account of the indiscreet publication of
+a despatch of Lord Ellenborough, condemning a Proclamation of the
+Governor-General, Lord Canning. A vote of censure was moved and would
+certainly have been carried if Lord Ellenborough had not saved his
+colleagues by resigning. He was President of the Board of Control, the
+Office which then directed Indian affairs, and Lord Stanley took his
+place, piloted the Indian Bill successfully through the House of
+Commons, and when the measure became law, was the first Secretary of
+State for India, and undertook the very important and responsible task
+of beginning the new system of Indian Government.
+
+'The Times' noticed the singular good fortune of Lord Derby in being
+able at this very critical moment to place his eldest son in one of
+the most important Cabinet offices in his Ministry without incurring
+from any side the smallest imputation of nepotism, and the skill and
+success of the new administration of the India Office was speedily and
+generally recognised. Greville tells us that Lord Stanley 'gained
+golden opinions and great popularity at the India House'; and he gives
+a striking instance of the firmness with which he maintained the full
+authority of the new Council over Indian affairs. He adds: 'I was
+prepared to hear of his ability, his indefatigable industry, and his
+business qualities; but I was surprised to hear so much of his
+courtesy, affability, patience, and candour; that he is neither
+dictatorial nor conceited, always ready to listen to other people's
+opinions and advice, and never fancying that he knows better than
+anyone else. I afterwards told Jonathan Peel what I had heard and he
+confirmed the truth of this report and said he was the same in the
+Cabinet.' 'Lord Stanley,' Greville said, 'is so completely _the man_
+of the present day, and in all human probability is destined to play
+so important and conspicuous a part in political life, that the time
+may come when any details, however minute, of his early career will be
+deemed worthy of recollection.' It is a characteristic fact that Lord
+Stanley offered a seat on the Indian Council to John Stuart Mill,
+which, however, that great writer declined.
+
+The disturbance in European politics which culminated in the French
+declaration of war against Austria contributed to weaken still further
+the feeble Ministry of Lord Derby. The Reform Bill caused profound
+divisions in its ranks. Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley resigned, and the
+Government Bill was defeated in the spring of 1859. Lord Malmesbury
+mentions that in the Cabinet divisions on that question Lord Stanley
+supported the more democratic view, and that on one occasion he
+threatened to resign if the measure were not made more liberal. He
+defended the Bill in an elaborate speech, advocating such an
+introduction of the working class to the franchise as would give them
+a considerable but not a preponderating power. A general election
+followed, and the Government gained several seats, but not sufficient
+to give it a majority. The different fractions of the Opposition drew
+together; on June 11 a vote of want of confidence was carried by a
+majority of 13, and Lord Derby immediately resigned.
+
+In opposition Lord Stanley devoted himself chiefly to the class of
+questions that had occupied him before his accession to office. He
+served on the long Cambridge University Commission, and supported the
+admission of Nonconformists to Fellowships. He was also warmly in
+favour of the measure which made it possible for clergymen to free
+themselves from their Orders and to adopt other professions. He
+presided over the Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army
+and over the Commission on Patents. Like Disraeli, he displayed during
+the American Civil War a reticence and reserve which contrasted very
+favourably with the rash language of other leaders.
+
+In 1862 a curious episode occurred which showed at least the
+widespread reputation that he had acquired. Prince Alfred having
+refused the throne of Greece, the idea was for a short time
+entertained of offering it to Lord Stanley. 'If he accepts,' Disraeli
+wrote to his friend Mrs. Willyams, 'I shall lose a powerful friend and
+colleague. It is a dazzling adventure for the house of Stanley, but
+they are not an imaginative race, and I fancy they will prefer
+Knowsley to the Parthenon and Lancashire to the Attic Plains.' 'The
+Greeks really want to make my friend Lord Stanley their king. This
+beats any novel; but he will not. Had I his youth I would not
+hesitate, even with the earldom of Derby in the distance.'
+
+It does not appear that this proposal ever took a very serious form,
+and if it had been made there is little doubt that Disraeli formed a
+just forecast of what would have been the result. The death of Lord
+Palmerston on October 18, 1865, gave a new turn to the political
+kaleidoscope: Lord Russell became Prime Minister; the policy of reform
+was pushed into the forefront, and the Reform Bill of 1866 speedily
+produced a secession in the Liberal ranks and led to the downfall of
+the Ministry. The feature of the Bill which specially lent itself to
+attack was that it dealt solely with reduction of the franchise,
+leaving the question of the distribution of seats to subsequent
+legislation, and an amendment was moved by Lord Grosvenor to the
+effect that no Bill for the reduction of the franchise should be
+discussed till the whole scheme was before the House. This amendment
+was seconded by Lord Stanley in a speech which Lord Malmesbury
+pronounced to be 'the finest and most statesmanlike speech he ever
+made.' In June the Government were beaten by a small majority on an
+amendment of Lord Dunkellin substituting rating for rental; a few days
+later Lord Russell resigned and Lord Derby for the third time became
+Prime Minister.
+
+As on the two former occasions he was in a minority, though the
+temporary secession of a portion of the Liberal party gave him a
+precarious power. Once more, too, he took office amid the convulsions
+of a European war, for the war of Prussia and Italy with Austria had
+just begun. In the new Ministry Lord Stanley was Secretary for Foreign
+Affairs. In his election address he gave the keynote of his policy by
+insisting in the strongest terms that England should observe a strict
+neutrality in European controversies. Her vast Indian and Colonial
+Empire, he said, made her a world apart and threw upon her duties and
+responsibilities that taxed all her energies. She had duties also to
+her poorer classes at home, whose condition was not what we could
+desire; and by simply existing as a free, prosperous, and
+self-governed nation, we should do more for the real freedom of Europe
+than by any policy of meddling or war.
+
+As far as his own department was concerned Lord Stanley's
+administration during this short Ministry was both eminently
+consistent and eminently successful. It is true that this pacific
+Minister made the Abyssinian war for the release of some imprisoned
+British subjects, but he only did this after every peaceful effort to
+procure their release had proved abortive, and it was almost
+universally recognised that there was no honourable alternative open
+to him. During his ministry the Luxemburg question brought France and
+Prussia to the very verge of war. It fell to the task of Lord Stanley
+to mediate between them, and he did so with a success which certainly
+adjourned, though it could not ultimately avert, the great catastrophe
+that burst upon Europe in 1870. No success could have been more
+gratifying to him, and he was fond of repeating the saying of Canning
+that 'If a war must come sooner or later, for my part I prefer that it
+should come later than sooner.' Lord Russell bore an ungrudging
+testimony to the 'tact and discretion' Lord Stanley displayed in this
+negotiation. In the same spirit he refused to take part in a
+conference of European Powers which the French Emperor desired to
+convene to settle the Roman question, declaring that this question was
+one with which England should in no way meddle, and that a conference
+would be useless and dangerous unless a basis were laid down before.
+He refused to interfere in any way with the Cretan rebellion, and with
+the impending disputes between Turkey and Greece. His abstention on
+this question was blamed by some, but it met with the full approbation
+of his great opponent, Lord Russell, who declared that 'he had acted
+with much prudence and discretion.' He laid the foundation also of the
+settlement of the long outstanding difficulty with America by
+proposing to refer the Alabama question to arbitration, and he
+negotiated a treaty on the subject, which, however, the Senate refused
+to ratify.
+
+In all this he was very consistent. The same consistency cannot be
+claimed for his support of a Reform Bill far more Radical than that
+which his party had so recently rejected. In my own judgment it is
+impossible to defend with success the conduct of the Derby Ministry on
+this question, and although Lord Stanley took only a subsidiary part
+in it, he cannot escape his share of the responsibility. The
+difficulty of the position of the eldest son of the Prime Minister who
+was taking this 'leap in the dark' was very great, and it must be
+remembered that he had long been identified with the more democratic
+wing of his party. After the great agitation that followed the
+downfall of the Russell Ministry, he probably regarded a democratic
+measure as inevitable, and it was the character of his mind to be very
+ready to accept what he considered the inevitable, and to endeavour by
+timely compromise to mitigate its effects. Lord Derby's health was now
+completely broken, and on February 24, 1868, he resigned office, and
+Disraeli became Prime Minister.
+
+Mr. Gladstone soon re-united the sundered sections of the Opposition
+by raising the question of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church.
+The resolutions asserting the expediency of this policy were
+introduced into the House of Commons in April. Lord Stanley was put
+forward as the principal opponent. His amendment expressed no opinion
+about the merits of the proposed policy, but simply affirmed that it
+was a question which ought to be reserved for a new Parliament which
+was soon to be elected under an altered franchise. In his speech he
+disclaimed any wish to maintain that the Irish Church Establishment
+was what it ought to be, but urged that in the condition of Ireland a
+merely destructive measure would do nothing but harm, that it would
+serve no good purpose to attack the Establishment without laying down
+the lines of a definite, constructive ecclesiastical policy, and that
+it was absurd to launch such a question in the last session of an
+expiring Parliament. The more ardent spirits of the Tory party
+strongly censured the ambiguity of this defence, and the Government
+were beaten by majorities of 56 and 60. The House of Commons was
+dissolved in the autumn and a large Liberal majority returned.
+Disraeli at once resigned without waiting for the assembling of
+Parliament.
+
+In October 1869 the death of Lord Derby terminated the career of his
+son in the House of Commons, and the following year added very greatly
+to the happiness of his life by his marriage with the Dowager
+Marchioness of Salisbury. His attitude in opposition is clearly shown
+in his published speeches. He had no wish to see the Conservative
+party again in office till they possessed an assured and homogeneous
+majority, and he maintained that it should be their main object to
+strengthen the influence of the more moderate section in the
+Government. He believed that by habitually pursuing this policy they
+would best prevent revolutionary changes, mitigate by wise compromises
+measures which they did not wholly approve, secure the continuance of
+the harmony of classes, on which more than on any other condition the
+prosperity of England depends, and gradually strengthen their own hold
+on the confidence of the country. It was also his earnest desire that
+English politics should be turned as much as possible from a policy of
+organic change to a policy of administrative reform. He considered it
+a great evil that public men had acquired the habit of continually
+tampering with the existing legislative machinery instead of wisely
+using it for the benefit of the whole nation. The party system, as he
+always thought, had falsified the perspective of English politics,
+bringing into the foreground comparatively unimportant questions which
+were well suited to rally parties and win majorities; thrusting into
+the background others which were immeasurably more important, but
+which were less available for party purposes. What Carlyle called 'The
+Condition of England Question' was always in his thoughts. No one
+would accuse him of under-rating the evils of war, but he questioned
+whether the most sanguinary battle which had ever been fought carried
+off nearly as many human beings as die in England every year from
+purely preventible causes. He threw the whole force of his clear and
+penetrating intellect into such questions as sanitary reform, the
+regulation of mines, the promotion of education and especially
+technical education, the organisation of charities, the treatment of
+juvenile offenders, the diffusion of wise methods of encouraging
+saving among the poor. The overcrowding of the great cities, and the
+vast masses of insanitary dwellings, seemed to him one of the most
+pressing dangers of the time, and he was a prominent member of nearly
+every important company and association in England for improving the
+houses of artisans. He had no puritanism in his nature and was very
+anxious, by the establishment of free libraries and people's parks,
+and Sunday opening of museums, to extend the range of innocent
+pleasure. 'Men die,' he once said, 'for want of cheerfulness, as
+plants die for want of light.' He did not believe in the repression of
+drunkenness by coercive legislation like the Local Veto Bill, but he
+believed that its true root lay in overcrowding, ignorance, insanitary
+conditions of life, the want of innocent means of enjoyment, excessive
+hours of labour. 'When you have to deal with men in masses,' he said,
+'the connection between vice and disease is very close. With a low
+average of popular health you will have a low average of national
+morality and probably also of national intellect. Drunkenness and
+vice of other kinds will flourish on such a soil, and you cannot get
+healthy brains to grow on unhealthy bodies. Cleanliness and
+self-respect grow together, and it is no paradox to affirm that you
+tend to purify men's thoughts and feelings when you purify the air
+they breathe.' He supported liberally the movement for establishing
+coffee-houses, and he looked with great hope to the co-operative
+movement as averting or mitigating industrial conflicts. 'The subject
+of co-operation,' he said, 'is in my judgment more important as
+regards the future of England than nine-tenths of those which are
+discussed in Parliament, and around which political controversies
+gather.' As the possessor of one of the largest properties in England
+he was excellently informed on all agricultural questions, and he
+exercised a great influence upon them. Among other services he
+dispelled many misrepresentations by obtaining an accurate return of
+the numbers of owners of land in the United Kingdom, and of the
+quantity of land which they owned.
+
+With the single exception of Lord Shaftesbury, I believe no
+conspicuous English public man devoted so much time and labour as Lord
+Derby to the class of questions I have described. He brought to their
+discussion an almost unrivalled fulness of knowledge. His purse was
+liberally opened in such causes, and the speeches in which he examined
+what Government can do and what it cannot do for the material
+well-being of the poor, are in my judgment among the most valuable
+contributions to political thought that have been furnished by any
+English statesman during the present century.
+
+The election of 1874, bringing the Conservative party again into
+power, called him to other fields, and he became for the second time
+Foreign Secretary under Disraeli, and was soon involved in that
+Eastern Question which led to his severance from the Conservative
+party. It would answer no good purpose in a short sketch like the
+present to rake up the still smouldering ashes of that controversy.
+The time will come when it will be reviewed in the calm light of
+history, and with the assistance of materials that are not now before
+the public. I shall here content myself with a mere sketch. In the
+earlier stages of their foreign policy the Government appear to have
+been perfectly agreed. Lord Derby fully concurred in the purchase of
+the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal, which was one of the most
+successful strokes of policy of the Government, though he defended it
+on somewhat more prosaic grounds than some of its supporters, and was
+careful to explain that it was essentially a measure of self-defence,
+and not connected with any project for the dismemberment of Turkey or
+the establishment of an English protectorate in Egypt. When the
+insurrection broke out in 1875 in Herzegovina and Bosnia, neither Lord
+Derby nor any of his colleagues believed it to be more than a mere
+passing disturbance. But the feebleness manifested by the Turkish army
+in suppressing the insurrection, and the partial bankruptcy of the
+Government at Constantinople, contributed with many elements of race
+and religious dissension, with foreign intrigue and local
+misgovernment, to aggravate the sore, and the movement soon acquired
+the dimensions of a great European danger. In sending an English
+Consul in conjunction with the Consuls of the other Powers to the
+scene of insurrection, in order, if possible, to arrive at a
+mediation; in the acceptance of the Andrassy Note, by which the three
+Imperial Powers laid down the reforms which they considered urgently
+necessary; in the rejection of the Berlin Memorandum, on the ground
+that the Porte could not or would not carry out its demands, and that
+it would almost certainly lead to an armed intervention; and finally,
+in sending the British fleet to Besika Bay for the purpose of
+protecting English and Christian interests at Constantinople, at a
+time when that city was in a state of almost complete anarchy, the
+Government were fully agreed, and they carried with them an immense
+majority in Parliament and in the country. For some time, also, the
+country seemed to approve of the policy which Lord Derby uniformly
+avowed and steadily observed, of maintaining a strict neutrality in
+the contest that was raging; doing all that could be done by advice,
+remonstrance, mediation, and moral influence to induce the Porte to
+carry out internal reforms; warning the Turkish Government in clear
+terms that under the circumstances of the case they must not look for
+any military assistance from England, but at the same time
+discouraging as much as possible the active interference of other
+Powers in the affairs of Turkey, and abstaining rigidly from any step
+that would involve the use of force or the chance of war unless some
+serious English interest was affected. He believed that the integrity
+of the Turkish Empire was a vital English interest, and that any
+attempt to substitute a Slavonic for a Turkish Empire would bring upon
+Europe calamities the extent of which it was impossible to exaggerate
+or to foresee. Russia and Austria would at once come into collision;
+England would almost certainly be drawn into the war, and all the
+fierce elements of race hatred and religious fanaticism would be let
+loose.
+
+For a time most English politicians seem to have agreed with him, and
+his one great object was to bring about an armistice, a mediation, and
+a peace. But the popular agitation which arose in England on the
+subject of the Bulgarian atrocities in the summer and autumn of 1876
+added enormously to his difficulties, and the danger was the greater
+because some skilful party management was blended with much genuine
+philanthropy. The speeches addressed by Lord Derby to the successive
+deputations that came to him, give the best explanation and defence of
+his position during this critical period, and the interruptions to
+which he had to reply give a vivid picture of the state of feeling
+that had arisen. The Crimean war was now deplored as a calamity, if
+not a crime. The Turks were described on high political authority as
+'the one great anti-human specimen of humanity.' The Ministers were
+accused of complicity in the Bulgarian massacres; they were urged to
+cast neutrality to the wind; to adopt a policy of armed coercion in
+Turkey; even to assist Russia in driving the Turks out of
+Constantinople. It had become, as Lord Derby sarcastically said, a
+very unpopular thing for an English Minister to talk of English
+interests in connection with the Eastern Question--almost dangerous
+for any man at a public meeting to express in plain terms his doubt of
+the disinterested philanthropy of Russia.
+
+Lord Derby had at this time to encounter much unpopularity. He was
+accused of an undue leaning towards the Turkish Government, and an
+inadequate sympathy with the Christian populations, and it was alleged
+that if he had acted in firm concert with the other Powers in coercing
+the Porte--if he had not proclaimed so loudly and constantly his
+determination to abstain from all active interference and
+compulsion--his remonstrances would have had more effect, and he might
+have averted or restricted the calamities that had occurred. But a
+great change soon took place. The first object of the Government was
+to prevent the Turkish disturbance from leading to a European war, and
+in this object they failed. On April 24, 1877, Russia, in spite of
+English remonstrances, declared war against Turkey. On the same day a
+Russian army crossed the Pruth, and the Eastern Question entered into
+a new and dangerous phase.
+
+To a statesman like Lord Derby, who maintained that war, unless it is
+a necessity, is a crime; that the maintenance of peace is beyond all
+comparison the greatest of British interests, the months that followed
+were extremely trying. His first object was to limit the war, and to
+safeguard English interests, and for this purpose he drew up on May 6,
+1877, a Note defining the English interests that were vital in the
+East. He warned the Russian Government that an attempt by Russia to
+blockade the Suez Canal, an attack on Egypt, a Russian occupation of
+Constantinople, or an alteration of the existing arrangements for the
+navigation of the Bosphorus or the Dardanelles might compel England to
+abandon her neutrality. Russia accepted these conditions, and for some
+time there appeared every prospect of limiting the war. But in the
+beginning of 1878 a period of extreme danger undoubtedly arrived.
+Plevna had fallen. The Turkish resistance had collapsed. A Russian
+army, flushed with victory, had advanced to near Constantinople. The
+treaty of San Stephano was signed; which in the opinion of most
+European statesmen placed Turkey at the feet of Russia, and Russia at
+first refused to submit its terms to a conference of European Powers.
+Public feeling in England now ran strongly in a direction almost
+opposite to that in which it had been running eighteen months before,
+and the nation was extremely alarmed at the danger of Constantinople
+becoming speedily and irremediably a Russian port. On the other hand,
+the national and military pride of the conquering Power was aroused,
+and it was felt that a single false step, a single imprudent menace,
+might lead to war.
+
+It was one of those moments in which men's judgments are largely
+affected by their temperaments, and it soon became evident that the
+Cabinet was seriously divided. Disraeli had now become Lord
+Beaconsfield, and sat with his Foreign Secretary in the House of
+Lords. With his character it was inevitable that he should meet the
+danger by a bold, decisive, and even aggressive, policy. It was no
+less natural that Lord Derby should have persistently leaned towards
+the side of caution and shrunk from any measure that could cut short
+negotiation and diminish the chances of peace. The order given that
+the British Fleet should enter the Dardanelles, first produced the
+inevitable schism, and Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon resigned. The
+order was countermanded, and Lord Derby, for a short time, resumed his
+post. He acquiesced, but with great reluctance, in the vote of credit
+for six millions which was at once brought before the House of
+Commons, but he was soon convinced that measures he did not approve of
+were impending, and when orders were given for calling out the
+reserves he definitely resigned.
+
+He announced his resignation on March 28, 1878, in terms of much
+dignity and moderation. He believed, he said, that his colleagues
+desired peace as truly as himself, and he did not maintain that their
+later measures led inevitably to war, but he considered that they were
+neither necessary nor 'prudent in the interests of European peace.'
+He agreed that the terms of the treaty should be submitted to a
+European Congress, in which England should take part. On minor matters
+he thought it his duty to waive his own opinion, but he could not do
+so on a question involving the momentous issue of peace or war. The
+threat involved in the last act of the Government, he said, in a later
+speech, would make it more difficult for Russia to modify her policy,
+and he believed that without a threat such a modification of the
+treaty of San Stephano could be obtained as would make it acceptable.
+He had been accused of indecision and even of cowardice. For his own
+part he thought it needed more courage to stand up in his place to
+express views which he knew to be unpopular among the great body of
+his friends, than to sit at a desk in Downing Street and issue orders
+which would bring no danger or unpopularity to himself, but might
+bring about a European war.
+
+The short speech in which Lord Beaconsfield accepted the resignation,
+and dwelt on the long friendship, personal as well as political, that
+bound him to Lord Derby, seems to me a perfect model of good feeling
+and good taste. Unfortunately the example of the Prime Minister was
+not followed, and words used in a later debate went far to make the
+breach irrevocable.
+
+Lord Derby for a short time maintained a neutral position, but the
+foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield was in the highest degree
+distasteful to him. A wave of Chauvinism was passing over England,
+which was utterly opposed to his views, and he believed that a section
+of the Conservative party encouraged it in order to divert the
+thoughts of men from internal reforms. He objected to the acquisition
+of Cyprus, to some of the responsibilities assumed by England under
+the treaty of Berlin, and very strongly to the Afghan war; and in the
+beginning of 1880 he formally attached himself to the Liberal party,
+on the ground of his objections to the foreign policy of the
+Government. His speeches in his new capacity differed very little from
+those which he had formerly delivered, but he said that he had learnt
+to see more clearly the uselessness of attempting to resist popular
+ideas, and to think 'more highly of the moderation, the fairness, and
+the general justice with which masses of men, including all conditions
+of life, are disposed to use their power.' He thought that England
+should mix herself as little as possible with 'the sanguinary muddle'
+of European diplomacy; that she should avoid increasing her
+responsibilities; that she should take stringent measures to reduce
+her debt; that she should pay much more attention than she was
+accustomed to do to the condition of her own poorer population; and
+that it should be the object of her statesmen to meet every great
+popular demand by wise and equitable compromise. One of the greatest
+dangers, he said, that could befall the country, would be 'a state of
+things in which the comparatively harmless antagonism of parties would
+be replaced by the far more serious and dangerous war of classes. From
+that danger more than from any other it is the business of a
+well-considered Liberalism to protect us.'
+
+In 1882 he accepted the Colonial Office from Mr. Gladstone, and held
+it until the fall of the Government in the summer of 1885. His
+ministry was not a very eventful one, and it was marked by that steady
+adherence to a middle line which had always characterised him. He
+congratulated the country that the indifference to our colonies which
+had prevailed during his youth had passed away, but he was by no means
+favourable to extensions of the Empire. 'We have quite black men
+enough,' he was accustomed to say; and he believed that any increase
+of our responsibilities was likely to endanger the Empire, and to
+divert the energies of politicians from pressing home questions. He
+did not condemn the policy which led to the occupation of Egypt by
+England, but he declared that even if it was inevitable it was a
+misfortune, and that we ought to 'see that we do not on any pretext,
+however plausible, get that Egyptian millstone tied permanently round
+our necks.' He was very sceptical about Imperial Federation, and
+entirely incredulous about the possibility of an Imperial Zollverein.
+He deplored the protectionism of the colonies, but was himself a
+strict free-trader of the school of Cobden, and utterly opposed to any
+attempt to negotiate treaties with the colonies on a basis of
+preferential tariffs. On the other hand, he showed himself quite ready
+to favour Confederation in Australia, and he accepted gratefully
+Australian help in the Soudan, but he was much alarmed by tendencies
+in some colonies which might lead to complications with foreign
+Powers, and he incurred considerable unpopularity in Australia by
+refusing to consent to the annexation by Queensland of New Guinea.
+
+There is, however, one incident in the colonial administration of Lord
+Derby on which it is necessary to dwell at somewhat greater length,
+for subsequent events have given it an unfortunate prominence and it
+has thrown some discredit on his statesmanship. I allude, of course,
+to the convention with the Transvaal in 1884. In the preceding
+convention, which had been signed in August 1881, complete
+self-government had been granted by England to the Transvaal 'subject
+to the suzerainty of her Majesty' and her successors, and also to a
+large number of carefully specified reservations and limitations. They
+comprised the complete control of the external relations of the
+Transvaal, including the conclusion of treaties and the conduct of
+diplomatic intercourse with foreign Powers, which could only be
+carried on through her Majesty's officers; the right of moving British
+troops in case of necessity through the Transvaal; a power of veto
+over all legislation affecting the interests of the native population.
+A number of articles prohibited slavery in the new State; protected
+with much detail the interests of the native population; secured
+complete religious liberty; established the right of all persons other
+than natives who conformed themselves to the laws of the State, to
+enter, travel, and reside in any part of the Transvaal, to acquire
+property and to carry on their business without being subject to any
+other taxation than that which was imposed on the citizens of the
+Transvaal; and placed British imports and exports on the same plane as
+those of the most-favoured nations. The limits of the new State were
+carefully defined and a British Resident was established in the
+Transvaal to superintend the carrying out of these provisions. There
+was no express provision in the convention for the political
+privileges of the English residents in the Transvaal, but the
+Government appear to have relied on a not very explicit verbal
+assurance given to the British Commissioners by President Kruger in
+May 1881. Asked about the rights of British subjects to complete free
+trade throughout the Transvaal, President Kruger answered that before
+the annexation 'they were on the same footing as the burghers'; that
+'there was not the slightest difference in accordance with the Sand
+River convention'; that this state of things would be continued and
+that 'there would be equal protection for everybody.' Sir Evelyn Wood
+then added, 'and equal privileges?' 'We make no difference,' answered
+President Kruger, 'so far as burgher rights are concerned. There may
+perhaps be some slight difference in the case of a young person who
+has just come into the country.' It was subsequently explained that
+the words 'young person' did not refer to age, but to the time of
+residence in the Republic--according to the old Transvaal
+Constitution, a year's residence in the Republic was necessary for
+naturalisation. With this assurance the Government of 1881 appears to
+have been content. They believed in words expressly sanctioned by Mr.
+Gladstone, that the concession of limited independence to the
+Transvaal by the convention of 1881 would 'provide for the full
+liberty and equal treatment of the entire white population, guard the
+interests of the natives, and promote harmony and good-will among the
+various races in South Africa.'[43] As a matter of fact, the only
+change in the political position of the English residents in the
+Transvaal was that the period of naturalisation was extended from one
+to five years--a change which appears to have produced little or no
+commotion in the Republic.
+
+The convention of 1881 was, however, extremely unpopular among a large
+section of the Boer population. Complete independence was their avowed
+object, and in order to attain it their first task was to abolish the
+suzerainty of Great Britain. Almost immediately after the convention
+was signed, the limitations of the Transvaal established by the
+convention were flagrantly disregarded by Transvaal filibusters, who
+proceeded with the tacit and even with the avowed countenance of their
+Government to place new sections of native territory under the
+exclusive protectorate of the Transvaal Government;[44] and a
+deputation, headed by President Kruger, came to England in 1883 for
+the purpose of negotiating with the Colonial Office for the abolition
+of the chief articles of the convention of 1881. They avowed with
+complete frankness that absolute independence would alone satisfy
+them, and that their desire was to revert to the Sand River convention
+of 1852, by which this independence had been recognised. This demand
+was absolutely rejected by the Imperial Government, but Lord Derby
+attempted to meet the objections of the Transvaal leaders by
+substituting for the articles of the convention of 1881 new articles
+in several respects more favourable to the pretensions of the Boers.
+
+He, in the first place, made a sentimental concession to which it is
+probable he attached little importance, but which was regarded by the
+Boer population as a considerable step towards the achievement of
+their independence. The term 'Transvaal State,' which was accepted in
+the convention of 1881 as the designation of the new State, was
+dropped and the old title of 'South African Republic' was revived and
+recognised. The question of suzerainty was dealt with in a somewhat
+ambiguous fashion. The new convention purported only to substitute new
+articles in the place of those of the preceding convention; and it was
+afterwards argued that the old preamble, which asserted at once the
+internal independence of the Transvaal and the suzerainty of Great
+Britain, remained in force. In fact, however, this preamble was
+neither reprinted nor replaced in the new convention, and the term
+'suzerainty,' which occurred in the original draft of the document,
+was deliberately expunged--it is said by Lord Derby himself. He
+considered the term wholly wanting in the precision which is desirable
+in a treaty arrangement, that it was capable of many different degrees
+of extension, and that the fact of the paramountcy of Great Britain
+over the new State might be sufficiently established without the use
+of an ambiguous word which excited the most bitter hostility in the
+Transvaal. His own words in defending his conduct in the House of
+Lords are perfectly clear. 'The word suzerainty,' he said, 'is a very
+vague word, and I do not think it is capable of any precise legal
+definition. Whatever we may understand by it, I think it is not very
+easy to define. But I apprehend whether you call it a protectorate, or
+a suzerainty, or the recognition of England as a paramount Power, the
+fact is that a certain controlling power is retained when the State
+which exercises this suzerainty has a right to veto any negotiation
+into which the dependent State may enter with foreign Powers. Whatever
+suzerainty meant in the convention of Pretoria (1881), the condition
+of things which it implies still remains; although the word is not
+actually employed, we have kept the substance. We have abstained from
+using the word because it was not capable of legal definition, and
+because it seemed to be a word which was likely to lead to
+misconception and misunderstanding.'
+
+The articles of the previous convention relating to slavery, to native
+rights, to free trade, to religious liberty, to the rights of
+residence of foreigners in the Transvaal, reappear in the new
+convention, and the limits of the State were somewhat more fully
+defined, but the controlling power of Great Britain over the foreign
+policy of the Transvaal, though clearly reasserted, was somewhat
+limited in its scope. It was provided that the South African Republic
+should conclude no treaty or engagement with any State or nation other
+than the Orange Free State, or with any native tribe to the eastward
+or westward of the Republic, until the same had been approved by the
+Queen; that every such treaty should be at once submitted to her
+Majesty's Government for her consent, but that this consent should be
+presumed to have been granted if no notification to the contrary was
+received within six months. The desire of the Transvaal authorities to
+be recognised as representing an independent sovereign power was thus
+distinctly rejected, and the English Government positively refused a
+proposal to admit foreign arbitration in cases of dispute between
+England and the Transvaal.
+
+This convention has been severely censured by later writers on the
+ground of the insufficiency and ambiguity of its assertion of the
+paramount authority of Great Britain over the Transvaal, and of its
+failure to do anything to supply the great deficiency in the preceding
+convention by an article securing political equality for the British
+population within it. A few years later, when an immense English
+immigration had taken place, not only with the consent but at the
+express invitation of the Transvaal Government; when the English
+element formed a large majority of the inhabitants of the State; when
+they paid an enormous preponderance of its taxation, and were the
+chief agents in developing its wealth and raising it from the position
+of a very poor pastoral community into that of a great and wealthy
+State, the Transvaal Government proceeded to impose upon the new
+emigrants disqualifications and disabilities which were utterly
+unknown when England conceded self-government to 'the inhabitants of
+the Transvaal.' They completely deprived the vast majority of
+political power or local self-government, and surrounded them at every
+turn with the most irritating disabilities. The Transvaal became the
+one part of South Africa where one white race was held in a position
+of inferiority to another. At a time when perfect equality was enjoyed
+by the Dutch population in our own colonies, the political
+disqualification of the English race was made the very corner-stone of
+the policy of the Transvaal Government. An annual revenue greatly in
+excess of what was required for its internal government was raised
+almost entirely from the taxation of an unrepresented class, to whom
+the prosperity of the State was mainly due, and it was employed in
+accumulating a great armament which could only be intended for use
+against England and for maintaining the subjection of an English
+population.
+
+This was the position to which the paramount Power in South Africa,
+the Power which of its own free will had conceded a limited
+independence to the Transvaal, found itself reduced. And yet it was
+possible for the Boer Government to maintain that there was nothing in
+all this legislation which was inconsistent with the terms of the
+convention of 1884.
+
+I do not think that the justice of this criticism can be wholly
+denied. The Transvaal authorities had already given clear intimation
+of their desire to emancipate themselves from all British control, and
+especially of their determination to disregard the limitations which
+had been imposed on the expansion of their State. There is, however,
+one very material fact to be remembered in judging the policy of Lord
+Derby. At the time of the convention of 1884 the English population in
+the Transvaal was a small, scattered, and powerless minority, and as
+their numbers were far too scanty to make them a danger to the State,
+there was not much reason to believe that the Transvaal authorities
+would repudiate their own assurances and subject them to oppressive
+disabilities. It was not until two years after the convention that the
+vast gold-mines of the Transvaal were discovered and all the
+conditions of the South African problem fundamentally changed. The
+gigantic immigration that ensued reversed the proportion between the
+two races. The revenue and the expenditure of the State multiplied
+more than fifteen fold in little more than ten years.[45] The
+Transvaal became the most powerful and wealthy State in South Africa,
+and the great preponderance of the Outlander element in numbers,
+wealth, energy, and industry rendered a conflict of races almost
+inevitable. No statesman could have foreseen this change, and a
+convention that might have allayed discontent if the gold-mines had
+never been discovered, proved wholly inefficient to meet it.
+
+Though in a politician of the stamp of Lord Derby the change from a very
+liberal conservatism to a very conservative liberalism involved little
+real modification of opinion, it necessarily involved some change of
+attitude, and on some questions he spoke with a freedom which would have
+been impossible as a member of the Conservative party. On Church
+questions, for example, while strongly maintaining that the country was
+not ripe for the disestablishment of the Church in England, he declared
+that in his opinion the exclusive alliance of one religious denomination
+among many with the State could not be permanently maintained side by
+side with a democratic representation--that disestablishment and at
+least partial disendowment must ultimately come; that if the
+representatives of Scotland desired the disestablishment of their
+Church, it was not for Englishmen to oppose them; and that Wales had a
+strong claim to be separately dealt with. 'The Welsh people constitute
+in many respects a distinct nationality, and I do not see why we should
+refuse to Welsh loyalty what we have granted to Irish sedition.' On the
+subject of endowments indeed as early as 1875 his view was that of most
+moderate Liberals. 'To my mind, so far as right is concerned, the
+Legislature may do what it chooses in regard to any endowment, without
+injustice, provided only that the rights of living individuals are
+respected. How far it is politic to use that power is another matter....
+Respect the founder's object, but use your own discretion as to the
+means. If you don't do the first, you will have no new endowments. If
+you neglect the last, those which you have will be of no use.'[46] He
+maintained that the question of local government had in England become
+one of pressing importance, and that the administration of county
+affairs must be put into the hands of elective bodies. He would give
+those local parliaments very large power--but he most urgently insisted
+on the importance of one restriction. The new bodies must not be given
+an unlimited power of mortgaging the future. The gradual reduction of
+the National Debt had been for some years one of the chief aims of
+enlightened politicians, but all that had been done in this direction
+would be undone if, side by side with the National Debt, there grew up a
+municipal debt of perhaps equal amount. In this tendency to municipal
+extravagance he saw one of the gravest menaces to property. 'The growth
+of Socialism throughout Europe has followed very closely on the gigantic
+increase of national indebtedness during the present century, and men
+who begin to feel the pressure intolerable are apt to raise questions,
+more easily stated than solved, as to the right of any State to impose
+burdens in perpetuity for the benefit of one generation.' He urged that
+every local body which contracted a debt should be under a statutory
+obligation to provide for its repayment in fifty or sixty years at
+latest.
+
+The growth of municipal indebtedness; the excessive tendency to
+increase the functions of the State; the disaffection of Ireland and
+the contingency of an isolated and disloyal body of some eighty Irish
+representatives offering their services to any party which would
+consent to carry out their designs, appeared to Lord Derby the chief
+dangers of English domestic politics. The last danger was very
+speedily realised, and the sudden conversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home
+Rule produced one more change in the attitude of Lord Derby. On this
+question he had never flinched or wavered, and he at once took his
+place in the front rank of the Liberal Unionists, whom for some time
+he led in the House of Lords. I do not know that the Unionist case has
+ever been more powerfully put forward than in his speeches on the
+subject, and the eminently judicial character of his mind, and his
+entire freedom from all mere party bias, gave a special weight to his
+advocacy. With this exception he took little part in party politics
+during the last years of his life, but he devoted himself largely to
+social questions, and among other things served with great assiduity
+and ability on the Labour Commission. His last speech was delivered at
+Manchester on the unveiling of the statue of Mr. Bright in October
+1891. His last public work was that of presiding over the Labour
+Commission in May 1892. In the preceding year an attack of influenza,
+followed by a relapse, had shattered a health which had hitherto been
+robust. Other complications ensued, and he passed away at Knowsley on
+April 21, 1893, in his sixty-seventh year.
+
+The foregoing sketch will, I hope, have given a sufficient idea of his
+public character. Few men have made a greater sacrifice of ambition to
+a conscientious conviction than he did, when, rather than support a
+measure which might lead to war, he abandoned the Conservative
+Ministry in 1878. He was then the fully recognised successor of Lord
+Beaconsfield, and if he had adopted a different course he would in a
+short time have been, beyond all doubt, Prime Minister of England. On
+the whole, however, the severance from old friends cost him, I
+believe, far more than the sacrifice of his political prospects.
+Whatever he may have been in his youth, he was certainly not in mature
+life an ambitious man. With the great position he held in England the
+world had little to offer him, and the self-knowledge which was not
+the least of his many remarkable gifts showed him that party conflict
+was not the sphere in which Nature intended him to move. With many of
+the qualities of the highest statesmanship he wanted some necessary
+ingredients of a great statesman. He wanted the power of appealing to
+the imagination and moving the passions. He wanted more decision of
+character, more power of initiative, more capacity of bearing lightly
+the weight of a great responsibility. His belief that the House of
+Lords must always ultimately yield to the House of Commons aggravated
+a weakness of resolution which was deeply rooted in his nature. There
+were moments when his inveterate moderation tended to exasperate, and
+he was accused, not altogether without reason, of sometimes making
+admirable speeches, pointing out in the clearest terms all the evils
+and dangers of a measure, and then concluding by exhorting the House
+of Lords to vote for it, introducing mitigating amendments in
+Committee. The measures he treated in this way usually, as he had
+predicted, became law, but this was not the attitude of a great
+leader. During a considerable part of his career, like a very large
+proportion of moderate men in England, he was in the embarrassing
+position of agreeing substantially with the home policy of one party
+and with the foreign policy of the other. After the death of Lord
+Palmerston an element of passion was infused into public life which
+was very uncongenial to his temperament, and English politics passed
+into phases in which caution, character, judgment, and knowledge were
+less prized than brilliant strokes that appealed to the popular
+imagination, clever coalitions, a skilful barter of principles for
+votes. In spheres governed by such methods Lord Derby was very useful,
+but he was not likely to play a foremost part.
+
+To few men who have taken a conspicuous part in active politics was
+the excitement of such an existence so little necessary. Happy in his
+domestic life and in a companionship and sympathy which were
+all-sufficient to him, he was not less happy in the wide range of his
+interests and duties. The administration of his vast estate would have
+been more than sufficient to tax the energies of most men, and it
+was, I believe, universally acknowledged that it was admirably
+administered. In the everyday affairs of practical life he had no
+indecision, and he judged swiftly with the clearest of judgments.
+Nothing about him was more remarkable than the apparent ease and the
+absence of all hurry and confusion with which he could deal with many
+different forms of work. His study in its perfect neatness was more
+like a lady's boudoir than the workshop of a very busy man. _Ohne
+Hast, ohne Rast_, might have been his motto. He had much belief in the
+future of English land, and was not, I think, at all exempt from the
+great English landlord's foible of adding field to field. In the long
+period of agricultural depression it was easy for a rich man to do so.
+'In my experience,' he used to say, 'in nine cases out of ten it is
+Naboth who comes to Ahab and begs him to buy his vineyard.' Certainly
+no one had reason to complain, for there were few better or more
+popular landlords than Lord Derby. In many long walks with him through
+his property I was always struck with the evident pleasure with which
+he was welcomed by his people, the fulness of knowledge and the
+kindness of interest with which he inquired into the circumstances of
+every tenant. It is characteristic of him that only two days before
+his death he was giving instructions for building a hospital for the
+sick poor of Knowsley. I have known few men in whom the desire to make
+everyone about them happy was so strongly and so clearly marked. He
+was fond of looking minutely into the circumstances of men of
+different classes, and comparing their wants with their means, often
+with somewhat whimsical results. There was a tradesman who made
+regularly 5_l._ a week; who was accustomed every week to devote 2_l._
+to his household expenses, to lay by 2_l._, and to employ the
+remainder in getting drunk. He was, Lord Derby thought, the only man
+he had ever known who satisfied all his wants with 40 per cent. of his
+income, who always laid by 40 per cent., and who expended 20 per cent.
+on his pleasures.
+
+Outside his property Lord Derby had strong county interests. With
+perhaps the exception of Birmingham there is no part of England where
+a distinctive local patriotism is so intensely developed as in
+Lancashire, and Lord Derby in tastes and character was pre-eminently a
+Lancashire man, very proud of the greatness, and deeply concerned in
+the interests, of his county. In all the vicissitudes of his career,
+Liverpool, I believe, never wavered in its attachment to him. He
+contributed to the many charitable and philanthropic works with which
+he was concerned not only much money, but also--what in so rich a man
+was far more meritorious--an extraordinary amount of time and patient
+supervision. Among the many offices he accepted, was president of the
+Literary Fund for dispensing charity to needy authors, and on the
+committee of that charity I had, during many years, ample opportunity
+of observing how far he was from treating a presidential position as a
+sinecure. The regularity of his attendance, the constant attention he
+paid to every detail of the charity; the infinite pains which he would
+bestow upon obscure cases of distress, marked him out as a model
+president, and many of those whom our rules did not allow us to help
+were assisted by his bounty. He contributed with a large but
+discriminating generosity to many causes that were conspicuous in the
+eyes of the world, but his special bias was towards unostentatious
+and unobserved benevolence, and crowds of obscure men in obscure
+positions were assisted by him.
+
+Those who did not know him, and those who had come in merely casual
+contact with him, sometimes formed a false impression of his
+character. He had a great deal of natural shyness. He had very little
+of the gift of small talk. On occasions of mere show and in
+uncongenial atmospheres he was apt to be awkward and embarrassed, and
+when walking by himself he was extremely absent and quite capable of
+brushing against his oldest friend with a complete unconsciousness of
+his presence. These traits sometimes gave rise to natural
+misinterpretations, which a fuller knowledge always dispelled. No one
+who knew Lord Derby could fail to feel that his nature was one of the
+most genuine and transparent simplicity, singularly free from all
+tinge of arrogance, superciliousness, and acrimony. His personal
+tastes were exceedingly simple, and there was not a particle of
+ostentation in his character. He delighted in a quiet country life and
+had a strong sense of natural beauty. In his youth he had been an
+ardent mountaineer, and in later life he had few greater pleasures
+than to watch the growth of his plantations. He calculated that he had
+planted in his lifetime about two million of trees.
+
+He was among the best-read men I have ever known. His private library
+was one of the finest in England, and he took a keen interest in it. A
+love of sumptuous, large-paper editions was indeed one of the very few
+luxuries in which from mere personal taste he greatly indulged. Like
+all men of literary tastes he had his limitations. German was a closed
+book to him. Theology and metaphysics were conspicuous by their
+absence. He was certainly not drawn to the mystical, the
+unintelligible, or the morbid, either in imaginative or speculative
+literature, and although he was a great lover and great buyer of
+water-colour pictures, I do not think he had much real sense or
+knowledge of art. But he had read very extensively and with great
+profit and discrimination in many widely different fields, and his
+memory was unusually retentive. He was an excellent literary critic,
+and if clear thought and accurate knowledge were what he most valued,
+it would be a complete mistake to suppose that he was insensible to
+the poetic and imaginative side of literature. He could repeat long
+passages from 'Childe Harold,' and I can well remember the delight
+which he took in the picturesque narrative of Mr. Froude, and in the
+fiery verses of Sir Alfred Lyall.
+
+He was one of the kindest and most gracious of hosts, and his genuine
+unforced good nature and good humour drew to him many whose tastes and
+sympathies were widely different from his own. Nature certainly never
+intended him for a sportsman, but he preserved game extensively and
+until the last years of his life usually went out with his guests. 'I
+rather like shooting,' he once said to me, 'it prevents the necessity
+of general conversation.' Among kindred spirits, however, his own
+conversation was eminently attractive. His wide knowledge both of
+books and men, his vast range of political anecdote, his experience of
+so many statesmen and offices and departments of life, made it
+singularly instructive. He was a very shrewd, and at the same time a
+very kind, judge of character; and he had a power, which is certainly
+not common, of fully appreciating merits that are allied with great
+and manifest defects. He had much quaint, dry humour, and a great
+happiness of expression; and one always felt that his opinions were
+genuinely thought out--that they were voices and not echoes. His
+private conversation had the quality that I have noticed in his
+public speeches, of grasping at once the essential elements of a
+question and disencumbering it from accessories and details. It is one
+of the qualities that add most to the charm of conversation, and, with
+the exception of Lord Russell, I do not think I have met with anyone
+who possessed it to a greater degree than Lord Derby. He delighted in
+long walks with one or two friends, and he might be seen to great
+advantage in some small dining-clubs which play a larger part than is
+generally recognised in the best English social life of our time. He
+had been a member of Grillion's for thirty-seven years, but the
+society to which he was most attached was, I think, 'The Club' which
+was founded by Johnson and Reynolds. During the nineteen years of
+which I can speak from personal experience, he was an almost constant
+attendant, and certainly no other member enjoyed a greater popularity
+in it, or contributed more largely to its charm.
+
+He hated cant of all kinds, and had a great distrust of ostentatious
+professions of lofty motives. He disliked, I think greatly, the habit
+of dragging sacred names into party speeches, and attributing every
+party manoeuvre to a solemn sense of duty. Language of this kind
+will never be found in his speeches, but I have known few men who were
+governed through life more steadily though more unobtrusively by a
+sense of duty. He always tried to look facts in the face, and to
+promote in the many spheres which he could influence the real
+happiness of men. There have been statesmen among his contemporaries
+of greater power and of more brilliant achievement. There has been, I
+believe, no statesman of sounder judgment and more disinterested
+patriotism; there have been very few whose departure has left a void
+in so many spheres.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[43] See, on this subject, Cook's _Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal
+War_, pp. 260-265.
+
+[44] See Westlake's _L'Angleterre et les Républiques Boers_, pp. 30-31.
+
+[45] See the table of revenue and expenditure in Fitzpatrick's
+_Transvaal from Within_, p. 71.
+
+[46] Inaugural address at Edinburgh University.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY REEVE, C.B., F.S.A., D.C.L.
+
+
+Although it has never been the custom of the 'Edinburgh Review' to
+withdraw the veil of anonymity from its writers and its
+administration, it would be mere affectation to suffer it to appear
+before the public without some allusion to the great editor whom we
+have just lost,[47] and who for forty years has watched with
+indefatigable care over its pages.
+
+The career of Mr. Henry Reeve is perhaps the most striking
+illustration in our time of how little in English life influence is
+measured by notoriety. To the outer world his name was but little
+known. He is remembered as the translator of Tocqueville, as the
+editor of the 'Greville Memoirs,' as the author of a not quite
+forgotten book on Royal and Republican France, showing much knowledge
+of French literature and politics; as the holder during fifty years of
+the respectable, but not very prominent, post of Registrar of the
+Privy Council. To those who have a more intimate knowledge of the
+political and literary life of England, it is well known that during
+nearly the whole of his long life he was a powerful and living force
+in English literature; that few men of his time have filled a larger
+place in some of the most select circles of English social life; and
+that he exercised during many years a political influence such as
+rarely falls to the lot of any Englishman outside Parliament, or even
+outside the Cabinet.
+
+He was born at Norwich in 1813, and brought up in a highly cultivated,
+and even brilliant, literary circle. His father, Dr. Reeve, was one of
+the earliest contributors to the 'Edinburgh Review.' The Austins, the
+Opies, the Taylors, and the Aldersons were closely related to him, and
+he is said to have been indebted to his gifted aunt, Sarah Austin, for
+his appointment in the Privy Council. The family income was not large,
+and a great part of Mr. Reeve's education took place on the Continent,
+chiefly at Geneva and Munich. He went with excellent introductions,
+and the years he spent abroad were abundantly fruitful. He learned
+German so well that he was at one time a contributor to a German
+periodical. He was one of the rare Englishmen who spoke French almost
+like a Frenchman, and at a very early age he formed friendships with
+several eminent French writers. His translation of the 'Democracy in
+America,' by Tocqueville, which appeared in 1835, strengthened his
+hold on French society. Two years later he obtained the appointment in
+the Privy Council, which he held until 1887. It was in this office
+that he became the colleague and fast friend of Charles Greville, who
+on his death-bed entrusted him with the publication of his 'Memoirs.'
+
+Mr. Reeve had now obtained an assured income and a steady occupation,
+but it was far from satisfying his desire for work. He became a
+contributor, and very soon a leading contributor, to the 'Times,'
+while his close and confidential intercourse with Mr. Delane gave him
+a considerable voice in its management. The penny newspaper was still
+unborn, and the 'Times' at this period was the undisputed monarch of
+the Press, and exercised an influence over public opinion, both in
+England and on the Continent, such as no existing paper can be said
+to possess. It is, we believe, no exaggeration to say that for the
+space of fifteen years nearly every article that appeared in its
+columns on foreign politics was written by Mr. Reeve, and the period
+during which he wrote for it included the year 1848, when foreign
+politics had the most transcendent importance.
+
+The great political influence which he at this time exercised
+naturally drew him into close connection with many of the chief
+statesmen of his time. With Lord Clarendon especially his friendship
+was close and confidential, and he received from that statesman almost
+weekly letters during his viceroyalty in Ireland and during others of
+the more critical periods of his career. In France, Mr. Reeve's
+connections were scarcely less numerous than in England. Guizot,
+Thiers, Cousin, Tocqueville, Villemain, Circourt--in fact, nearly all
+the leading figures in French literature and politics during the reign
+of Louis Philippe were among his friends or correspondents. He was at
+all times singularly international in his sympathies and friendships,
+and he appears to have been more than once made the channel of
+confidential communications between English and French statesmen.
+
+It was a task for which he was eminently suited. The qualities which
+most impressed all who came into close communication with him were the
+strength, swiftness, and soundness of his judgment, and his unfailing
+tact and discretion in dealing with delicate questions. He was
+eminently a man of the world, and had quite as much knowledge of men
+as of books. Probably few men of his time have been so frequently and
+so variously consulted. He always spoke with confidence and authority,
+and his clear, keen-cut, decisive sentences, a certain stateliness of
+manner which did not so much claim as assume ascendancy, and a
+somewhat elaborate formality of courtesy which was very efficacious in
+repelling intruders, sometimes concealed from strangers the softer
+side of his character. But those who knew him well soon learnt to
+recognise the genuine kindliness of his nature, his remarkable skill
+in avoiding friction, and the rare steadiness of his friendships.
+
+One great source of his influence was the just belief in his complete
+independence and disinterestedness. For a very able man his ambition
+was singularly moderate. As he once said, he had made it his object
+throughout life only to aim at things which were well within his
+power. He had very little respect for the judgment of the multitude,
+and he cared nothing for notoriety and not much for dignities. A
+moderate competence, congenial work, a sphere of wide and genuine
+influence, a close and intimate friendship with a large proportion of
+the guiding spirits of his time, were the things he really valued, and
+all these he fully attained. He had great conversational powers, which
+never degenerated into monologue, a singularly equable, happy, and
+sanguine temperament, and a keen delight in cultivated society. These
+characteristics showed conspicuously in two small and very select
+dining-clubs which have included most of the distinguished English
+statesmen and men of letters of the century. He became a member of the
+Literary Society in 1857 and of Dr. Johnson's Club in 1861, and it is
+a remarkable evidence of the appreciation of his social tact that both
+bodies speedily selected him as their treasurer. He held that position
+in 'The Club' from 1868 till within a year of his death, when failing
+health and absence from London obliged him to relinquish it. The
+French Institute elected him 'Correspondant' in 1863 and Associated
+Member in 1888, in which latter dignity he succeeded Sir Henry Maine.
+In 1869 the University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree
+of D.C.L.
+
+It was in 1855, on the death of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, that he
+assumed the editorship of the 'Edinburgh Review' which he retained
+till the day of his death. Both on the political and the literary side
+he was in full harmony with its traditions. His rare and minute
+knowledge of recent English and foreign political history; his vast
+fund of political anecdote; his personal acquaintance with so many of
+the chief actors on the political scene, both in England and France,
+gave a great weight and authority to his judgments, and his mind was
+essentially of the Whig cast. He was a genuine Liberal of the school
+of Russell, Palmerston, Clarendon, and Cornewall Lewis. It was a sober
+and tolerant Liberalism, rooted in the traditions of the past, and
+deeply attached to the historical elements in the Constitution. The
+dislike and distrust with which he had always viewed the progress of
+democracy deepened with age, and it was his firm conviction that it
+could never become the permanent basis of good government. Like most
+men of his type of thought and character, he was strongly repelled by
+the later career of Mr. Gladstone, and the Home Rule policy at last
+severed him definitely from the bulk of the Liberal party. From this
+time the present Duke of Devonshire was the leader of his party.
+
+His literary judgments had much analogy to his political ones. His
+leanings were all towards the old standards of thought and style. He
+had been formed in the school of Macaulay and Milman, and of the great
+French writers under Louis Philippe. Sober thought, clear reasoning,
+solid scholarship, a transparent, vivid, and restrained style were the
+literary qualities he most appreciated. He was a great purist,
+inexorably hostile to a new word. In philosophy he was a devoted
+disciple of Kant, and his decided orthodoxy in religious belief
+affected many of his judgments. He could not appreciate Carlyle; he
+looked with much distrust on Darwinism and the philosophy of Herbert
+Spencer and he had very little patience with some of the moral and
+intellectual extravagances of modern literature. But, according to his
+own standards and in the wide range of his own subjects, his literary
+judgment was eminently sound, and he was quick and generous in
+recognising rising eminence. In at least one case the first
+considerable recognition of a prominent historian was an article in
+the 'Edinburgh Review' from his pen.
+
+He had a strong sense of the responsibility of an editor, and
+especially of the editor of a Review of unsigned articles. No article
+appeared which he did not carefully consider. His powerful
+individuality was deeply stamped upon the Review, and he carefully
+maintained its unity and consistency of sentiments. It was one of the
+chief occupations and pleasures of his closing days, and the very last
+letter he dictated referred to it.
+
+Time, as might be expected, had greatly thinned the circle of his
+friends. Of the France which he knew so well scarcely anything
+remained, but his old friend and senior Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire
+visited him at Christ Church, and he kept up to the end a warm
+friendship with the Duc d'Aumale. He spent his eightieth birthday at
+Chantilly, and until the very last year of his life he was never
+absent when the Duke dined at 'The Club.' In Lord Derby he lost the
+statesman with whom in his later years he was most closely connected
+by private friendship and political sympathy, while the death of Lady
+Stanley of Alderley deprived him of an attached and lifelong friend.
+
+Growing infirmities prevented him in his latter days from mixing much
+in general society in London, but his life was brightened by all that
+loving companionship could give; his mental powers were unfaded, and
+he could still enjoy the society of younger friends. He looked forward
+to the end with a perfect and a most characteristic calm, without fear
+and without regret. It was the placid close of a long, dignified, and
+useful life.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[47] Mr. Reeve died October 21, 1895.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D., DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S.
+
+
+The great prominence which the High Church movement has assumed in the
+ecclesiastical history of England during the second and third quarters
+of the nineteenth century, and the extraordinary success with which it
+has permeated the Established Church by its influence, have led some
+writers to exaggerate not a little the place which it occupied in the
+general intellectual development of the time. In the universities, it
+is true, it long exercised an extraordinary influence, and Mr.
+Gladstone, who was by far the most remarkable layman whom it
+profoundly influenced, was accustomed to say that for at least a
+generation almost the whole of the best intellect of Oxford was
+controlled by it. It possessed in Newman a writer of most striking and
+undoubted genius. In an age remarkable for brilliancy of style he was
+one of the greatest masters of English prose. His power of drawing
+subtle distinctions and pursuing long trains of subtle reasoning made
+him one of the most skilful of controversialists, and he had a great
+insight into spiritual cravings and an admirable gift of interpreting
+and appealing to many forms of religious emotion. But though he was a
+man of rare, delicate, and most seductive genius, we have sometimes
+doubted whether any of his books are destined to take a permanent and
+considerable place in English literature. He was not a great scholar,
+or an original and independent thinker. Dealing with questions
+inseparably connected with historical evidence, he had neither the
+judicial spirit nor the firm grasp of a real historian, and he had
+very little skill in measuring probabilities and degrees of evidence.
+He had a manifest incapacity, which was quite as much moral as
+intellectual, for looking facts in the face and pursuing trains of
+thought to unwelcome conclusions. He often took refuge from them in
+clouds of casuistry. The scepticism which was a marked feature of his
+intellect allied itself closely with credulity, for it was directed
+against reason itself; and though he has expressed in admirable
+language many true and beautiful thoughts, the glamour of his style
+too often concealed much weakness and uncertainty of judgment and much
+sophistry in argument.
+
+Many of those who co-operated with him were men of great learning and
+distinguished ability. No one will question the patristic knowledge of
+Pusey, the metaphysical acumen of Ward, the genuine vein of religious
+poetry in Keble and Faber, the wide accomplishments and scholarly
+criticism of Church. But on the whole the broad stream of English
+thought has gone in other directions. In politics the Oxford movement
+had brilliant representatives in Gladstone and Selborne, but the ideal
+of the relations of Church and State and the ideal of education to
+which the Oxford school aspired, have been absolutely discarded. The
+universities have been secularised. The Irish Established Church,
+which it was one of the first objects of the party to defend, has been
+abolished by Gladstone himself, and although the English Established
+Church retains its hold on the affections of the nation, it is
+defended by its most skilful supporters on very different grounds and
+by very different arguments from those which were put forward by the
+Oxford divines. Among the foremost names in lay literature during the
+fifty years we are considering, it is curious to observe how few were
+even touched by the movement. Froude is an exception, but he speedily
+repudiated it. The mediæval sympathies that were sometimes shown by
+Ruskin sprang from a wholly different source. Macaulay, Carlyle,
+Hallam, Grote, Mill, Buckle, Tennyson, Browning, and the great
+novelists, from Dickens to George Eliot, all wrote very much as they
+might have written if the movement had never existed. An unusual
+proportion of the best intellect of England passed into the fields of
+physical science, and the methods of reasoning and habits of thought
+which they inculcated were wholly out of harmony with the school of
+Newman, while both geology and Darwinism have made serious incursions
+into long-cherished beliefs. Even in the Church itself, though the
+High Church movement was stronger than any other, great deductions
+have to be made. The school of independent Biblical criticism, which
+in various degrees has come to be generally accepted, certainly owed
+nothing to it, and several of the most illustrious Churchmen of this
+period were wholly alien to it. Thirlwall and Merivale were
+conspicuous examples, but they devoted themselves chiefly to great
+works of secular history. Arnold--who was one of the strongest
+personal influences of his age, and whose influence was both
+perpetuated and widened by Dean Stanley--and Whately, who was one of
+the most independent and original thinkers of the nineteenth century,
+were strongly antagonistic. In the field of ecclesiastical history it
+might have been expected that a school which was at once so scholarly
+and so wedded to tradition would have been pre-eminent, but no
+ecclesiastical histories which England has produced can, on the whole,
+be placed on as high a level as those which were written by the great
+Broad Church divine whose name stands at the head of this article.
+
+Milman was, indeed, a man well deserving of commemoration on account
+of the works which he produced, yet it is perhaps not too much to say
+that to those among whom he lived the man seemed even greater than his
+works. For many years he was a central and most popular figure in the
+best English literary society, and he reckoned most of the leading
+intellects of his day among his friends. He was in an extraordinary
+degree many-sided, both in his knowledge and his sympathies. He was an
+admirable critic, and the eminent sanity of his judgment, as well as
+the eminent kindness of his nature, combined with a great charm both
+of manner and of conversation. Few men of his time had more friends,
+and were more admired, consulted, and loved.
+
+Mr. Arthur Milman has sketched his father's life in one short
+volume,[48] written in excellent English and with uniformly good
+taste. We have read it with much interest, yet in laying it down it is
+impossible not to be sensible how much of the personal charm which was
+so conspicuous in its subject has passed beyond recovery. More than
+thirty years have gone by since the old Dean was laid in his grave,
+and but few of those who knew him intimately survive. He appears to
+have kept no journal. He wrote nothing autobiographical, and he had a
+strong sense of the chasm that should separate private from public
+life. It was wholly contrary to his unegotistical nature to make the
+great public the confidant of his domestic affairs or of his inner
+feelings, and he was deeply sensible of the injustice which is so
+often done by biographers in printing unguarded, unqualified opinions
+and judgments, expressed in the freedom of private correspondence. He
+acted sternly on this view. Many of the foremost men in England were
+among his correspondents, but he deliberately burnt their letters. 'I
+could never bear,' we have heard him say, 'that what was written to me
+by dear friends in the most unreserved and absolute confidence should,
+through my fault, be one day dragged before the public.' This
+reticence and this strong feeling of the sanctity of friendship and
+private correspondence, which is now becoming very rare, was one of
+his most characteristic traits, but it has necessarily deprived his
+biography of many elements of interest.
+
+He was the youngest son of Sir Francis Milman, the well-known
+physician of George III. He was born in 1791, and educated at Eton and
+Oxford, where he soon distinguished himself as one of the most
+brilliant of students. He won the Newdigate in 1812, the Chancellor's
+prize for Latin verse in 1813, the prize for English and Latin essays
+in 1816. He obtained a first class in classics, and in 1815 he was
+elected a Fellow of his college. He was ordained in the following
+year, and a year later Lord Eldon, who was then Chancellor of the
+university, nominated him to the vicarage of St. Mary at Reading,
+where he spent eighteen happy and fruitful years. Like most young and
+brilliant men, he first turned to verse, and for several years he
+poured out in rapid succession a number of dramas and poems which have
+been collected in three substantial volumes. The tragedy of 'Fazio'
+was written when he was still at Oxford, and it was speedily followed
+by a long and ambitious epic poem called 'Samor, Lord of the Bright
+City'; by three elaborate sacred dramas, the 'Fall of Jerusalem,' the
+'Martyr of Antioch,' and 'Belshazzar'; and by an historical tragedy on
+'Anne Boleyn,' as well as by a few minor poems.
+
+Some of these works had considerable popularity. 'Fazio' for many
+years held its place on the stage. Byron, in one of his letters to
+Rogers, speaks of its 'great and deserved success' when it was brought
+out at Covent Garden. Its heroine was a favourite part of Miss O'Neil
+and of Fanny Kemble. It was translated into Italian by Del Ongaro for
+Ristori, who acted it with admirable power, and there was also a
+French translation or adaptation in which Mademoiselle Mars took part.
+The 'Fall of Jerusalem' was never intended for the stage, but it had a
+great literary success. Murray, who had given only a hundred and fifty
+guineas for 'Fazio,' gave five hundred for the 'Fall of Jerusalem,'
+and he gave the same sum both for the 'Martyr of Antioch' and for
+'Belshazzar,' which succeeded it. Neither of these, however, proved as
+popular as the 'Fall of Jerusalem,' but the 'Martyr of Antioch'
+contains that noble funeral ode beginning 'Brother, thou art gone
+before us, and thy saintly soul is flown,' which is familiar to
+numbers who are probably not aware of its authorship. It is worthy of
+notice that as recently as 1880 Sir Arthur Sullivan set the 'Martyr of
+Antioch' to music and brought it out at the Leeds Festival, where it
+achieved an immediate and brilliant success, and was frequently
+performed.[49] On the other hand, 'Samor' and 'Anne Boleyn' were
+almost absolute failures, and, on the whole, the longer poems of
+Milman have not retained their popularity, and probably now rarely
+find a reader.
+
+Those who turn to them will certainly be struck by the command of
+language and metre they display. It was shown both in rhyme and in
+blank verse. Many fine odes are scattered through them, and in the
+octo-syllabic verse Milman always appears to us peculiarly happy. But
+his poetry, like most of the poetry that was written under the Byronic
+influence, was rather the poetry of rhetoric than of imagination, and
+it wanted both the intensity and the concentration of the great
+master. Stately, sonorous, fluent, unfailingly lucid, it was too
+lengthy and too artificial, and Lockhart was not wholly wrong in
+pronouncing that it showed 'fine talents, but no genius,' and in
+urging that prose rather than poetry was the vehicle in which its
+author was destined to succeed. In addition, however, to the funeral
+ode to which we have referred, Milman has written many hymns, and some
+of these are of singular beauty. They appeared originally in the
+collection of that other great hymn-writer, Bishop Heber, who was one
+of his dearest friends, and one of the men to whose memory he looked
+back with the fondest affection. The Good Friday hymn, 'Bound upon th'
+accursèd tree,' the Palm Sunday hymn, 'Ride on, ride on in majesty,'
+and perhaps still more that exquisitely pathetic hymn (so often
+misprinted in modern hymn-books) beginning
+
+    When our heads are bowed with woe,
+    When our bitter tears o'erflow,
+
+have long since taken their permanent place in devotional literature.
+
+In another and very different field of poetry also he greatly
+excelled. He was an admirable example of that highly finished and
+fastidious classical scholarship which is, or was, the pride of our
+great public schools, and he took great pleasure in translations from
+the classics. He translated into verse the 'Agamemnon' of Æschylus,
+and the 'Bacchanals' of Euripides, and also a great number of small
+and much less known poems. He held the professorship of poetry at
+Oxford from 1821 to 1831, and as his lectures, according to the custom
+which then prevailed, were delivered in Latin, he had the happy
+thought of diversifying them by English metrical translations of the
+different poems he treated. They range over a wide field of obscure
+Greek poets, as well as of epitaphs, votive inscriptions, and
+inscriptions relating to the fine arts, and in addition to these there
+are translations from Sanscrit poetry--a branch of knowledge which was
+then very little cultivated, and to which Milman was greatly
+attracted. These poems the author published in 1865, but the lectures
+in which they were produced he committed to the flames. They had, in
+his opinion, lost their value through the subsequent publication of
+the works on the history of Greek literature by Bode, Ulrici, Otfried
+Müller, and Mure.
+
+In prose his pen was exceedingly active. In 1820 he began his long
+connection with the 'Quarterly Review,' which continued, with
+occasional intervals, through more than forty years. His articles
+extended over a great variety of subjects, but most of them were
+essentially reviews and essentially critical. The fact that he was
+both a poet and an accomplished critic of verse caused some persons to
+ascribe to him the authorship of two articles which had an unhappy
+reputation--the criticism which was falsely supposed to have hastened
+the death of Keats, and the attack upon the 'Alastor' of Shelley, a
+poet for whom Milman had a special admiration. It is now well known
+that neither of these articles was by him, but it is characteristic of
+his loyalty to his colleagues that he never disclaimed the authorship.
+This loyalty was indeed not less conspicuous in his nature than the
+singular kindness of disposition with which he ever shrank from giving
+pain. After his death a few of his many essays in the 'Quarterly' were
+collected in one volume. Among them there is an admirable account of
+Erasmus, with whom in mental characteristics he had considerable
+affinity.
+
+In 1829 appeared his first historical work, the 'History of the Jews,'
+a work which excited a violent storm of theological indignation. The
+crime of Milman was that he applied to Jewish history the usual canons
+of historical criticism--sifting evidence, discriminating between
+documents, pointing out the parallelisms between Jewish conditions and
+those of other Oriental nations, and attempting to separate in the
+sacred writings the parts which were essential and revealed from those
+which were merely human and fallible. In a remarkable preface to a
+revised and enlarged edition of this work, which was published thirty
+years later, he laid down very clearly the principles that had guided
+him. The Jewish writers, in his opinion, were 'men of their age and
+country who, as they spoke the language, so they thought the thoughts
+of their nation and their time.... They had no special knowledge on
+any subject but moral and religious truth to distinguish them from
+other men, and were as fallible as others on all questions of science,
+and even of history, extraneous to their religious teaching.... Their
+one paramount object being instruction and enlightenment in religion,
+they left their hearers uninstructed and unenlightened as before in
+other things.... In all other respects society, civilisation,
+developed itself according to its usual laws. The Hebrew in the
+wilderness, excepting as far as the law modified his manners and
+habits, was an Arab of the desert. Abraham, except in his worship and
+intercourse with the one true God, was a nomad Sheik.... The moral and
+religious truth, and this alone, I apprehend, is "the word of God"
+contained in the sacred writings.'
+
+It must also, he contended, be always remembered that the Semitic
+records are of an 'essentially Oriental, figurative, poetical cast,'
+and that it is therefore wholly erroneous to suppose that every word
+can be construed with the precision of an Act of Parliament or of a
+simple modern historical narrative.
+
+His attitude towards the miraculous was carefully defined. He observed
+the absolute impossibility of evading the conclusion that the Jewish
+writers, whether eye-witnesses or not, implicitly believed in 'the
+supernaturalism, the divine or miraculous agency almost throughout the
+older history of the Jews,' and that it is 'an integral, inseparable
+part of the narrative.' Sometimes it is possible 'with more or less
+probability to detect the naked fact which may lie beneath the
+imaginative or marvellous language in which it is recorded; but even
+in these cases the solution can be hardly more than conjectural.' In
+other cases 'the supernatural so entirely predominates and is so of
+the intimate essence of the transaction that the facts and the
+interpretation must be accepted together or rejected together.' In
+such cases it is the duty of the historian simply 'to relate the facts
+as recorded, to adduce his authorities, and to abstain from all
+explanation for which he has no ground.'
+
+The distinction between the providential and the strictly miraculous
+appears to him impossible to draw. 'Belief in Divine Providence, in
+the agency of God as the Prime Mover in the Natural world as in the
+mind of Man, is an inseparable part of religion. There can be no
+religion without it.' But in numerous cases, to distinguish between
+the simply providential and the strictly miraculous implies a
+knowledge of the working of natural causes greater than we possess;
+and in certain stages of civilisation, and very eminently in the
+Jewish mind, there is a marked tendency to suppress secondary causes,
+and to attribute not only the more extraordinary but also the common
+events of life to direct divine agency. The possibility and the
+reality of the miraculous he emphatically asserts.
+
+'The palmary miracle of all, the Resurrection, stands entirely by
+itself. Every attempt to resolve it into a natural event, a delusion
+or hallucination in the minds of the disciples, the eye-witnesses and
+death-defying witnesses to its truth, or to treat it as an allegory or
+figure of speech, is to me a signal failure. It must be accepted as
+the keystone--for such it is--and seal to the great Christian doctrine
+of a future life, as a historical fact, or rejected as a baseless
+fable.'
+
+But great numbers of what were deemed miracles may be explained by
+natural causes, by figurative modes of expression which were common in
+Oriental nations, by the tendency of the human mind to embellish or
+exaggerate surprising facts, or invent supernatural causes for what it
+is unable to explain, by the retrospective imagination which seeks to
+dignify the distant past with a supernatural halo. The early annals of
+all nations are strewn with pretended miracles which no one will now
+maintain, and Milman shows in a powerful passage how the idea of the
+miraculous has been steadily contracting and receding; how dangerous
+it is to base the defence of Christianity on the evidence of miracles
+rather than on appeals to the conscience, the moral sense, the innate
+religiousness, the deep spiritual cravings of human nature.
+
+Such views, though now sufficiently commonplace, seemed very novel in
+England when Milman wrote. Dean Stanley described his work as 'the
+first decisive inroad of German theology into England; the first
+palpable indication that the Bible could be studied like another book;
+that the characters and events of sacred history could be treated at
+once critically and reverently.' But though Milman was very well
+acquainted with German theology, he resented the notion that he was
+its interpreter or representative. He contended that in restricting
+the province of inspiration to the direct inculcation of religious
+truth he was following a sound Anglican tradition. He quoted the
+authority of Paley and Warburton, of Tillotson and Secker. In such
+principles of interpretation he said he had found 'a safeguard during
+a long and not unreflective life against the difficulties arising out
+of the philosophical and historical researches of his time.' They had
+enabled him 'to follow out all the marvellous discoveries of science,
+and all those hardly less marvellous, if less certain, conclusions of
+historical, ethnological, linguistic criticism, in the serene
+confidence that they are utterly irrelevant to the truth of
+Christianity.' 'If on such subjects,' he concluded, 'some solid ground
+be not found on which highly educated, reflective, reading, reasoning
+men may find firm footing, I can foresee nothing but a wide, a
+widening--I fear, an irreparable--breach between the thought and the
+religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing, truly Catholic
+Christianity which knows what is essential to religion, what is
+temporary and extraneous to it, may defy the world.'
+
+These words are taken from the later preface to which we have
+referred. In the same preface, and also in his 'History of
+Christianity,' may be found some interesting remarks on the German
+school of Biblical criticism, the greater portion of which has arisen
+since the original publication of the 'History of the Jews.' In many
+of its conclusions he had anticipated it, and he was quite as sensible
+as the German writers of the hopelessness of seeking scientific
+revelations in the Biblical narrative; of the worthlessness of most of
+the common schemes for reconciling science and theology; of the
+untrustworthy character of Jewish chronology and Jewish figures; of
+the grave doubts that hang over the authorship and the date of some of
+the books; of the necessity of making full allowance, when reading
+them, for human fallibility and inaccuracy. At the same time, his
+admiration for the German critics was by no means unqualified. While
+fully admitting their extraordinary learning, industry, and ingenuity,
+he complained that their too common infirmity was 'a passion for
+making history without historical materials,' basing the most dogmatic
+and positive statements upon faint indications, or upon ingenious
+conjectures that could not legitimately go beyond a very low degree of
+probability. The assurance with which these writers undertook by
+internal evidence to decompose ancient documents, assigning each
+paragraph to an independent source; the decisive weight they were
+accustomed to give to slight improbabilities or coincidences, and to
+small variations of style and phraseology; the confidence with which
+they put forward solutions or conjectures which, however ingenious or
+plausible, were based on no external evidence as if they were proved
+facts, appeared to him profoundly unhistorical.
+
+It must have been somewhat irritating to one who clung so closely to
+University life, and who had been justly regarded as one of the most
+brilliant of Oxford scholars, to find that his own University was
+prominent in the condemnation of the 'History of the Jews.' Only two
+years before he had preached with general approbation the Bampton
+Lectures in defence of Christianity. His new work was again and again
+condemned from the University pulpits, and among others by the
+Margaret Professor of Divinity and by the Hulsean lecturer for 1832.
+The clamour was naturally taken up in many other quarters, and
+especially by the religious newspapers. It was noticed that 'Milman's
+History' appeared in the window of Carlisle, the infidel bookseller.
+
+'I only wish,' wrote Milman, when the fact was brought to his notice,
+'all Carlisle's customers would read it. A noble lord once wrote to
+the bishop of a certain diocese to complain that a baronet who lived
+in the same parish brought his mistress to church, which sorely
+shocked his regular family. The bishop gravely assured him that he was
+very glad to hear that Sir ---- brought his naughty lady to church,
+and hoped that she would profit by what she heard there and amend her
+ways. So say I of Carlisle's customers.'[50]
+
+The opinions expressed in this, as in his later works, no doubt in
+some degree obstructed the promotion of Milman in the Church, but he
+had no reason to regret it. Of all men, he once said, he thought he
+owed most to Bishop Blomfield, for there was once a question of
+offering him a bishopric, and it was a remonstrance of the Bishop of
+London that prevented it. 'I am _afraid_,' he said, 'that if it had
+been offered me I should have accepted it, and I should then never
+have written my "Latin Christianity."' But, though he escaped the fate
+which has cut short the best work of more than one distinguished
+historian, his conspicuous position among the scholars and writers in
+the Church was widely recognised, and he was soon transferred from a
+provincial town to a central position in the Metropolis. In 1835 Sir
+Robert Peel made him Rector of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and
+Prebendary in the Abbey. Though continuing without intermission his
+historical work, he appears to have discharged with exemplary vigour
+the duties of a large and poor parish until 1849, when Lord John
+Russell appointed him Dean of St. Paul's. The position was exactly
+suited to him. It was one of much dignity, but also of much leisure,
+and it gave him ample opportunities of pursuing the studies which were
+the true work of his life.
+
+The great subject of the history of Christianity was, indeed,
+continually before him. Among other things, he studied minutely both
+the text and the authorities of Gibbon, for whom he had a deep and
+growing admiration. An excellent edition of Gibbon was one of the
+first results. Milman's notes have been included in Smith's later
+edition, and, though a large proportion of them were naturally
+somewhat controversial, being devoted to refuting some of the
+conclusions of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, it is impossible
+to read them without recognising the candour as well as the learning
+and the acumen of the critic. Few things that Milman has written are
+finer than the preface in which, in ten or twelve masterly pages, he
+sums up his estimate of his great predecessor.
+
+The three volumes of the 'History of Christianity,' dealing with its
+early history up to the period of the abolition of Paganism in the
+Roman Empire, appeared in 1840, and they were followed by the six
+large volumes of the 'History of Latin Christianity,' carrying the
+history of the Western Church to the end of the Pontificate of
+Nicholas V. in 1455. This great work was published in two
+instalments--the first three volumes in 1854, and the remaining three
+in the following year--and it gave its author indisputably the first
+place among the ecclesiastical historians of England and a high place
+among the historians of the nineteenth century. He possessed, indeed,
+in an eminent degree some of the qualities that are most rare, and at
+the same time most valuable, in ecclesiastical history. A large
+proportion of the most learned ecclesiastical historians have been men
+who have devoted their whole lives to this single department of
+knowledge, who derived from it all their measures of probability and
+canons of criticism, and who, treating it as an isolated and mainly
+supernatural thing, have taken very little account of the intellectual
+and political secular influences that have largely shaped its course.
+Most of them also have been men who undertook their task with
+convictions and habits of thought that were absolutely incompatible
+with real independence and impartiality of judgment in estimating
+either the events or the characters they described. Milman was wholly
+free from these defects. His wide knowledge, his cool, critical,
+admirably trained judgment, were never better shown than in the many
+pages in which he has pointed out the analogies or resemblances
+between Jewish and other Oriental beliefs; the manner in which
+national characteristics or secular intellectual tendencies affected
+theological types; the countless modifications in belief or practice
+which grew up, as the Church accommodated itself to the conditions of
+successive ages and entered into alliance or conflict with different
+political systems; the many indirect, subtle, far-reaching ways in
+which the world and the Church interacted upon each other in all the
+great departments of speculation, art, industry, social and political
+life. A certain aloofness and coldness of judgment in dealing with
+sacred subjects was the reproach which was most frequently brought
+against him. As he himself said, he wrote rather as an historian than
+a religious instructor, and he dealt with his subject chiefly in its
+temporal, social, and political aspects. Justice and impartiality of
+judgment to friend and foe he deemed one of the first moral duties of
+an historian, and Dean Church was not wrong in ascribing to him a
+quite 'unusual combination of the strongest feeling about right and
+wrong with the largest equity.' 'What a delightful book, so tolerant
+of the intolerant!' was his characteristic eulogy of the work of
+another writer, and it truly reflects the turn of his own mind.
+Provost Hawtrey, who was no mean judge of men, said, after an intimacy
+of nearly fifty years, that he had never known a man who possessed in
+a greater degree than Milman the virtue of Christian charity in its
+highest and rarest form. It was a gift which stood him in good stead
+in dealing with the very blended characters, the tangled politics, the
+often misguided enthusiasms of ecclesiastical history. While he was
+constitutionally extremely averse to the moral casuistry which
+confuses the boundaries of right and wrong, he had too sound a grasp
+of the evolution of history to fall into the common error of judging
+the acts of one age by the moral standards of another. His history was
+eminently a history of large lines and broad tendencies. The growth,
+influence, and decline of the Papacy--the distinctive characteristics
+of Latin and Teutonic Christianity; the effect of Christianity on
+jurisprudence; the monastic system in its various phases; the rise and
+conquests of Mohammedanism; the severance of Greek from Latin
+Christianity; Charlemagne, Hildebrand, the Crusades, the Templars, the
+Great Councils; the decay of Latin and the rise of modern languages;
+the influence of the Church on literature, painting, sculpture, and
+architecture--are but a few of the great subjects he has treated,
+always with knowledge and intelligence, often with conspicuous
+brilliancy.
+
+In so vast a field there were, no doubt, many subjects which have been
+treated with a greater fulness and completeness by other writers.
+There are some in which subsequent research has gone far to supersede
+what Milman has written, and inaccuracies of detail not unfrequently
+crept into his work; but in the truthfulness of its broad lines, in
+the sagacity of its estimates both of men and events, it holds a high
+place among the histories of the world. Very few historians have
+combined in a larger measure the three great requisites of knowledge,
+soundness of judgment, and inexorable love of truth. The growth and
+modifications of doctrines and the minutiæ of religious controversies
+were, however, subjects in which he took little interest, and though
+they could not be excluded from an ecclesiastical history, they are
+dealt with only in a slight and cursory manner. Those who desire to
+study in detail this side of ecclesiastical history will find other
+histories much more useful. It has been said that his work is
+imperfect as a book of reference, for while the great events and
+personages are discussed with a fulness that leaves little to be
+desired, many of the more insignificant transactions or more obscure
+periods are passed over or barely noticed. Critics of different
+religious schools have also complained that his mind was essentially
+secular; that he had a low sense of the certainty and the importance
+of dogma; that there were some classes of ecclesiastical writers who
+have been deeply revered in the Church with whom he had no real
+sympathy; that the spirit of criticism was stronger in his book than
+the spirit of reverence; that he did not do full justice to the
+spiritual and inner side of the religion he described. He looked upon
+it, they said, too externally. He valued it as a moral revolution, the
+introduction of new principles of virtue and new rules for individual
+and social happiness. Much of this criticism would probably have been
+accepted with but little qualification by Milman himself. He would
+have said that what these writers complained of was in the main
+inseparable from an historical as distinguished from a devotional
+treatment of his subject. He would have added that no form of human
+history reveals so clearly as ecclesiastical history the fallibility,
+the credulity, the intolerance of the human mind, or requires more
+imperatively the constant exercise of independent judgment and of
+fearless and unsparing criticism, and that, if the history of the
+Church is ever to be written with profit, it must be written in such a
+spirit. Of his own deeper convictions he seldom spoke; but in the
+concluding page of his 'Latin Christianity' there is a passage of
+profound interest. Leaving it, as he says, to the future historian of
+religion to say what part of the ancient dogmatic system may be
+allowed to fall silently into disuse, and what transformations the
+interpretation of the Sacred Writings may still undergo, he adds these
+significant words:
+
+'As it is my own confident belief that the words of Christ, and his
+words alone (the primal indefeasible truths of Christianity), shall
+not pass away, so I cannot presume to say that men may not attain to a
+clearer, at the same time more full, comprehensive, and balanced sense
+of those words, than has as yet been generally received in the
+Christian world. As all else is transient and mutable, these only
+eternal and universal, assuredly whatever light may be thrown on the
+mental constitution of man, even on the constitution of nature and the
+laws which govern the world, will be concentered so as to give a more
+penetrating vision of those undying truths.... Christianity may yet
+have to exercise a far wider, even if more silent and untraceable
+influence, through its primary, all-pervading principles, on the
+civilisation of mankind.'
+
+Macaulay, speaking of the 'History of Latin Christianity' in his
+Journal, says, 'I was more impressed than ever by the contrast between
+the substance and the style: the substance is excellent; the style
+very much otherwise.' Looking at it from a purely literary point of
+view it had undoubtedly great merits. Milman had an admirable sense of
+proportion--a rare quality in history. He was invariably lucid, and it
+is easy to cull from his history many characters excellently drawn,
+many pages of vivid narrative, or terse and weighty criticism. Still,
+on the whole his historic style is on a lower level than that of
+Macaulay, Buckle, and Froude, though it will compare, I think, not
+unfavourably with that of Hallam and Grote. The points of controversy
+are usually relegated to his notes, which contain a great mass of
+curious learning and excellent criticism. The reader who turns to them
+from works of the German school will be struck by his strong English
+common-sense and grasp of facts, and his dislike of subtle far-fetched
+ingenuities of explanation. He has the crowning merit of being always
+readable, and his strong sane moral sense never left him. He was
+probably at his best in the later volumes, when he could treat his
+subject like secular history and was free from the embarrassing
+theological difficulties of the earlier portion, and he is especially
+admirable in those chapters which give scope to his wide literary and
+artistic sympathies. He was an excellent Italian scholar and keenly
+sensible of the beauties of Italian literature, and his love of the
+ancient classics never left him. There was something at once
+characteristic and amusing in the delight which he again and again
+expressed, after the termination of his History, at being able to
+return to them after spending so many years in reading bad Latin and
+Greek. In taste and character he was indeed pre-eminently a man of
+letters, and as such he ranks in the first line among his
+contemporaries.
+
+The outburst of indignation that in some quarters had greeted the
+first appearance of the 'History of the Jews' was not repeated when
+that work was republished in an enlarged form. Nor does it appear to
+have arisen on the appearance of the two later histories. Newman
+reviewed the 'History of Early Christianity' at great length, speaking
+with much personal respect of the writer, though he was naturally
+extremely hostile to its spirit. The difference between the High
+Church sentiment and the mind of Milman was indeed organic. Milman's
+own type of thought was formed before the Tractarian movement had
+begun; the sacerdotal spirit was thoroughly alien to him, and his
+profound study of ecclesiastical history had certainly not tended to
+attract him to it. He fully recognised both the abilities and the
+piety of Newman, and he described his secession as perhaps the
+greatest loss the Church of England had experienced since the
+Reformation; but he disliked his opinions, he profoundly distrusted
+the whole character of his mind and reasonings, and he early foresaw
+that he could never find a permanent resting-place in the English
+Church. In the posthumous volume of Essays there will be found a full
+and most searching examination of Newman's 'Essay on Development,' in
+which these points of difference are clearly shown. For Keble, Milman
+entertained warmer feelings. They were contemporaries, and at one time
+most intimate friends. In the field of sacred poetry they had been
+fellow-labourers. Keble had succeeded Milman as professor of poetry,
+and Milman had been one of the few persons who had read the 'Christian
+Year' in manuscript. When, after Keble's death, a committee was
+appointed to erect a memorial to his memory, Milman was much hurt at
+finding that it was determined to give it a distinctly Tractarian
+character, and that his own name was deliberately excluded. In
+Milman's last years the Oxford movement had begun to assume its
+ritualistic form, and questions of vestments and ceremonies and
+candles came to the forefront. With all this Milman had no sympathy.
+'After the drama,' he said of it, 'the melodrama!'
+
+It was a remarkable coincidence that for some years the two deaneries
+of London were both held by brilliant men of letters and by men with
+the strongest theological sympathy. A feeling of warm personal
+affection united Milman and Stanley, and there was something
+peculiarly touching in the almost filial attitude which Stanley
+assumed towards his older colleague. In one point, however, they
+differed greatly. Stanley was a keen fighter. He threw himself into
+the forefront of ecclesiastical controversies, and was never seen to
+greater advantage than when leading a small minority, defying
+inveterate prejudice, defending an unpopular cause. Milman could
+seldom be tempted to follow his example. He pleaded old age and
+declining strength, but, in truth, though he never flinched from the
+avowal of his own opinions, he had a deep and increasing distaste for
+religious controversies and Church politics. He was rarely seen in
+Convocation, and he always regarded its revival as a misfortune. He
+proposed, however, in it a petition for the discontinuance of the use
+of the State services commemorating the martyrdom of Charles I., the
+restoration of Charles II., the discovery of the gunpowder plot, and
+the Revolution of 1688; and Parliament soon after adopted his view. He
+also sat on the Royal Commission in 1864 for considering the subject
+of clerical subscription. He took on this occasion a characteristic
+line, advocating a complete abolition of the subscription of the
+Articles, and desiring that the sole test of membership of the Church
+should be the acceptance of the Liturgy and the Creeds. In 1865 he
+received an invitation, which greatly gratified him, to preach before
+the University of Oxford the annual sermon on Hebrew prophecy. The
+sermon was delivered in the pulpit of St. Mary's, where many years
+before he had been so vehemently condemned for views on the same
+subject, no one of which, as he truly said, he had either recanted or
+modified. His sermon was afterwards printed, and would form a worthy
+chapter of his 'History of the Jews.' In the Colenso controversy he
+had no great sympathy with either side. Many of Bishop Colenso's
+arguments appeared to him crude or exaggerated, and he dissented from
+many of his conclusions, but he considered that he had been treated
+with gross injustice and intolerance, and he accordingly subscribed to
+his defence fund. For the rest, he confined his ecclesiastical life as
+much as possible to his own cathedral, where he presided over the
+State funeral of the Duke of Wellington, and where he introduced the
+custom of throwing open the nave to evening services. His last and
+unfinished work was his 'Annals of St. Paul's,' investigating its
+history and portraying with his old learning and with much of his old
+felicity the lives of his predecessors.
+
+It was however in secular literary society that he was most fitted to
+shine, and there he passed many of his happiest hours. The usual
+honours of a distinguished man of letters clustered thickly around
+him. He was a trustee of the British Museum; an honorary member of the
+Royal Academy; a correspondent of the French Institute. He was also a
+member of 'The Club'--the small dining-club which was founded in 1764
+by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Johnson, and which since then has
+included in its fortnightly dinners the great majority of those
+Englishmen who in many walks of life have been most distinguished by
+their genius or their accomplishments. He was elected to it in 1836,
+three years before Macaulay, and he became one of its most constant
+attendants. In 1841 'The Club' made him its treasurer, and he held
+that position for twenty-three years, and presided over the centenary
+dinner in 1864. He was also an original member of the Philobiblion
+Society, which has brought together many curious and hitherto unknown
+documents, and he wrote for it a short paper on Michael Scott the
+Wizard, who, as he showed, had been once offered the Archbishopric of
+Cashel. He was never a keen politician, but he was intimate with a
+long succession of leading statesmen, and he contributed to Sir
+Cornewall Lewis's 'Administrations of Great Britain' a full and
+valuable letter on the relations of Pitt and Addington, which was
+largely based on his own recollections of the latter statesman.
+
+London society in the middle of the nineteenth century was much
+smaller and less mixed than at present, and there was then a
+distinctively literary or at least intellectual society which can now
+hardly be said to exist. The most eminent men of letters came more
+frequently together. Criticism was in fewer and perhaps stronger
+hands, and was to a larger extent representative of the opinions
+expressed in such social gatherings. In this kind of society Milman
+was long a foremost figure. He had all the gifts that fit men for
+it--not only brilliancy, knowledge, and versatility, but also
+unfailing tact, a rare charm of courtesy, a singularly wide tolerance.
+He was quick and generous in recognising rising talent, and he had
+that sympathetic touch which seldom failed to elicit what was best in
+those with whom he came in contact. Few men possessed more eminently
+the genius of friendship--the power of attaching others--the power of
+attaching himself to others. In the long list of his intimate friends
+Macaulay, Sir Charles Lyell, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis were
+conspicuous. Like most men of this type, he found the multiplying
+gaps around him the chief trial of old age. Not long before he died
+there was an exhibition of contemporary portraits, but though Milman
+went to it he could not go through it. 'When I found myself,' he said,
+'surrounded by the likenesses--often the miserable likenesses--of so
+many I had known and loved, it was more than I could bear.'
+
+An admirable portrait by Watts which is now in the National Portrait
+Gallery will recall to those who knew him his appearance in old
+age--his strong masculine features beaming with intelligence, his
+grand shaggy brows, his bright and penetrating eyes. An illness
+affecting the spine had bowed him nearly double, and there are still
+those who will remember how his bent figure seemed projected, almost
+like a bird in its flight, across the dinner-table, while his eager
+brilliant talk delighted and fascinated his hearers. In his last years
+increasing deafness obliged him to narrow the circle of his social
+life, but he retained to the end all the vividness of his mind and
+sympathies, and when at length death came in his seventy-eighth year,
+it found him in the midst of unfinished work. His life was not of a
+kind to win wide popularity and to give him a conspicuous place among
+the great masses of his nation, but few English clergymen of his
+generation made so deep an impression on those who came in contact
+with them or have left works of such enduring value behind them.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48] _Henry Hart Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's._ A Biographical
+Sketch by his son, Arthur Milman, M.A., LL.D.
+
+[49] Laurence's _Life of Sir A. Sullivan_, p. 310.
+
+[50] Smiles' _Memoirs of John Murray_, ii. p. 300.
+
+
+
+
+QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE
+
+
+At a time when the unprecedented increase of gigantic and rapidly
+acquired fortunes has deeply infected both English and American
+society with the characteristic vices of a Plutocracy, the profound
+feeling of sorrow and admiration elicited by the death of Queen
+Victoria is an encouraging sign. It shows that the vulgar ideals, the
+false moral measurements, the feverish social ambitions, the love of
+the ostentatious and the factitious, and the disdain for simple
+habits, pleasures, and characters so apparent in certain conspicuous
+sections of society, have not yet blunted the moral sense or perverted
+the moral perceptions of the great masses on either side of the
+Atlantic. To this type, indeed, we could scarcely find a more complete
+antithesis than in the life and character of the great Queen who has
+passed away. Nothing more deeply impressed all who came in contact
+with her than the essential simplicity and genuineness of her nature.
+
+She was a great ruler, but she was also to the last a true, kindly,
+simple-minded woman, retaining with undiminished intensity all the
+warmth of a most affectionate nature, all the soundness of a most
+excellent judgment. Brought up from childhood in the artificial
+atmosphere of a Court, called while still a girl to the isolation of a
+throne; deprived, when her reign had yet forty years to run, of the
+support and counsel of her husband, she might well have been pardoned
+if she often found herself out of touch with large sections of her
+people, and had viewed life through a false medium or in partial
+aspects. Yet Lord Salisbury probably in no degree exaggerated when he
+said that if he wished to ascertain the feelings and opinions of the
+English people, and especially of the English middle classes, he knew
+no truer or more enlightening judgment than that of the Queen. She
+thought with them and she felt with them; she shared their ambitions;
+she knew by a kind of intuitive instinct the course of their
+judgments; she sympathised deeply with their trials and their sorrows.
+
+She could hardly be called a brilliant woman. It is difficult indeed
+to judge the full social capacities of anyone who lives under the
+constant restraints of a royal position, but I do not think that in
+any sphere of life the Queen would have been regarded as a woman of
+striking wit, or originality, or even commanding power. The qualities
+that made her so successful in her high calling were of another kind:
+supreme good sense; a tact in dealing with men and circumstances so
+unfailing that it almost amounted to genius; an indefatigable industry
+which never flagged from early youth till extreme old age; a sense of
+duty so steady and so strong that it governed all her actions and
+pleasures, and saved her not only from the grosser and more common
+temptations of an exalted position, but also in a most unusual degree
+from the subtle and often half-concealed deflecting influences that
+spring from ambition or resentment, from personal predilections and
+personal dislikes. It was these qualities, combined with her
+unrivalled experience of affairs, and strengthened by long and
+constant intercourse with the foremost English statesmen of two
+generations, that made her what she undoubtedly was--a perfect model
+of a constitutional Sovereign.
+
+The position of a Sovereign under a parliamentary government like ours
+is a singular and difficult one. There was a school of politicians who
+were much more prominent in the last generation than in the present
+one, who regarded the Sovereign, in political life at least, as little
+more than a figure-head or a cipher, absolved from all responsibility,
+but also divested of all power, and fulfilling functions in the
+Constitution which are little more than mechanical. This view of the
+unimportance of the Monarchy will now be held by few really
+intelligent men. Those take but a false and narrow view of human
+affairs who fail to realise the part which sentiment and enthusiasm
+play in the government of men; and no one who knows England will
+question that the throne is the centre of a great strength of personal
+attachment which is wholly different from any attachment to a party or
+a parliament.
+
+In India and the Colonies this is still more the case. It is not the
+British Parliament or the British Cabinet that there forms the centre
+of unity or excites genuine attachment. The Crown is the main link
+binding the different States to one another, and the pervading
+sentiment of a common loyalty unites them in one great and living
+whole. In foreign politics it cannot be a matter of indifference that
+a Sovereign is closely related to nearly all the greatest rulers in
+the world, and in frequent, intimate, unconstrained correspondence
+with them. This is a kind of influence which no Minister, however
+powerful, can exercise, and it was possessed by Queen Victoria
+probably to a greater degree than by any Sovereign on record, for
+there has scarcely ever been one who included among her relations so
+many of the Sovereigns of the world. Future historians will no doubt
+have ample means of judging how frequently and how judiciously it was
+employed in assuaging differences and promoting European peace. All
+the great offices in Church and State, all the great distributions of
+honours were submitted to her; and though in a large number of cases
+this patronage is purely Ministerial or professional, there are many
+cases in which the Sovereign had a real voice, and a strong objection
+on her part was usually attended to. In Church patronage and in the
+distribution of honours she is known to have taken a great interest,
+and to have exercised a considerable influence.
+
+The one subject on which the Queen was not always in harmony with her
+people was that of foreign politics. She and the Prince Consort took a
+keen interest in them, and during his lifetime she followed very
+implicitly his guidance. The strong German sympathies she imbued from
+her own marriage were much intensified by the marriages of her
+children, and especially by that of her eldest daughter to the heir of
+the Prussian throne. The influence also of Stockmar, who was the
+closest adviser of her early married life, was not wholly for good,
+and the theory which the Prince held that the direction of foreign
+affairs is in a peculiar degree under the care of the Sovereign, and
+that the Prince, her husband, should be regarded as 'her permanent
+Minister,' created during many years much friction. In a
+constitutional country, where the responsibility of affairs rests
+wholly on the Minister, who is doubly responsible to the Cabinet and
+to the Parliament, such a theory can only be maintained with great
+qualifications.
+
+On the other hand, the government of the country was carried on in the
+name of the Queen. Foreign despatches were addressed to her and could
+only be answered with her sanction. The right of the English
+Sovereigns to be present at the Cabinet Councils of their Ministers
+was abdicated when George I. came to the throne, but every important
+departure in policy was submitted to the Queen and required her
+assent. The testimony of Ministers of all shades of policy supports
+the belief that this was no idle form. The Queen, though always open
+to argument and tolerant of contradiction, had her own decided
+opinions; she exercised her undoubted right of expressing and
+defending them, and even apart from her royal position, her great
+experience and her singular clearness and rectitude of judgment made
+her opinion well worth listening to.
+
+The claim put forward by the Queen in her famous memorandum of August
+1850, can, I think, hardly be pronounced excessive. She demanded only
+that before a line of policy was adopted and brought before her she
+should be distinctly informed of the facts of the case and of the
+motives that inspired it; that when she had given her sanction to a
+measure it should not be arbitrarily altered or modified by the
+Minister; that she must be kept acquainted with all important
+communications between foreign Ministers and her own Foreign
+Secretary, and that the drafts of foreign despatches must be sent to
+her for her approval in sufficient time for her to make herself
+acquainted with them. She complained that Lord Palmerston was
+accustomed to send despatches to the Continent without submitting
+them, in their last revise, to the Sovereign; that in one case he
+retained without her knowledge a passage which the Prince Consort had
+deleted; that he paid little or no attention to the numerous memoranda
+which were drawn up by the Prince for his instruction; that he of his
+own will and without any consultation committed his Government, in a
+conversation with the French Ambassador, to an approbation of the
+_coup d'état_ of Napoleon III. If the general line of his policy had
+been in accordance with the royal wishes, indiscretions of detail
+could probably have been overlooked, but the Queen and Prince were
+both undoubtedly on many occasions--and especially in 1848 and
+1849--strongly opposed to the policy of Lord Palmerston. In the
+interests of peace they objected to the remarkably provocative
+character of his despatches, which excited a degree of animosity and
+resentment among the Governments of the Continent that has rarely been
+paralleled--on two, if not three, occasions it brought England into
+grave danger of a war with France--and which aroused a very widespread
+indignation among statesmen of his own party at home.
+
+The widely different tone which was adopted by Lord Clarendon and Lord
+Granville, the open breach between Palmerston and Lord John Russell on
+account of the way in which the former conducted his foreign policy
+without consultation with the Cabinet, and the refusal of Lord Grey,
+in a most critical moment, to take office in a Government in which
+Lord Palmerston held the seals of the Foreign Office, show how fully
+in this respect the sentiments of the Queen accorded with those of
+many of Lord Palmerston's own colleagues. But in addition to mere
+questions of manner and procedure, there was much in the substance of
+the policy of Palmerston to which the Queen objected. Her dislike to
+the Revolutionary element on the Continent, which Lord Palmerston
+either encouraged or viewed with indifference, her sympathy with the
+old governments and dynasties, that were so gravely shaken in the year
+of the Revolution, were very marked. In the disputes between Germany
+and Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein question her sympathies, unlike
+those of her people, were decidedly with Germany, and although she was
+fully sensible of the misgovernment of some of the Italian States, she
+was not favourable to that cause of Italian unity which Lord John
+Russell and Lord Palmerston so strenuously upheld. Her nature, which
+was very frank, made it impossible for her, even if she desired it, to
+conceal her opinions, and she devoted much time and pains to making
+herself acquainted with the details of every question as it arose. She
+made it a rule to sign no paper that she had not read. She did not
+hesitate fully to apprise her Ministers of her views when they
+differed from their own, and she enforced her views by argument and
+remonstrance. She more than once drew up memoranda of her dissent from
+the opinions of her Foreign Minister, and insisted on their being
+brought before the Cabinet for consideration. In the formation of a
+new Ministry she more than once exercised her power of deciding to
+whom the succession of the first places should be offered. After an
+adverse vote of the House of Commons, she considered herself fully
+authorised to decide whether she would accept the resignation of a
+Minister or submit the issue to the test of a dissolution, and there
+were occasions on which she remonstrated with her Ministers on their
+too ready determination to resign.
+
+At the same time it is certain that the Queen fulfilled with
+perfection that most difficult duty of an able constitutional
+Sovereign--the duty of yielding her convictions to those of her
+responsible Ministers and acting faithfully with Ministers she
+distrusted. To a Sovereign with clear views and a more than common
+force of character this must often have been very painful, and to have
+fulfilled it faithfully and with no loss of dignity is no small merit.
+It is the universal testimony of all who served her, that no Sovereign
+ever supported her successive Ministers with a more perfect loyalty or
+held the scales between contending parties with a more complete
+impartiality. No one understood better to what point a constitutional
+Sovereign may press her opinions and at what point she is bound to
+give way; and while maintaining her rightful authority she never in
+any degree transgressed its bounds. In the very beginning of her reign
+she showed this quality in a high degree. She looked up to Lord
+Melbourne with an almost filial affection, and there were peculiar
+reasons why his great opponent, Sir Robert Peel, should have been
+distasteful to her. The dispute about the removal of her Ladies of the
+Bedchamber, and still more the conduct of Sir Robert Peel in
+supporting the reduction of the income which the Whigs had proposed
+for Prince Albert, must have touched her feelings on the most
+sensitive points, and the stiff, formal, somewhat awkward manner of
+Peel seemed very little fitted to ingratiate him with a young
+Sovereign. Yet when the change of Ministry arrived, Peel found no
+trace of resentment in the Queen. She gave him her complete
+confidence, and she fully estimated his great qualities. Of all the
+Ministers who served her there is indeed none of whom she has written
+in warmer terms. When Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister in 1855 it
+was contrary to her earnest desire, but when the change was made
+Palmerston himself acknowledged that he had 'no reason to complain of
+the least want of cordiality or confidence on the part of the Court.'
+At the time when she was most opposed to her Ministers, she fully
+acquiesced in the principle that she must submit all letters on public
+affairs to them and frame her replies upon their advice. There were
+constant attempts on the part of foreign Sovereigns who were connected
+with her to carry on affairs by correspondence with her without the
+knowledge and sanction of her Ministers, but the Queen steadily
+resisted them. Anything, indeed, that in any way savoured of intrigue
+was in the highest degree repugnant to her nature.
+
+She acted in the same way in internal affairs. Few measures that were
+carried in her time were more repugnant to her than Gladstone's
+disestablishment of the Irish Church. It abolished an institution of
+which she was herself the head and which a special clause in the
+Coronation Oath required her to uphold, and she foretold, not without
+good reason, that it would not pacify Ireland but would be an
+encouragement to further agitation. The question, however, had been
+submitted at a general election to the decision of the country, and
+after that decision had been unequivocally given in favour of the
+policy of Gladstone, she frankly accepted it with the assent of the
+Prime Minister. When a great danger of a conflict between the two
+Houses of Parliament had arisen, she devoted herself actively in
+preventing it. She employed for that service the instrumentality of
+Archbishop Tait--a great statesman-prelate, whose promotion to the see
+of Canterbury was due to her own personal initiative, contrary to the
+wish of Lord Beaconsfield, but most fully justified by the result--and
+it was largely due to the intervention of the Queen that the Church
+Bill was not thrown out in the House of Lords. She acted in a
+somewhat similar way with reference to the Franchise Bill of 1884,
+though on this occasion she does not seem to have disliked the
+measure, which she urged the House of Lords to accept.
+
+On three very memorable occasions the intervention of the Queen had
+probably a great effect on English politics. It is well known that at
+the time when the issue of peace or war with the United States was
+trembling in the balance on account of the seizure of the Southern
+envoys on the 'Trent,' the Queen, acting in accordance with the Prince
+Consort, by softening and revising the language of an English despatch
+to America, did very much to prevent the dispute from leading to a
+great war; that in the proclamation which was issued to the Indian
+people after the Sepoy Mutiny, she insisted on the excision of some
+most unfortunate words that seemed to menace the native creeds, and on
+the insertion of an emphatic promise that they should in no wise be
+interfered with, and thus probably prevented a new outburst of most
+dangerous fanaticism; that at the time of the Schleswig-Holstein
+dispute she contributed powerfully and actively to give a turn to the
+negotiations that averted a war with Prussia and Austria, which, as is
+now almost universally recognised, could only have led to a great
+catastrophe.
+
+Whatever opinions may be formed of the merits of the dispute between
+Denmark and the German powers about Schleswig-Holstein, few persons
+who judge by the event can doubt that an isolated intervention of
+England on behalf of Denmark against the combined forces of Austria
+and Prussia would have been absolutely impotent to effect the object
+that was desired, and that even if France had consented to join in the
+struggle it would have led to a military disaster hardly less than
+that of the war of Sedan. If, contrary to all probability, the
+combined forces of France and England had proved stronger than those
+of Austria and Germany, the result could have hardly failed to be that
+France would have been established on the left bank of the Rhine, and
+that the treaty of Vienna, which it was one of the great objects of
+English policy to maintain, would have been torn into shreds.
+
+The dangers, however, of conflict arising from the extreme
+irritability of English public opinion against Germany on the Danish
+question, were very great, and there can be little doubt that the
+personal influence of the Queen with the German Sovereign was an
+appreciable influence, and it was her desire that a paragraph in the
+Queen's Speech opening Parliament in February 1864 was erased. Words
+which contained at least a veiled or attributed threat to Germany were
+omitted, and instead of them an inoffensive paragraph was inserted
+expressing the Queen's ardent desire for peace and recording the
+earnest efforts she had made to maintain it.[51] At the same time
+when, by the Convention of Gastein in August 1865, the Duchies were
+severed from the Danish throne and placed in the virtual possession of
+Prussia and Austria, the protest of Lord Russell against so flagrant a
+violation of public right, and especially of the right of the people
+to be consulted on their own destiny, was drawn up with her full
+assent and indeed in a great measure at her suggestion.[52]
+
+On other occasions her remonstrances were disregarded, and courses
+were pursued to which she strongly objected. The surrender after
+Majuba was in her opinion a pusillanimous abandonment of the English
+flag, and it was with extreme reluctance that she acquiesced in it.
+Still more vehement were her feelings about the long abandonment of
+General Gordon in the Soudan. She had been indefatigable in urging on
+the Ministry of Gladstone the duty of speedy measures for his rescue,
+and when, owing to the long delay of the Ministry, the most heroic of
+modern Englishmen perished at Khartoum, her indignation knew no
+bounds. In a letter to his sisters, burning with mingled pity and
+indignation, she pronounced his 'cruel though heroic fate' to be 'a
+stain left upon England,' which she keenly felt. This was one of the
+few occasions in which she allowed her sentiments in hostility to the
+policy of her Ministers to appear publicly before the world. In
+general, she had a profound distrust of the policy and judgment of Mr.
+Gladstone, and she fully shared the dread with which the great body of
+English statesmen looked upon the Home Rule policy. It was no new
+sentiment on her part, for she had lived through the Repeal agitation
+of O'Connell, and as far back as 1843 Sir Robert Peel had somewhat
+unconstitutionally declared in Parliament that he was authorised by
+the Queen to state that she, like her predecessor, was resolved to
+maintain the Union inviolate by all the means in her power.
+
+There can now be no harm in saying--what when both parties were alive
+was naturally kept in the background--that the relations of the Queen
+with Mr. Gladstone were usually of a very painful character. She had
+personally not much to complain of. The skill and firmness with which
+Mr. Gladstone resisted the attempts to diminish the parliamentary
+subsidies for her family were fully and gratefully recognised by the
+Queen, but the main course of his politics, both foreign and domestic,
+filled her with alarm, and she never appears to have experienced the
+attraction which his great personal gifts exercised over most of those
+with whom he came in immediate contact. The extreme copiousness of his
+vocabulary, the extreme subtlety of his mind and reasoning, and the
+imperiousness of temper with which he seldom failed to meet
+opposition, were all repugnant to her. To those who have experienced
+the sustained emphasis of language with which Mr. Gladstone was
+accustomed in conversation to enforce his views, there is much truth
+as well as humour in the saying which was attributed to the Queen, 'I
+wish Mr. Gladstone would not always speak to me as if I was a public
+meeting'; and a little episode which is related by Sir Theodore Martin
+illustrates the irritation which Mr. Gladstone's methods of business
+must have caused to a very busy and overworked lady who always loved
+few words and simple and direct arguments.[53] At all times the Queen
+had decided political opinions, and the experience of a long reign had
+given her a large measure of not unjustifiable self-confidence. Few
+persons had studied as she had during all those years the various
+political questions that arose, and she had had the advantage of
+discussing them at length with a long succession of the leading
+statesmen of England. Under such circumstances her opinions had no
+small weight, and although in the Liberal Government she gave her full
+confidence to Lord Clarendon and Lord Granville, she looked with the
+gravest apprehension on the policy of Mr. Gladstone.
+
+It was a painful and irksome position, but it did not lead the Queen
+to any unconstitutional course. No public act or word ever disclosed
+her feelings. It was indeed in most cases very slowly, and in small
+circles and through private channels, that the convictions of the
+Queen became known.
+
+At the close of the second Ministry of Mr. Gladstone she at once
+offered him an earldom, which he refused, and on his death she fully
+acquiesced in the public funeral in Westminster Abbey, and the Prince
+of Wales attended it as her representative. In an autograph letter to
+Mrs. Gladstone she spoke with the deep and genuine warmth that was
+never wanting in her letters of condolence of her sympathy with the
+bereavement of that lady. She spoke of his illustrious gifts and of
+his personal kindness to herself, but it was noticed that no sentence
+in the letter intimated any approbation of his general policy. 'Truth
+in the inmost parts' was indeed a prominent characteristic of the
+Queen, and she wrote nothing which was not in accordance with her true
+convictions.
+
+There were occasions when she took independent steps, and some of these
+had a considerable influence on politics. Louis Napoleon was one of the
+few great Sovereigns who were not related to her, and to few persons
+could the _coup d'état_ which brought him to the throne have been more
+repugnant, but the cordial personal relations she established with him
+undoubtedly contributed considerably to the good relations which for
+many years subsisted between England and France. Bismarck detested
+English Court influence and was greatly prejudiced against her, but he
+has left a striking testimony to the favourable impression which her
+tact and good sense made upon him when he first came into contact with
+her. She possessed to a high degree the power of choosing the right
+moment and striking the true chord, and she appears to have been an
+excellent judge not only of the feelings of large bodies of men, but
+also of the individual characters of those with whom she dealt. She had
+a style of writing which was eminently characteristic and eminently
+feminine, and it is easy to trace the letters which were entirely her
+own. Her letters of congratulation, or sympathy, or encouragement on
+public occasions scarcely ever failed in their effect and never
+contained an injudicious word. The same thing may be said of her many
+beautiful letters to those who were suffering from some grievous
+calamity. Whether she was writing to a great public character like the
+widow of an American President, or expressing her sorrow for obscure
+sufferers, there was the same note of true womanly sympathy, so
+manifestly spontaneous and so manifestly heartfelt, that it found its
+way to the hearts of thousands. The tact for which she was so justly
+celebrated, like all true tact, sprang largely from character, from the
+quick and lively sympathies of an eminently affectionate nature. No one
+could have been less theatrical, or less likely in any unworthy way to
+seek for popularity; but she knew admirably the occasions or the methods
+by which she could strike the imagination and appeal most favourably to
+the feelings of her people. She showed this in the very beginning of her
+reign when she insisted, in defiance of the opinion of the Duke of
+Wellington, on riding herself through the ranks of her troops at her
+first review. She showed it on countless other occasions of her long
+reign--pre-eminently in her two Jubilees and in her last visit to
+Ireland. It is well known that this visit was entirely her own idea. To
+many it seemed rash or even positively dangerous. They dwelt upon the
+bitter disaffection of a great portion of the Irish people, upon the
+danger of mob outrage or even assassination, upon the extreme difficulty
+of preventing a royal visit to Ireland from taking a party character and
+being regarded as a party triumph or defeat. But the Queen, as Sir
+William Harcourt once truly said, 'never feared her people,' and nothing
+could be more happy than the manner in which she availed herself of the
+new turn given to Irish feeling by the splendid achievements of Irish
+soldiers in South Africa, to come over, as if to thank her Irish people
+in person, and at the same time to repair in extreme old age a neglect
+for which she had been often, and not altogether unjustly, blamed. There
+never indeed was a more brilliant and unqualified success. To those who
+witnessed the spontaneous and passionate enthusiasm with which she was
+everywhere greeted, it seemed as if all bitter feeling vanished at her
+presence; and the Irish visit, which was one of the last, was also one
+of the brightest pages of her reign. The credit of its most skilful
+arrangements belongs chiefly to the officials in Dublin, but the Irish
+people will long remember the patient courage with which the aged Queen
+went through its fatigues; the tactful kindness and the gracious dignity
+with which she won the hearts of multitudes who had never before seen
+her or spoken to her; the evident enjoyment with which she responded to
+the cordiality of her reception. One feature of that visit was
+especially characteristic. It was the Children's Review in Phoenix Park,
+where, by the desire of the Queen, 'some fifty thousand children were
+brought together to meet her. No act of kindness could have gone more
+directly home to the hearts of the parents, and it left a memory in many
+young minds that will never be effaced.
+
+It is rather, however, by the example of a life than by any public
+acts that a constitutional Sovereign can impress her personality on
+the affections of her people. Of the reign of Queen Victoria it may be
+truly said that very few in English history have been so blameless as
+this, which was the longest of all. Her Court was a model of quiet
+dignity and decorum, singularly free from all the atmosphere of
+intrigue and from all suspicion of injudicious or unworthy
+favouritism. She managed it as she managed her family, with a happy
+mixture of tact and affection; and though she gave her confidence to
+many she gave it to such persons and in such a way that it seemed
+never to be abused. No domestic life could in all its relations have
+been more perfect, and her love of children amounted to a passion.
+Among the great female rulers it would be difficult to find one less
+like Queen Victoria than the Empress Catherine of Russia, but they had
+this common trait of an intense love of children and a great power of
+winning their affection. There is a charming letter of Catherine to
+Grimm, describing her life among her grandchildren, which might almost
+have been written by the English Queen. Her vast family, spread
+through many countries, was her abiding interest and delight, and
+although she had to pay in full measure the natural penalty of many
+bereavements, she at least never knew the dreary loneliness that
+clouded the last days of her great predecessor, Elizabeth.
+
+In the early years of her reign she fully filled her place as the
+leader of English society. In the plays she patronised, in the art
+she preferred, in the restrictions of her Drawing Rooms, in the
+fashions she countenanced, in the intimacies she selected or
+encouraged, her influence was always healthy and pure, and for some
+years it powerfully affected the tone of English society.
+Unfortunately, after the great calamity of her widowhood the nerves of
+the Queen seem to have been shaken, and though she never intermitted
+her political duties and spent daily many hours over her
+correspondence, she allowed her social duties to fall too much and too
+long into abeyance. She still, it is true, occasionally appeared in
+public ceremonies. She laid the first stones of several hospitals and
+infirmaries. She presided over the inauguration of several great
+industrial enterprises. She sometimes opened Parliament in person, and
+was sometimes present at military and naval reviews. But she scarcely
+ever appeared in London, except for a few days. She never appeared in
+a London theatre. She shrank from great crowds and large social
+gatherings, and buried herself too much in her Highland home. This is
+one of the few real reproaches that history is likely to bring against
+her. Her influence on English society was never wholly lost, and it
+was always an influence for good, but for many years it was exerted
+less frequently and less powerfully than it should have been, and the
+tone of large sections of society lost something by her retirement.
+
+It may be doubted, however, whether this long retirement really
+injured her in the minds of her people. Her rare occasional
+appearances had a greater weight, and the depth of feeling exhibited
+by her long widowhood became a new title to respect. The transparent
+simplicity and unselfishness of her character were now generally
+appreciated, and her own books contributed greatly to make her people
+understand her. It is in general far from a wise thing for royal
+personages to descend into the arena of literature unless they possess
+some special aptitude for it. They expose themselves to a kind of
+criticism wholly different from that which follows them in their
+public lives--a criticism more minute and often more deliberately
+malevolent than that to which an ordinary writer is subject. The Queen
+wrote pure and excellent English and she had a good literary taste,
+but she certainly could never have become a great writer; and the
+complete frankness and unreserve of her Journals, as well as their
+curious homeliness of thought and feeling, were not viewed with favour
+in some sections of the fashionable and of the literary world. There
+were circles in which the word 'bourgeois,' and there were others in
+which the word 'commonplace,' was often pronounced. Yet in this, as on
+nearly all occasions when the Queen acted on her own impulse, she
+acted wisely. Her books had at once an enormous circulation, and there
+can be no doubt that they contributed very widely to her popularity.
+Multitudes to whom she had before been little more than a name, now
+realised that she was one with whom they had very much in common. Her
+evident longing for sympathy produced an immediate response. Her deep
+domestic affection, her constant interest in her servants, her high
+spirits, her love of scenery, her love of animals, her power of taking
+delight in little things, appeared vividly in her pages and came home
+to the largest classes of her people.
+
+In some respects the Queen was an eminently democratic Sovereign.
+While maintaining the dignity of her position, rank and wealth were in
+her eyes always subordinate to the great realities of life and to
+true human affections. In no one was the touch of Nature that makes
+the whole world kin more constantly visible. She was never more in her
+place than in visiting some poor tenant on the morrow of a great
+bereavement, or uttering words of comfort by the sick bed of some
+humble dependant. Men of all ranks who came in contact with her were
+struck with her thoughtful kindness, and her royal gift of an
+excellent memory never showed itself more frequently than in the
+manner in which she remembered and inquired after the fortunes and
+happiness of obscure persons related to those with whom she spoke.
+
+Her religious opinions were brought very little before the public.
+Beyond a deep sense of Providential guidance and of the comforting
+power of religion, little is to be gathered from her published
+utterances; but she seemed equally at home in the Scotch Presbyterian
+and the Anglican Episcopal Church, and her marked admiration for such
+men as Dean Stanley and Norman Macleod, and for the preaching of
+Principal Caird, gives some clue to the bias of her opinions. Her mind
+was not speculative but eminently practical, and while she patronised
+good works of the most various kinds, there is reason to believe that
+those which most appealed to her personal feelings were those which
+directly contributed to alleviate the sufferings, or promote the
+material welfare, of the poor. She devoted the greater part of her
+Jubilee present to institutions for providing nurses for the sick
+poor, and this is said to have been one of the charities in which she
+took the warmest and most constant interest.
+
+She is said not to have had any sympathy with the movement for the
+extension of political power to women, which became so conspicuous in
+her reign; but her own success in filling for sixty-three years the
+highest political position in the nation will always be quoted in its
+support. Considering, indeed, how comparatively small has been the
+number of reigning female Sovereigns, it is remarkable how many in
+modern times have shown themselves pre-eminently capable. Isabella of
+Spain, Catherine of Russia, Maria Theresa of Austria, and our own
+Elizabeth, all rise far above the level of ordinary Sovereigns. Some
+of these seem figures of a larger and stronger mould than Queen
+Victoria, but they governed under very different constitutional
+conditions, and, with one exception, there are serious blots on their
+memory. There are few sadder facts in history than that the pure and
+tender-hearted Spanish Queen should have been deeply tinged with the
+persecuting fanaticism of her age and country; that she should have
+consented to the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile, to the
+expulsion of the Moors from her dominions, to the first law in Europe
+establishing a practical censorship of the Press. The unscrupulous
+ambition, the shameless favouritism, the gross personal vices of
+Catherine, are as conspicuous as her high intelligence, her
+indomitable will, her majestic commanding power. The reign of
+Elizabeth is perhaps the most glorious in English history, but the
+character of that great Queen is lamentably tarnished by waywardness
+and caprice. Among purely constitutional Sovereigns Queen Anne holds a
+respectable, though certainly not a brilliant, place, and it may be
+added that much of the merit of the very constitutional though not
+very glorious reign of George II. is due to the excellent sense and
+judgment of Queen Caroline. In spite of the saying of Burke, the age
+of chivalry is not wholly dead. The sex of Queen Victoria no doubt
+gave an additional touch of warmth to the loyalty of her people, and
+many of the qualities that made her most popular are intensely, if not
+distinctively, feminine. They would not, however, have given her the
+place she will always hold in English history, if they had not been
+united with what men are accustomed to regard as more peculiarly
+masculine--a clear, well-balanced mind, singularly free from
+fanaticisms and exaggerations, excellently fitted to estimate rightly
+the true proportion of things.
+
+In the last years of her reign the political horizon greatly cleared.
+Lord Beaconsfield, during his later Ministries, obtained not only her
+fullest political confidence, but also won a warmer degree of personal
+friendship than she had bestowed on any Minister since the death of
+Lord Melbourne; and her relations with his successor, Lord Salisbury,
+appear to have been perfectly harmonious. The decisive rejection by
+the country of the Home Rule policy removed a great incubus from her
+mind, and she was fully in harmony with the strong Imperialist
+sentiments which now began to prevail in English thought, and
+especially with the warmer feeling towards our distant colonies which
+was one of its chief characteristics. Her own popularity also rapidly
+grew. She had keenly felt and bitterly resented the reproaches which
+had at one period been frequently brought against her for her neglect
+of social and ceremonial duties during many years of her widowhood.
+Her censors, she maintained, made no allowance for her loneliness, her
+advancing years, her feeble health, the overwhelming and incessant
+pressure of her more serious political duties. But her two Jubilees,
+bringing her once more into close touch with her people, put an end to
+these reproaches. The Queen found with pleasure and perhaps with
+surprise how capable she still was of performing great public
+functions, and the vast outburst of spontaneous loyalty and affection
+of which she became the object gave her deep and unconcealed pleasure.
+To those, however, who were closely in connection with her it was
+touching to observe the gracious and unaffected modesty with which she
+received the homage of her subjects. Flattery was one of the things
+she disliked the most, and all who knew her best were struck with the
+singularly modest view she always took of herself. But blending with
+this modesty, and even with a shyness which she never wholly
+conquered, was the craving of a deeply affectionate and womanly nature
+for sympathy, and this craving was now abundantly gratified.
+
+Still, with all this there was much that was melancholy in her later
+days. She had survived nearly all the intimacies of her youth. Death
+had made--especially in very recent times--many gaps in the circle of
+those who were nearest to her, and several of her children and of her
+children's husbands had preceded her to the tomb. Her sight had
+greatly failed. She was bowed down by physical infirmity, and her last
+year was saddened by a long, sanguinary, and inglorious war. Yet
+almost to the very end she continued with unabated courage to fulfil
+her daily task, and there was no sign that she had lost anything of
+her quick sympathy and her admirable judgment and tact. Her life was a
+most harmonious whole in which mind and character were happily
+attuned,
+
+    Like perfect music set to noble words.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[51] _Queen Victoria_, by Sidney Lee, p. 349.
+
+[52] Ollivier, _L'Empire Libéral_, vii. p. 455.
+
+[53] Sir Theodore Martin was asked by the Queen to give her a _précis_
+of a very long and unintelligible letter of Mr. Gladstone purporting to
+explain the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill (_Queen Victoria as I
+knew Her_, by Sir Theodore Martin).--ED.
+
+
+
+
+OLD-AGE PENSIONS
+
+
+There are many signs that the question of old-age pensions is destined
+to assume a great prominence in England; although it is probable that
+the large increase of national expenditure which is certain to follow
+the unhappy war in South Africa may, for some time, postpone actual
+legislation on the subject. The generation has passed away which
+witnessed the enormous abuses of Poor Law relief that existed, under
+the old English Poor Law, before 1834, and the rapid diminution of
+pauperism that was effected by the sterner administration introduced
+in that year.
+
+The principles of poor-law relief which were then recognised by the
+best minds in England have been somewhat forgotten. These principles
+were that, while in England provision is made for the support of all
+who are absolutely destitute, it is of the utmost importance that on
+the whole the condition of the pauper should be a less eligible one
+than that of an independent labourer; that nothing should be done that
+could diminish habits of thrift, forethought, and steady industry
+among the poor; nothing that could weaken their sense of the necessity
+of providing for their latter days, or of their duty of supporting,
+when they have the means, their aged parents and relations. In
+accordance with these principles it was laid down that outdoor relief
+should be either absolutely refused to the able-bodied or only
+granted under most exceptional circumstances; that the workhouse test,
+with its stringent, deterrent discipline, should be steadily
+maintained; that relaxations and special favours granted out of public
+funds should be limited, as far as possible, to cases of special
+calamity which it was impossible for any prudence or foresight to have
+averted.
+
+It would certainly be a great exaggeration to say that these
+principles have disappeared. Indeed, the robust, independent,
+self-respecting character which it was the object of the Manchester
+School to encourage is abundantly displayed in the gigantic Friendly
+and other working-class Co-operative Societies which have so largely
+increased in England during the last half-century. Two of these
+Friendly Societies--the Manchester Unity and the Foresters--have each
+of them more than seven hundred thousand members on their roll. At the
+same time, it is equally certain that in many quarters a different,
+and, in my opinion, very dangerous, spirit prevails. In England as
+elsewhere there is an increased tendency to aggrandise the functions
+of the State and to look to State aid or State control rather than
+individual or co-operative effort as the remedy of every evil. Social
+questions have assumed a greater prominence in politics; and, with the
+lowering of the franchise, the vague State Socialism, which, in
+different degrees, pervades most working-class politics, has given a
+bias to both parties in the State. It has become prominent in every
+election and has produced many rash pledges.
+
+The close connection between taxation and representation, which was
+once considered the cardinal principle of English Liberalism, has, in
+a marked degree, diminished, both in Imperial and local taxation. It
+used to be contended that those who chiefly paid should chiefly
+regulate, and that taxation should be as much as possible the
+voluntary grant of the taxpayers, restricted to their common purposes.
+But in many quarters a different belief has grown up. It is held that
+in the hands of a democracy taxation should be made the means of
+redressing the inequalities of fortune, ability, or industry; the
+preponderant class voting and spending money which another class are
+obliged to pay. The income-tax is so arranged that a large majority of
+the voters are exempt from its burden; a highly graduated system of
+death duties is now nearly the most prominent of our Imperial taxes;
+and the Local Government Act of 1894 has placed local taxation on the
+most democratic basis. The latter has given the power of voting rates
+to many who do not pay them; and, by abolishing the nominated, or
+ex-officio, guardians, and the plural voting of the larger ratepayers,
+it has almost destroyed the influence of property on local taxation.
+
+At the same time the doctrine has arisen, and is now sedulously
+propagated in England, that the State ought to undertake to provide at
+the public expense for all old persons, or at least for all deserving
+old persons, who have not succeeded in obtaining a sufficient
+livelihood for themselves; that this provision should not be regarded
+as an eleemosynary grant, but as a positive right; and that, in order
+to free it from the taint of pauperism, and take away from the
+recipient all reluctance to receive it, a new fund should be created,
+entirely distinct from poor-law relief, and administered by some other
+tribunal than the poor-law guardians.
+
+The claim has been supported on another ground. The immense
+improvement of the material condition of the English working classes
+during the last half-century is beyond all question; but it is much
+more evident among the young and the strong than among the old. The
+intense competition of modern industry, stimulated to the highest
+point by free trade, by the factory system, and by the vast
+development of machinery, has expelled the old and feeble from some of
+its most important fields; and the influence of trade-unions in
+enforcing, in each trade which they can control, a uniform and minimum
+wage, has obliged the employer to employ only the most efficient
+labour.
+
+The old man who could once easily obtain a little work at low wages
+now finds it much more difficult; and the recent legislation
+compelling the employer to compensate his workmen for all accidents
+that take place in his employment, even when those accidents are in no
+degree due to any negligence on his own part or on that of his
+servants, has acted in the same direction. Such serious obligations
+have been thrown on the employer in the more dangerous trades, that he
+is obliged in self-defence to restrict himself to the workmen who are
+least liable to accidents; and they are naturally those whose
+strength, activity, and eyesight are at their best. Among the
+recipients of poor-law relief the proportion of men over sixty-five is
+enormously great; and some figures which, in 1893, were brought before
+the Commission on the Aged Poor, made a great impression on the
+country. It was stated that in a single year 29.3 of the whole
+population over sixty-five were in receipt of poor-law relief in
+England and Wales; and assuming that a third part of these old persons
+belonged to the well-to-do, it was calculated that not much less than
+three in seven must fall into the ranks of pauperism.
+
+There has been much controversy about the accuracy of this statement;
+and, even if it be admitted, a good deal has been said to attenuate
+its force. In the poor-law system as it was reformed in 1834, it was a
+first principle that the workhouse, with its painful and degrading
+associations, was to be the chief form of poor-law relief, and that
+outdoor relief should only be granted on exceptional occasions and on
+stringent conditions. This provision has been gradually relaxed.
+Outdoor relief, which, in the eyes of the poor, carries with it very
+little of the discredit and dislike that gathers round the workhouse,
+is now by far the larger part of poor-law relief; and in many
+districts it is administered with great laxity.
+
+It has been proved by the clearest evidence that the immense majority
+of the aged and deserving poor who are in receipt of poor-law relief
+only receive it in the form of outdoor relief, and very often only in
+the form of medical relief, and that if they go to the workhouse it is
+only when their peculiar circumstances make it desirable for them to
+do so. Wherever a more stringent system of relief is imposed,
+pauperism invariably and rapidly decreases; and Mr. Loch, the
+Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, has collected much
+evidence to show that, on the whole, old-age pauperism is diminishing,
+though it has not been diminishing at the same rate as pauperism under
+the age of sixty. The administration of the workhouses has also
+greatly improved; and the poor-law infirmaries are becoming hospitals
+which are largely resorted to in time of sickness by many who might
+easily avoid them. On the whole, old-age destitution is, and must be,
+a grave question for philanthropists; but there has been great
+exaggeration about its magnitude and its hardships.
+
+The expediency of devising a new and better method of providing for
+the destitute aged poor of deserving character has long been
+smouldering obscurely in English politics; but it obtained a real
+importance for the first time when a very strong Royal Commission,
+under the presidency of Lord Aberdare, was appointed, at the beginning
+of 1893, to inquire into the question. After long and careful inquiry,
+and after hearing a great multitude of witnesses, this Commission
+reported in the spring of 1895. The majority of the members, while
+recommending various reforms in the administration of the poor-law,
+reported decisively against any system of old-age pensions, either in
+the form of endowment or assisted assurance, as likely to do more harm
+than good; but a minority, which derived special importance from the
+presence of Mr. Chamberlain, refused to accept this decision as final,
+and urged that the question should be submitted to a smaller body of
+experts. In the election which took place in 1895 the question
+appeared frequently upon the platform, and many members on both sides
+of politics pledged themselves on the subject.
+
+The weight which is always attached to the speeches of Mr. Chamberlain
+gave a great impulse to the movement. He never countenanced the idea
+of universal old-age pensions, which was already advocated by many;
+but he strongly maintained that special provision, apart from the
+poor-law and in the shape of pensions, might, and ought to, be made
+for the old and deserving poor; he expressed his belief that such a
+measure 'would do more than anything else to secure the happiness of
+the working classes'; and he suggested as the most feasible scheme
+that 'whenever a man acquires for himself in a Friendly Society or
+any other society a pension of 2_s._ 6_d._ a week the State should
+come in and double that pension.' Mr. Chamberlain, however, did not
+insist on this precise proposal; but he gave the question a great
+prominence; and among politicians on both sides there was a manifest
+tendency to make party capital out of it.
+
+A purely non-party Committee, presided over by Lord Rothschild, and
+consisting mainly of distinguished financial authorities connected
+with the permanent Civil Service, and therefore removed from active
+politics, was appointed in 1896, in accordance with the recommendation
+of the Aberdare Commission, to inquire especially into the question of
+old-age pensions; and it reported in a document of conspicuous
+ability. It was unanimous in condemning as impracticable or dangerous
+all the schemes for such pensions that were brought before it; and it
+fully confirmed the views of the preceding Commission. The report, and
+the evidence on which it is based, clearly show the ways in which
+measures intended for the benefit of the working class may prove in
+the highest degree injurious to them.
+
+If the matter could have been decided by pure reasoning, this report
+might have been generally accepted as decisive. But many of the
+supporters of the Government had at the election made speeches in
+favour of old-age pensions. One of its most powerful members had
+thrown his weight into the scale. The idea had taken hold of great
+sections of the working classes. The trade-unions, that see in
+increasing old-age poverty the chief drawback to their policy of
+enforcing in each trade a uniform and minimum wage, were naturally
+delighted that the State should undertake, out of public funds, to
+remove their difficulty. A number of Bills dealing with the question
+had been introduced into the House of Commons by private members; and
+the reluctance of the Government to take it up had become a favourite
+form of party attack. The Government acted as perhaps most
+Governments, under the circumstances, would have done. While refusing
+to give any pledge, and repudiating any sympathy with the idea of
+universal pensions, and insisting that an encouragement of thrift
+should be an essential condition of any old-age pension scheme, they
+refused to admit that a false departure had been made; and they
+appointed a new Committee--of which the writer of these lines was a
+member--to report upon the best means of improving the condition of
+the aged deserving poor, and upon the feasibility of dealing with
+their case by old-age pensions.
+
+Mr. Chaplin, the President of the Local Government Board, an
+experienced and very popular member of the Cabinet, presided over the
+Committee; and the fact that he drew up the report of the majority
+gave that report its chief political importance. The Committee
+consisted largely of members who had already committed themselves
+deeply in favour of old-age pensions; and it will hardly be disputed
+in England that it carried with it much less financial and political
+weight than its predecessors; and that the majority report--which was
+carried by 9 to 4--is more remarkable for the boldness of its
+recommendations than for the cogency of its reasoning. It completely,
+and almost contemptuously, discarded the conclusions of the majority
+of the Aberdare Commission, and the unanimous opinion of the
+Rothschild Committee; and it recommended that old-age pensions,
+derived in part from Imperial and in part from local sources, and
+varying from 5_s._ to 7_s._ a week, should be granted to all the
+deserving poor who had attained the age of sixty-five and whose
+incomes did not exceed 10_s._ a week. It proposed that these pensions
+should be granted by committees established in every poor-law union
+and elected by the poor-law guardians; that they should be revised
+every three years; and that they should be distributed through the
+agency of the post-office.
+
+On the great difficulties that seemed so formidable to its
+predecessors it touched very lightly. How many of the poor were likely
+under the proposed system to become pensioners, and what burden of
+taxation was likely to be thrown on the State, were questions that
+were put aside as irrelevant to the inquiry. To meet the enormous
+difficulty of deciding upon the real merits, and of investigating the
+real circumstances, of the great masses of independent and industrious
+labourers who live in the manufacturing towns, or are constantly
+moving from one great centre of population to another, and circulating
+in quest of work through the whole extent of the Empire, it was
+suggested that the relief be confined to those who were resident in a
+single locality; and it was pointed out that a number of charities,
+endowed out of old legacies or donations, and applying to particular
+classes or districts, had come to be administered by the Charity
+Commissioners, and that in this restricted field they had been able to
+convert a large part of the income at their disposal from doles into
+permanent pensions.
+
+The thrift test and the character test, which previous inquirers had
+found it almost impossible to establish on a satisfactory basis, were
+defined on the loosest lines. The pensioner must not, during the
+preceding twenty years, have been sentenced to penal servitude or
+imprisonment without the option of a fine; he must not, during the
+same period of time, have been in receipt of poor-law relief 'other
+than medical relief or unless under circumstances of a wholly
+exceptional character'; and he must have 'endeavoured to the best of
+his ability, by his industry and by the exercise of reasonable
+providence, to make provision for himself and those immediately
+dependent on him.'
+
+The extreme vagueness and the extreme elasticity of such provisions
+are sufficiently manifest; and it is difficult to see how they can
+give any real assistance in practical legislation; while they leave
+the door open to the largest and most lavish expenditure. I have
+endeavoured in a minority report to deal with these questions at
+somewhat greater length than my present space will admit; but a few
+pages may suffice to give an outline of the case of those who believe
+the new policy to be both mistaken and dangerous.
+
+Nothing is more certain or more cheering in the condition of modern
+England than the extraordinary diminution that has taken place, during
+the present generation, in pauperism. It began with the reform of the
+poor law in 1834; and although it has been found possible to relax
+greatly the stringency of the poor-law regulations that were then
+made, it has steadily continued. Much of this is due to the increase
+in the rate of wages which has taken place in most departments of
+English industry, and which has been accompanied by a great decrease
+in the cost of most of the chief necessaries of life, as well as by a
+considerable reduction in the hours of work. Sir Robert Giffen, in the
+very remarkable paper which he published, in 1883, on the condition of
+the working classes in England during the preceding fifty years, has
+shown that in every class of work in which it is possible to make a
+comparison the wages of the labourer have in these fifty years risen
+at least 20 per cent., and in most cases between 50 and 100 per cent.;
+and he has clearly demonstrated that no other section of the community
+has obtained so large a proportion of the increase of the national
+wealth, and improved in so great a degree in material prosperity.
+
+But the mere increase of wages is but one element of this improvement.
+The very mainspring of the prosperity of the great masses of the
+British working classes is to be found in their increased sobriety,
+and in the habits of thrift and providence that have followed the
+spread of education. The statistics of the Friendly Societies, the
+Industrial and Provident Societies, the Building Societies, the
+savings-banks, and of countless other institutions, created by
+voluntary working-class effort for the purpose of insuring against
+sickness or death, and providing working-class investments, attest in
+the clearest manner the rapid growth of provident and thrifty habits
+among the wage-earning classes. In no other respect is the improvement
+of the nation so marked and so indisputable and no element in the
+national character is more important to its prosperity and to its
+enduring greatness. In the evidence that was brought before our
+Committee, it was shown that since 1849 the pauperism of Great Britain
+had been reduced from 62.7 per 1,000 to 26.2 per 1,000, if lunatics
+and vagrants are included, to 22.8 per 1,000, if lunatics and vagrants
+are excluded.
+
+The first, and most vital, condition of any sound legislation for the
+relief of poverty is that it should not impair these industrial
+qualities, or weaken these vast voluntary organisations of self-help
+which are their result. Can it be said that the old-age pension policy
+is compatible with this condition?
+
+It proposes to open, in addition to the existing system of poor
+relief, a new fund, amounting to many millions of pounds a year, and
+drawn from compulsory taxation for the purpose of subsidising simple
+poverty; a fund to which it is to be rather creditable than otherwise
+to resort; a fund which is intended to deal, not with exceptional
+calamity, but with that which springs from the mere efflux of time,
+and which is, beyond all others, the most normal and most easily
+foreseen. It proposes to teach the whole working population to look to
+the State, and not to themselves, for the provision for their old age,
+and for the old age of those who might be dependent on them, and thus
+to destroy the most powerful of all motives to thrift--the very
+mainspring of productive and self-sacrificing industry. And it
+proposes to do this at a time when wages are higher than they have
+ever been before; when voluntary societies for securing the poor from
+want are flourishing and increasing as they have never done before;
+when the rapid decline of pauperism is one of the most marked and most
+universally recognised signs of national improvement. Can it be
+seriously believed that the addition of many millions a year to the
+State funds directly employed in the relief of poverty will, in the
+long run, tend to diminish pauperism or to encourage self-reliance and
+thrift?
+
+Mr. Chamberlain and the other more considerable advocates of old-age
+pensions clearly see that if such pensions are to be of real value
+they must discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving; and
+they believe that they may have the effect of stimulating, instead of
+weakening, thrift. For this purpose several schemes have been devised.
+
+The most popular Continental method of achieving this end is by a law
+obliging the working man in early life to insure against old age, and
+by supplementing the income derived from this insurance by a State
+subsidy. In Germany, where this system is actually carried out, the
+old-age pension is derived from three sources--viz. compulsory
+insurance by the workers, compulsory contribution by the employer, and
+a State subsidy. Compulsory insurance found for many years a powerful
+English advocate in Canon Blackley; and it has been recommended by a
+recent inquiry in Holland, which, however, refused to propose any
+system of old-age pensions. According to the best accounts, the German
+system has been far from successful either economically or
+politically; and it has certainly not prevented Socialism from
+becoming one of the great dangers of the State. Into this question,
+however, it is needless to enter, as it is now universally admitted in
+England that compulsory insurance for old age is an impossibility; for
+it would certainly be repudiated by the working classes.
+
+A large group of proposals are to the effect that old-age pensions
+should be granted to all poor persons over the age of sixty-five whose
+total income is less than 10_s._ a week, provided that a certain
+portion of that income consists of a fixed annuity acquired by their
+own industry and thrift. It is urged that in most of the great
+branches of industry a deserving man in his earlier and stronger years
+could easily earn such an annuity; and it is suggested that the State
+should double it, or add to it sufficient to make it up to 10_s._ a
+week, or supplement it by a fixed grant of 2_s._ 6_d._, or 5_s._, or
+even 7_s._ a week.
+
+The objections to such schemes are very serious. It is obvious that if
+they encourage a workman to save up to the amount required to secure a
+pension, they would have a directly opposite effect as soon as that
+amount had been attained. The first result of any addition to his
+income would then be to disqualify him for a pension. It is also
+obvious that the pensioner of sixty-five would have a strong
+inducement to abstain from the work he could easily do, and that if he
+continued to do it he would compete on exceptionally favourable terms
+with the workman who, though he had passed the prime of life, was not
+yet entitled to a pension, restricting his means of employment and
+beating down his wages. Many of the most necessitous and deserving
+poor would also be left unrelieved.
+
+Although it is true that in the more flourishing trades men could
+easily in early life save out of their wages a sufficient sum to
+acquire this annuity, there are large fields of industry in which such
+a saving would be almost or absolutely impossible. We have had
+melancholy evidence of how utterly insufficient most forms of women's
+wages are to provide the needed margin. The same thing is true of the
+agricultural labourer in the more depressed districts in England and
+in large tracts of Ireland and Scotland. Even in the more remunerative
+employments innumerable special circumstances would prevent a thrifty
+and deserving man from obtaining this annuity. Certainly no one is
+more deserving of compassion and State aid than the widow and young
+orphans of a working man; but the scheme we are considering would not
+only not help them, but would most seriously injure them. It is a
+direct incentive to the workman to sink his savings in an annuity
+which would terminate with his own life.
+
+The whole policy, indeed, of attempting to turn all working-class
+savings into this one channel is a false one; and it has been shown
+that no kind of saving is in fact less popular among working men than
+the purchase of a deferred annuity. I may here be allowed to quote a
+few lines from my own report:
+
+'In the infinitely various conditions of a working-man's life thrift
+will take many forms, and an attempt to prescribe a single form is
+eminently injudicious. The whole life-plan of a farmer whose farm will
+remain with him to the end will be different from that of an artisan
+or a domestic servant whose power of earning a livelihood depends
+entirely upon his physical strength. The former will probably find it
+most profitable to expend his savings on the improvement of his farm.
+Where the system of peasant proprietorship prevails most agricultural
+thrift is directed to the purchase and enlargement of farms. In
+Ireland it is largely directed to the purchase of tenant right, or to
+enabling the younger members of the family to emigrate.
+
+'Nor is it true that even the artisan will find the purchase of an
+annuity the best thing to be aimed at. To buy a house or some
+furniture; to start a small business; to expend his savings in tiding
+over periods of slack or failing work; to avail himself of the
+advantage which some fluctuation in the market gives to the man who
+can transport himself promptly to a new locality or a new business is
+often far more to his advantage. Above all, money expended in settling
+his family is often his best policy as well as the course which is
+most beneficial to the community. At present a large proportion of
+working men look forward to their children to help them in their old
+age, and make it a main object of their lives to place them in a
+position to do so. It does not seem to me a wise thing for the State
+either to emancipate children from this duty or to induce every
+married working man to sink his savings in an annuity which will end
+with his life and from which his widow and children can derive no
+benefit. It is certainly not for the advantage of the country that in
+selecting between alternative ways of providing for old age he should
+be induced to choose that which throws the greatest burden on the
+State. With the vast increase of population, with the great
+fluctuations of modern industry, and with the rapid development of the
+colonies, it is extremely desirable both in the interest of the
+working men and of the State that they should be induced to transfer
+themselves from congested towns and from exhausted industries to new
+fields. A general pension system would certainly contribute most
+powerfully to prevent them from doing so.'
+
+It has been proposed by others that the pension fund should be placed
+in the hands of Friendly or Benefit Societies, and that they should be
+intrusted with its administration, or that subscription to such
+societies for a certain number of years should be taken by the State
+as the thrift test. On the first proposal it is sufficient to say,
+that these great voluntary societies are themselves opposed to it; for
+if they were directly subsidised by the State, they would be obliged
+to submit to a State control of their management and their finances
+which they do not desire. It is observed that only a very small
+proportion of the subscribers to these societies ever find it
+necessary to come upon the poor rates; and if a system of old-age
+pensions were confined to these limits, it would act in the most
+unequal manner. Their members are drawn in a far larger proportion
+from the lucrative and flourishing trades than from those which are
+struggling and underpaid. Few women belong to them. In Ireland, which
+is the poorest part of the Empire, Friendly Societies scarcely exist;
+and the same thing is true of large districts in Wales and Scotland.
+The main result of such proposals would be to concentrate the new
+State fund for the relief of poverty on the richest parts of the
+Empire, and on the trades that need it the least.
+
+The extreme difficulty of finding any efficient test of thrift is very
+evident; and those proposed by a large number of the advocates of
+old-age pensions are so easy as to be almost worthless. Some consider
+it sufficient that a man has for a certain number of years not been in
+receipt of poor-law relief, except medical relief or relief granted
+under 'exceptional circumstances.' Others would accept the mere fact
+that a man has lived to be sixty-five, as the drunken and disreputable
+workman seldom lives so long. A large number of resolutions have
+condemned Mr. Chaplin's report on the grounds that old-age pensions
+ought not to be confined to the 'deserving' poor; that they ought to
+begin at an earlier age than sixty-five; that they ought to be
+administered by a body totally unconnected with the poor law, so as to
+carry with them no taint of pauperism or eleemosynary relief. They
+ought, it is said, to be universal; to be looked on as a matter of
+strict right; to be considered as of the same nature as the pension
+given to the soldier or the Civil Servant.
+
+It is obvious that all this may carry us very far. It is estimated
+that some of the most popular proposals would involve an annual
+expenditure of considerably more than twenty millions of
+pounds--making allowance for the saving that might be effected in the
+ordinary poor-law relief, but not counting the cost of administration.
+And this expenditure would be a growing one; and once accepted it
+could hardly be withdrawn. The vast addition to the national debt that
+might follow a great European war or the great shrinkage of the
+national income that might easily follow some revolution in trade or
+manufacture, might render the burden of taxation incomparably more
+serious than at present; but once the great mass of the population had
+learned to regard State support in old age as their normal prospect
+and their inalienable right, it would be impossible, without producing
+a social revolution, to recede. All the advantages gained by
+generations of economical administration of the national finance would
+be nullified; while the certain result of this crushing addition to
+taxation would be to weaken incalculably the spirit of thrift,
+providence, and self-reliance, and at the same time to lower wages, by
+removing one of the great considerations by which they are regulated.
+And this reduction of wages would fall not only on the recipient of
+the pension, but also on multitudes who would never live to attain it.
+Nothing can be more certain than that a general system of pensions
+attached to the labour of the wage-earner must lower wages, at least
+among all those who are approaching the pension age; while it would
+prevent or retard their natural increase over a far wider area.
+
+It would also most certainly bring with it the gravest danger of
+corruption. It would not be easy to secure the pure and the impartial
+administration of these vast funds; but the political dangers would be
+much more serious. It is proposed that the pension system should be
+first introduced on a small scale, but gradually extended till it
+included all the aged poor, or at least all who were deserving. Such a
+question would infallibly pass into the competitions of party warfare.
+It would become in most constituencies one of the most prominent of
+electioneering tests. Rival candidates would be competing for the
+votes of a wage-earning electorate who had a direct pecuniary interest
+in increasing or extending pensions and in relaxing the conditions on
+which they are given. Can it be doubted that in many cases their first
+object would be to outbid one another, and that national and party
+politics would soon be forced into a demoralising race of
+extravagance?
+
+I cannot conclude without protesting against the supposition that
+those who think with me are indifferent to the great evil of old-age
+destitution and propose nothing for its relief. The committees which
+have most clearly pointed out the dangers of old-age pensions have
+also urged, that within the lines of our present poor-law system it is
+quite possible to do much, by an improved classification, to
+distinguish among the recipients of poor-law relief between the
+respectable and the worthless. Much has already been done, and in the
+most important unions the guardians have introduced a large amount of
+classification by merit. As I have already said, the immense majority
+of the respectable aged poor are now relieved only in their own homes
+or in comfortable infirmaries. The severe test of absolute destitution
+has in practice been greatly relaxed; there is a legal provision
+preventing those who are receiving help from Friendly Societies from
+being disqualified for relief; husbands and wives are no longer
+separated in the workhouse; and in some unions of which we had
+evidence much more has been done. This, however, depends too much on
+the will of particular Boards of Guardians, and there are in
+consequence great inequalities of treatment. The condition of the
+deserving poor may be greatly improved by relaxation in points of
+hours, discipline, and visitors, and by workhouse arrangements
+securing more universally that paupers who have lived respectable
+lives should not be obliged to mix with the drunken, the disreputable,
+and the hopelessly idle. And, though extensions of outdoor relief
+should be carefully watched, and entail great dangers, yet under wise
+and strict administration something more may be done in this
+direction.
+
+But all this should be regarded as essentially poor-law relief, and
+not as the recognition of a claim of right for services supposed to
+have been rendered to the community. No form of State Socialism is
+more dangerous than the doctrine which has been countenanced by Prince
+Bismarck, and which is making many disciples in England--namely, that
+an industrious man, who has pursued his course in life with perfect
+independence, made his own contracts, chosen his own work, and been
+paid for it by stipulated wages, is entitled, if he fails in obtaining
+a sufficiency for his old age, to be placed as a 'soldier of industry'
+in the same category as State servants, and to receive like them, not
+on the ground of compassion, but of right, a State pension drawn from
+the taxation of the community. There is no real analogy between the
+relief that is very properly granted to such workmen in their
+destitution, and the pensions--largely of the nature of deferred
+pay--that are given by the State or by private employers, under the
+terms of distinct contracts, and for specific services duly rendered,
+to those who have entered into their employment and placed themselves
+under their control.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Aberdare Commission, 303
+
+Addington, 273
+
+American Revolution, 34-37, 55-57, 77, 78
+
+Anne, Queen, 295
+
+Anti-Semite movement, 116-121, 123-125, 128
+
+Arnold, Dr., 251
+
+Australia, 58
+
+Austria, 116, 145
+
+
+Bacon, 28, 94, 101
+
+Bayard, Mr., 48
+
+Bayle, 97
+
+Beaconsfield, Earl of (B. Disraeli), 126, 151, 153, 207, 211, 214,
+    215, 217, 283;
+  imperialism, 46;
+  policy regarding Eastern Crisis, 222;
+  relations with Lord Derby, 223;
+  Queen Victoria's regard for, 296
+
+Beer, George, 56
+
+Bentham, J., 43, 101
+
+Bernard, Claude, 121
+
+Bismarck, Prince, 288, 289, 317
+
+Blackley, Canon, 310
+
+Blennerhassett, Lady, 131-133, 145, 148, 149
+
+Blomfield, Bishop, 263
+
+Bossuet, 96-98
+
+Boulanger, General, 116
+
+Bright, 207, 208
+
+British Empire, growth, 51, 53, 64;
+  defence, 61, 65;
+  unity, 45, 48, 51, 62, 67
+
+Browning, Robert, 105, 251
+
+Buckle, H.T., 29, 100-102, 251, 269
+
+Burke, Edmund, 28, 54, 55, 151, 295
+
+Butler's 'Analogy,' 91, 92
+
+
+Caird, Principal, 294
+
+Canada, 59, 60
+
+Canning, 151, 174, 188, 189, 198, 199;
+  attitude towards Catholic Question, 156, 160, 161, 166-170, 172, 188;
+  quoted, 213
+
+Cardan, quoted, 10
+
+Carlyle, Thomas, 47, 91, 216, 247, 251;
+  school of, 29;
+  style, 105;
+  characteristics, 106-113;
+  teaching, 107, 108, 110-115
+
+Caroline, Queen, 295
+
+Castlereagh, Viscount, 156, 157, 160, 161, 167, 169, 170, 188
+
+Catherine, of Russia, Empress, 291, 295
+
+Catholic Emancipation, 78-86, 152, 153, 157-174, 187-190, 193, 194, 197;
+  _see also under_ Ireland
+
+Cato, 15
+
+Chamberlain, Joseph, 303-304, 309
+
+Charlemagne, 17-19, 266
+
+Charlemont, 73, 81
+
+Chartism, 108, 115
+
+Chatham, Lord, 85, 86, 138, 151, 157-160, 165, 186, 273
+
+Chaucer, 18, 117
+
+Chivalry, 17, 19, 295
+
+Chrysostom, Dio, 16
+
+Church, Dean, 250, 265
+
+Clarendon, Lord, 244, 246, 280
+
+Cobden, Richard, 44, 46, 62
+
+Colenso, Bishop, 272
+
+Coleridge, 22, 96, 112, 147
+
+Colonial policy of Great Britain, 43-46, 52, 53, 55-61
+
+Colonies, British:
+  defence, 49, 56, 65;
+  federation, 63, 64;
+  governors, 52, 54, 60;
+  representation, 51, 65, 66;
+  trade, 47, 56, 63-65, 225;
+  value of, 47-50;
+  attachment to the Crown, 277
+
+Comte, 100
+
+Constant, Benjamin, 142, 144, 148
+
+Constitutional sovereignty, 277
+
+Co-operation, 108, 217, 299
+
+Croker, 177, 178
+
+Crusades, 18, 19, 266
+
+Curchod, Mlle., _see_ Necker, Mme.
+
+Curwen's Act, 177
+
+
+Dalling, Lord, 151
+
+Darwin and his teaching, 90, 101, 114, 247, 251
+
+Davies, Sir John, quoted, 70
+
+Delane, J.T., 243
+
+De Quincey, 107
+
+Derby, 14th Earl of, 201, 202, 204-206, 208-210, 212, 214, 215
+
+Derby, 15th Earl of:
+  career, 200, 205-213, 215, 217, 218, 222-224, 234, 235;
+  views on Church questions, 205, 210, 214, 232, 233;
+  on Reform Bill, 210;
+  Indian policy, 205, 209, 210;
+  foreign policy, 212, 213, 217-224;
+  colonial policy, 208, 224, 225, 228-230;
+  attitude towards Home Rule, 234;
+  contemporary opinion of him, 206-209, 211-213, 219, 220;
+  marriage 215;
+  interest in social questions, 205, 206, 212, 216, 217, 224, 235;
+  in working men, 205, 206, 210, 216, 217, 237;
+  tastes, 239, 240;
+  conversation, 240, 241;
+  estimate of his talents and character, 202-204, 207, 209, 212, 217,
+    219-224;
+  speeches, 202, 205, 211, 212, 214, 215, 217, 222-224, 229, 234-236
+
+Dicey, Professor 89
+
+Disraeli, B., _see_ Beaconsfield
+
+Duigenan, 169, 174
+
+
+Eastern Question, Lord Derby's views on, 218-223
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, 242, 243, 246, 247
+
+Education, popular, 108, 185
+
+Eldon, Lord, 160, 174, 189, 190, 192, 253
+
+Elizabeth, Queen, 291, 295;
+  inscription on tomb of, 187
+
+Ellenborough, Lord, 208, 209
+
+Emerson, R.W., 96, 104
+
+Emigration, 49, 50, 53, 108
+
+Erasmus, 257
+
+'Essays and Reviews,' 90
+
+
+Faber, 250
+
+Factory legislation, 108
+
+Federation, 63, 64, 225
+
+Feudalism, 17, 69, 110
+
+Fitzwilliam, Lord, 85
+
+Flood, 73, 81
+
+Foster, Leslie, 195
+
+Fox, 158, 162, 174
+
+France, 73, 97, 98, 116
+
+Franklin, Benjamin, 94
+
+_Fraser's Magazine_, 104
+
+Free Trade, 44, 45, 47, 63, 64, 78, 225
+
+French Revolution, 28, 37, 38, 82, 139, 141, 142
+
+Froude, J.A., 251, 269
+
+
+Galdos' 'Gloria,' 117
+
+George II., 295
+
+George III. and Catholic Emancipation, 85, 86, 157-162, 194
+
+George IV., as Prince Regent, 162, 163, 165, 166;
+  as King, 188-191, 194
+
+German literature, 146, 147
+
+Germany, 106, 107, 116, 118, 145, 260, 262, 310, 317
+
+Gibbon, 3, 134, 263, 264
+
+Giffen, Sir Robert, 307, 308
+
+Gladstone, W.E., 214, 246, 249, 250, 283, 286-288
+
+Goethe, 107, 147
+
+Gordon, General, 286
+
+Goulburn, 196, 197
+
+Grattan, 78, 81, 82, 84, 161, 163, 164, 166, 168-171, 174, 186, 187,
+    195, 197
+
+Grenville, George, 36, 56, 57
+
+Grenville, Lord, 158, 161, 162, 166
+
+Greville, Charles, 206, 207, 209, 243
+
+Grey, Lord, 166, 280
+
+Grote, 251, 269
+
+Guizot, 151, 244
+
+Gustavus III., King of Sweden, 138
+
+
+Hallam, A., 96, 251, 269
+
+Harcourt, Sir William, quoted, 290
+
+Hastings, Warren, 54, 55
+
+Haussonville, M. d', 134, 138
+
+Hawkesbury, Lord, 161
+
+Hawtrey, Provost, 265
+
+Heber, Bishop, 255
+
+High Church movement, 90, 92, 249-251, 270
+
+Hippisley, Sir John, 163, 169
+
+Historians, qualities requisite, 2, 4-6, 10-12;
+  motto for, 10;
+  scientific school, 2-4;
+  literary, 3;
+  methods, 7, 8, 22, 23;
+  applied to religion, 97-99;
+  eighteenth century, 22, 23;
+  fatalist school, 29, 30;
+  individualist school, 29, 31
+
+History:
+  biographical element, 7, 9;
+  individual influences, 12, 13;
+  fiction and, 20;
+  accident as affecting, 31, 100;
+  of institutions, 27, 28;
+  of revolutions, 29, 30, 34-38;
+  speculations, 32, 33;
+  advantages of studying, 38-40;
+  moral lessons, 40, 42
+
+Hobbes, 94, 98, 99
+
+Home Rule, _see under_ Ireland
+
+Homer, 16, 22
+
+
+Ideals, varying popular, 14-19
+
+Imperial Institute, 43
+
+Imperialism, 46-51, 63, 64, 296
+
+India, 44, 46-48, 54, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 277
+
+Ireland (_see also_ Ulster):
+  invasions, 69;
+  rebellions, 71, 82, 83, 85, 157;
+  influence of the Reformation, 70;
+  under the Stuarts, 71;
+  trade, 71, 72, 75, 78;
+  effects of English Revolution, 71, 72;
+  of American Revolution, 77, 78;
+  of French Revolution, 82;
+  Young's views on, 76, 77;
+  Catholics and Protestants, 70-79, 81-87;
+  Volunteer movement, 78, 87;
+  political agitation, 77, 78, 82, 87, 88;
+  union with Great Britain, 74, 75, 81, 83-85, 157;
+  Catholic Emancipation, 81-86, 157-174, 189, 194-198;
+  corruption, 175-179, 181, 183;
+  discontent, 165, 183, 184, 189, 194;
+  tithe commutation, 185-187;
+  Church disestablishment, 214, 215, 250, 283;
+  land tenure, 70, 75-77, 86, 87;
+  landlords, 75-77, 79, 86, 87;
+  Home Rule, 25, 87-89, 234, 246, 286, 296;
+  Queen Victoria's visit, 290, 291;
+  present condition, 86, 87;
+  representation in Parliament, 86
+
+Irish Acts of Parliament,
+  of settlement, 71;
+  octennial, 77;
+  of 1793, 85, 158, 159;
+  of union, 74, 75, 81, 83-85
+
+Irish Parliament, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77-83, 85
+
+Irishmen, United, 81, 84, 85
+
+Isabella of Spain, Queen, 295
+
+Italian art, 103
+
+Italy, 97, 98, 145, 146
+
+
+Jefferson, quoted, 37, 38
+
+Jeffrey, 107
+
+Jewish type,
+  stability of, 120, 121;
+  trade, 118, 119, 121;
+  writings, modern investigation of, 8, 9, 257-259, 261, 262, 271, 272
+
+Jews,
+  calumnies against, 117, 118;
+  characteristics, 118-130;
+  code, 121;
+  compared with other tribes, 119;
+  continuity of race, 119, 120;
+  distinguished, 126-129;
+  persecution of, 116-121, 123-126;
+  return of, to Palestine, 129, 130;
+  Milman's 'History of the', 257, 258, 262, 272
+
+
+Kant, Immanuel, 92, 147, 247
+
+Keats, John, 256
+
+Keble, John, 250, 270
+
+Kruger, President, 226-228
+
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, quoted, 22
+
+Leroy, Beaulieu, M. Anatole, 116-128
+
+Lewis, Sir G. Cornewall, 45, 153, 246, 273
+
+Liverpool, Lord, 156, 166, 168, 182, 188, 192-194, 197-199
+
+Lloyd, Dr., 192
+
+Locke, 96, 101
+
+Lockhart, 255
+
+Loughborough, Lord, 186
+
+Louis Napoleon, _see_ Napoleon III.
+
+Lyall, Sir Alfred, 240
+
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 3, 6, 8, 55, 204, 246, 251, 268, 269, 272, 273
+
+Macleod, Norman, 294
+
+Malmesbury, Lord, 206, 210
+
+Manchester School, 44, 45, 47, 50, 299
+
+Marie Antoinette, Queen, 140, 141
+
+Martin, Sir Theodore, 287
+
+Masson's 'Life of Milton,' 132
+
+Melbourne, Lord, 282, 296
+
+Mill, James, 43, 55
+
+Mill, John Stuart, 90, 96, 206, 210, 251
+
+Milman, Dean,
+  career, 253, 256, 262, 263, 271-274;
+  dramatist, 253;
+  poet, 254, 255;
+  translator, 256;
+  hymns, 255;
+  historian, 257-270;
+  critic, 252, 256-261, 263-267, 269;
+  learning, 269;
+  style, 268, 269;
+  views on miracles, 258-260;
+  on German criticism, 260-262;
+  on Christianity, 268;
+  on Tractarian movement, 270;
+  on clerical subscription, 271;
+  Mr. Reeve and, 246;
+  Dean Stanley and, 271;
+  friendships, 252, 273;
+  private correspondence, 253;
+  social gifts, 272, 273;
+  characteristics, 252, 253, 257, 265, 266, 268, 269, 271, 272-274;
+  works, 252-270, 272, 273;
+  portrait, 274
+
+Milman, Arthur, 252
+
+Milner, Bishop, 163, 164
+
+Milton, 132
+
+Mohammedanism, rise of, 32, 101
+
+Molyneux, 74
+
+Monasticism, 24
+
+Montesquieu, 132, 136
+
+Montmorin, Mme, de, 139
+
+Moral standard, changes in, 14-19, 266
+
+Murray, 254
+
+
+Napoleon I., 142-146, 149
+
+Napoleon III., 280, 288
+
+Narbonne, Louis de, 138-141
+
+Necker, Mme., 134, 135, 142
+
+Necker, Monsieur, 133, 138, 140, 144, 146, 149
+
+Necker, Germaine, _see_ Staël, Mme. de
+
+Newcastle, Duke of, 45, 189
+
+Newman, Cardinal, 90, 96, 249-251, 269, 270
+
+
+O'Connell, 164, 165, 171, 174, 189, 192, 193, 286
+
+Old-age pensions, 307, 309, 311-316;
+  proposals for, 300, 309, 310, 313;
+  Royal Commission, 303;
+  Rothschild Committee, 304, 305;
+  Chaplin Committee, 305, 307
+
+Orangemen, 84, 173, 189, 190
+
+
+Palestine, return of Jews to, 129, 130
+
+Paley, 95, 260
+
+Palmerston, Lord, 46, 178, 206-209, 211, 246, 279-282
+
+Parker, editor of Peel Correspondence, 153, 156, 192
+
+Parnell, C.S., 186
+
+Parnell Commission, 88, 89
+
+Parsons, 73, 84
+
+Pasteur, 121
+
+Pauperism, diminution of, 298-309
+
+Peel, Sir Lawrence, 156
+
+Peel, Sir Robert,
+  education, 154, 155;
+  career, 151, 153-156, 168, 172, 177, 187, 188, 194;
+  abolition of Corn Laws, 152, 153;
+  Irish Secretary, 156, 157, 167, 174-187;
+  relations with O'Connell, 174;
+  correspondence, 153, 173, 175-185, 189, 190, 191, 197-199;
+  Croker and, 177, 178;
+  advocates unsectarian education for Ireland, 185, 190;
+  Catholic Emancipation, 152, 153, 168-174, 187, 189-191, 193-195, 197-199;
+  financial measures, 187, 194, 195;
+  patronage, 178-183, 191, 192;
+  police force organised, 184, 185;
+  Home Secretary, 188-198;
+  parliamentary skill, 152, 153, 157, 181, 191;
+  debating powers, 172, 173;
+  Queen Victoria and, 282, 286;
+  recantations, 152, 153, 187, 193, 194;
+  estimate of his character and abilities, 151-154, 156, 157, 172, 181, 191
+
+Perceval, 155, 156, 159-161, 165, 166
+
+Pitt, William, _see_ Chatham
+
+Pliny, quoted, 102
+
+Plunket, 84, 168, 174, 188
+
+Pobedonosteff, 117
+
+Pole, Wellesley, 168
+
+Poor-law relief,
+  improvement in, 316, 317;
+  principles of, 298, 299
+
+Portland, Duke of, 159-161
+
+Portugal, Jews in, 120, 121
+
+Prince Consort, 278-280, 282, 284
+
+Prince Regent, _see_ George IV
+
+Prison reform, Carlyle's views on, 114
+
+Pusey, 250
+
+
+'Quarterly Review,' 256, 257
+
+
+Rationalism in Europe, author's History of, 103
+
+Redesdale, Lord, 175, 181, 182, 186
+
+Reeve, Henry:
+  education, 243;
+  career, 243, 245, 246;
+  editor of _Edinburgh Review_, 242, 246, 247;
+  historical knowledge, 246;
+  views on Home Rule, 246;
+  linguistic talent, 243;
+  literary judgment, 246, 247;
+  religious and philosophical views, 247;
+  political and social influence, 242, 244-246;
+  friendships, 243, 244, 247, 248;
+  writings of, 242-244, 247;
+  closing days, 248
+
+Reform Bills, 210, 211, 213
+
+Reformation,
+  causes of the, 29, 30;
+  effect in Ireland, 70
+
+Revolution,
+  American, 34-37;
+  effects of, in Ireland, 77, 78
+
+Revolution,
+  English, effect of, in Ireland, 71, 72;
+  on trade, 72, 74
+
+Revolutions, history of, 29, 30, 34-38
+
+Richmond, Duke of, 165, 167, 187
+
+Ristori, Mme., 245
+
+Rocca, 148, 149
+
+Rogers, Sir Frederick, 45, 46
+
+Roumania, anti-Semite movement in, 116, 118
+
+Rousseau, 96, 132, 136
+
+Ruskin, 251
+
+Russell, Lord John, 46, 47, 211-213, 241, 246, 263, 280, 281, 285
+
+Russia, anti-Semite movement in, 116-118, 124
+
+
+Salisbury, Lord, 276, 296
+
+Saurin, 165, 168, 169, 174, 183, 188
+
+Schiller, 147
+
+Schleswig-Holstein question, 281, 284, 285
+
+Scotland, Act of Union with, 74
+
+Shaftesbury, Lord, 206, 217
+
+Shelley, P.B., 256, 257
+
+Sidmouth, Lord, 158, 188
+
+Smith, Goldwin, 44, 151
+
+Socialism, 299, 310
+
+Spain, 73, 97, 98, 117, 120, 121, 124, 125
+
+Spencer, Herbert, 90, 109, 247
+
+Staël, Baron de, 138, 140, 142
+
+Staël, Mme. de., parentage, 133, 134;
+  personal appearance, 135;
+  career, 134-138, 142, 145, 148-150;
+  devotion to her father, 138;
+  friendships, 138, 139, 142, 145;
+  literary works, 136, 141, 142, 145-150;
+  Napoleon I., views on, 143, 144;
+  political influence, 139, 140, 142, 144;
+  religious views, 136, 149;
+  travels, 145, 146;
+  characteristics, 136, 137, 141, 145, 148, 149
+
+Stanley, Dean, 251, 260, 271, 294
+
+Stanley, Lord, _see_ Derby, 15th Earl of
+
+Stockmar, Baron, 278
+
+Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 254
+
+
+Tait, Archbishop, 283
+
+Talleyrand, 134, 139, 142, 144
+
+Taxation of American Colonies, 34-36, 56, 57;
+  democratic principles of, 300
+
+Taylor, Sir Henry, 45, 46
+
+Tennyson, Lord, 90, 251
+
+Tocqueville, 242-244
+
+Trade,
+  Colonial, 47, 56, 63-65;
+  Indian, 47;
+  Irish, 71, 72, 75, 78;
+  Jewish, 118, 119, 121;
+  affected by English Revolution, 72
+
+Transportation to Australia, 58
+
+Transvaal affairs, 225-232, 286
+
+Trinity College, Dublin, 90-92, 96-100, 103
+
+
+Ulster, 70, 77, 78, 83, 84
+
+United Irishmen, 81, 84, 85
+
+
+Voltaire, 7, 96, 121, 135
+
+Volunteer movement in Ireland, 78, 87
+
+Victoria, Queen:
+  relations with her Ministers, 279-283, 286-288, 296;
+  memorandum on foreign affairs, 279, 280;
+  political influence, 277, 278, 280, 282-286, 288;
+  patronage, 278;
+  views on foreign policy, 279-281, 283-286;
+  on Irish Church disestablishment, 283;
+  on women's suffrage, 294;
+  on Home Rule, 296;
+  wide experience, 276, 279, 287;
+  letters, 288, 289;
+  journals, 292, 293;
+  widowhood, 275, 292, 296;
+  moral influence, 291, 292;
+  rule of, 275, 277-279, 281-284, 293-295;
+  popularity, 289-291, 293, 296, 297;
+  characteristics, 274-276, 279, 281-283, 287-294, 296, 297;
+  jubilees, 290, 296, 297;
+  visit to Ireland, 290, 291;
+  closing days, 296, 297
+
+
+Walpole, Spencer, 151
+
+Ward, 250
+
+Watts, 274
+
+Wellesley, Lord, _see_ Wellington, Duke of
+
+Wellington, Duke of, 160, 161, 166, 167, 188-190, 198, 272, 289
+
+Whateley, Archbishop, 92-96, 100, 251
+
+Women rulers, 295
+
+Working classes, improvement in their condition, 300, 301, 308
+
+
+York, Duke of, 194, 197-199
+
+Young, Arthur, 76, 77
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+LONDON
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 322: added page number 322, to Murray entry.         |
+    | Page 324: Whateley replaced with Whately                  |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
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+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Historical and Political Essays, by William
+Edward Hartpole Lecky</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Historical and Political Essays</p>
+<p>Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky</p>
+<p>Release Date: January 17, 2007  [eBook #20389]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: UTF-8</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3 class="pg">E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Jeannie Howse,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:<br /><br /></p>
+
+<p class="noin">Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved.</p>
+<p class="noin">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this text.
+For a complete list, please see the <a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</p>
+</div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>HISTORICAL</h1>
+
+<h4>AND</h4>
+
+<h1>POLITICAL ESSAYS<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></h1>
+
+<h4 style="margin-bottom: -1px;">BY</h4>
+<h2 style="margin-top: -1px;">WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></h2>
+
+
+
+<h3 style="margin-bottom: -1px">LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.</h3>
+<h5 style="margin-top: -1px;">39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON<br />
+NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA<br />
+1908</h5>
+
+<h6>All rights reserved</h6>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h3><a name="toc" id="toc"></a>CONTENTS</h3>
+
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="70%" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><span style="font-size: 80%;">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#THOUGHTS_ON_HISTORY">Thoughts on History</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">1</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#VALUE_OF_HISTORY">The Political Value of History</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">21</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#THE_EMPIRE">The Empire: its Value and its Growth</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">43</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#LIGHT_OF_HISTORY">Ireland in the Light of History</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">68</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#FORMATIVE_INFLUENCES">Formative Influences</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">90</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#CARLYLES_MESSAGE">Carlyle's Message to His Age</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">104</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#ISRAEL">Israel among the Nations</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">116</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#MADAME_DE_STAEL">Madame de Staël</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">131</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#SIR_ROBERT_PEEL">The Private Correspondence of Sir Robert Peel</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">151</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#EDWARD_HENRY">The Fifteenth Earl of Derby</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">200</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#HENRY_REEVE">Mr. Henry Reeve</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">242</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#HENRY_HART_MILMAN">Dean Milman</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">249</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#QUEEN_VICTORIA">Queen Victoria as a Moral Force</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">275</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#OLD-AGE_PENSIONS">Old-age Pensions</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">298</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#INDEX">Index</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr">319</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="block"><p>The Essays 'Thoughts on History,' 'Formative Influences,'
+'Madame de Staël,' 'Israel among the Nations,' 'Old-age
+Pensions,' appeared originally in the American Review, the
+<i>Forum</i>&mdash;the first under the title of 'The Art of Writing
+History'; 'Ireland in the Light of History,' in the <i>North
+American Review</i>. Those on Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Henry Reeve,
+and Dean Milman were written for the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. The
+Essay on 'Queen Victoria as a Moral Force' appeared first in
+the <i>Pall Mall Magazine</i>; 'Carlyle's Message to His Age' in
+the <i>Contemporary Review</i>. 'The Political Value of History'
+was a presidential address delivered before the Birmingham and
+Midland Institute; 'The Empire,' an inaugural address
+delivered at the Imperial Institute; and the 'Memoir of the
+Fifteenth Earl of Derby' was originally prefixed to the
+volumes of his speeches and addresses.</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+
+<h2>HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS</h2>
+
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+
+<h3><a name="THOUGHTS_ON_HISTORY" id="THOUGHTS_ON_HISTORY"></a>THOUGHTS ON HISTORY<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<p>I do not propose in this paper to enter into any general inquiry about
+the best method of writing history. Such inquiries appear to me to be
+of no real value, for there are many different kinds of history which
+should be written in many different ways. A diplomatic, a military, or
+a parliamentary history, dealing with a short period or a particular
+episode, must evidently be treated in a very different spirit from an
+extended history where the object of the historian should be to
+describe the various aspects of the national life, and to trace
+through long periods of time the ultimate causes of national progress
+and decay. The history of religion, of art, of literature, of social
+and industrial development, of scientific progress, have all their
+different methods. A writer who treats of some great revolution that
+has transformed human affairs should deal largely in retrospect, for
+the most important part of his task is to explain the long course of
+events that prepared and produced the catastrophe; while a writer who
+treats of more normal times will do well to plunge rapidly into his
+theme.</p>
+
+<p>Historians, too, differ widely in their special talents, and these
+talents are never altogether combined. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>power of vividly realising
+and portraying men, or societies or modes of thought that have long
+since passed away; the power of arranging and combining great
+multitudes of various facts; the power of judging with discrimination,
+accuracy, and impartiality conflicting arguments or evidence; the
+power of tracing through the long course of events the true chain of
+cause and effect, selecting the facts that are most valuable and
+significant and explaining the relation between general causes and
+particular effects, are all very different and belong to different
+types of mind. It is idle to expect a writer with the gifts of a
+Clarendon, a Kinglake, or a Froude to write history in the spirit of a
+Hallam or a Grote. Writers who are eminently distinguished for wide,
+patient, and accurate research have sometimes little power either of
+describing or interpreting the facts which they collect. All that can
+be said with any profit is that each writer will do best if he follows
+the natural bent of his genius, and that he should select those kinds
+or periods of history in which his special gifts have most scope and
+the qualities in which he is deficient are least needed.</p>
+
+<p>It is the fashion of a modern school of historical writers to deplore
+what they call the intrusion of literature into history. History, in
+their judgment, should be treated as science and not as literature,
+and the kind of intellect they most value is not unlike that of a
+skilful and well-trained attorney. To collect documents with industry;
+to compare, classify, interpret and estimate them is the main work of
+the historian. It is no doubt true that there are some fields of
+history where the primary facts are so little known, so much contested
+or so largely derived from recondite manuscript sources, that a
+faithful historian will be obliged in justice to his readers <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>to
+sacrifice both proportion and artistic charm to the supreme importance
+of analysing evidence, reproducing documents and accumulating proofs;
+but in general the depreciation of the literary element in history
+seems to me essentially wrong. It is only necessary to recall the
+names of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Livy and Tacitus, of Gibbon and
+Macaulay, and of the long line of great masters of style who have
+related the annals of France. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted
+that there is no subject in which rarer literary qualities are more
+demanded than in the higher forms of history. The art of portraying
+characters; of describing events; of compressing, arranging, and
+selecting great masses of heterogeneous facts, of conducting many
+different chains of narrative without confusion or obscurity; of
+preserving in a vast and complicated subject the true proportion and
+relief, will tax the highest literary skill, and no one who does not
+possess some, at least, of these gifts in an unusual measure is likely
+to attain a permanent place among the great masters of history. It is
+a misfortune when some stirring and momentous period falls into the
+hands of the mere compiler, for he occupies the ground and a really
+great writer will hesitate to appropriate and plagiarise the materials
+his predecessor has collected. There are books of great research and
+erudition which one would have wished to have been all re-written by
+some writer of real genius who could have given order, meaning and
+vividness to a mere chaos of accurate and laboriously sifted learning.
+The great prominence which it is now the fashion to ascribe to the
+study of diplomatic documents, is very apt to destroy the true value
+and perspective of history. It is always the temptation of those who
+are dealing with manuscript materials to overrate the small <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>personal
+details which they bring to light, and to give them much more than
+their due space in their narrative. This tendency the new school
+powerfully encourages. It is quite right that the treasure-houses of
+diplomatic correspondence which have of late years been thrown open
+should be explored and sifted, but history written chiefly from these
+materials, though it has its own importance, is not likely to be
+distinguished either by artistic form or by philosophical value. Those
+who are immersed in these studies are very apt to overrate their
+importance and the part which diplomacy and statesmanship have borne
+in the great movement of human affairs.</p>
+
+<p>A true and comprehensive history should be the life of a nation. It
+should describe it in its larger and more various aspects. It should
+be a study of causes and effects, of distant as well as proximate
+causes, and of the large, slow and permanent evolution of things. It
+should include, as Buckle and Macaulay saw, the social, the
+industrial, the intellectual life of the nation as well as mere
+political changes, and it should be pre-eminently marked by a true
+perspective dealing with subjects at a length proportioned to their
+real importance. All this requires a powerful and original intellect
+quite different from that of a mere compiler. It requires too, in a
+high degree, the kind of imagination which enables a man to reproduce
+not only the acts but the feelings, the ideals, the modes of thought
+and life of a distant past, and pierce through the actions and
+professions of men to their real characters. Insight into character is
+one of the first requisites of a historian. It is therefore, much to
+be desired that he should possess a wide knowledge of the world, the
+knowledge of different types of character, foreign as well as English,
+which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>travel and society and practical experience of business can
+give, and it will also be of no small advantage to him if he has
+passed through more than one intellectual or religious phase, widening
+the area of his appreciation and realisations. He should also have
+enough of the dramatic element to enable him to throw himself into
+ways of reasoning or feeling very different from his own. One of the
+most valuable of all forms of historical imagination is that which
+enables a writer to place himself in the point of view of the best men
+on different sides, and to bring out the full sense of opposing
+arguments. All these gifts or qualities are never in a high degree
+united, but they are all essential to a great historian, and a true
+school of history should widen instead of narrowing our conception of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The supreme virtue of the historian is truthfulness, and it may be
+violated in many different degrees. The worst form is when a writer
+deliberately falsifies facts or deliberately excludes from his picture
+qualifying circumstances. But there are other and much more subtle
+ways in which party spirit continually and often quite unconsciously
+distorts history. All history is necessarily a selection of facts, and
+a writer who is animated by a strong sympathy with one side of a
+question or a strong desire to prove some special point will be much
+tempted in his selection to give an undue prominence to those that
+support his view, or, even where neither facts nor arguments are
+suppressed, to give a party character to his work by an unfair
+distribution of lights and shades. The strong and vivid epithets are
+chiefly reserved for the good or bad deeds on one side, the vague,
+general and comparatively colourless epithets for the corresponding
+deeds on the other side; and in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>this way very similar facts are
+brought before the reader with such different degrees of illumination
+and relief that they make a wholly different impression on his mind.
+In the history of Macaulay this defect may, I think, be especially
+traced. The characteristic defect of that great and in most respects
+admirable writer, both as historian and artist, was the singular
+absence of graduation in his mind. The neutral tints which are
+essential to the accurate shading of character seemed almost wanting,
+and a love of strong contrasted lights and shades, coupled with his
+supreme command of powerful epithets, continually misled him. But no
+attentive reader can fail to observe how unequally those epithets are
+distributed and how clearly this inequality discloses the strong bias
+under which he wrote.</p>
+
+<p>The truth of an historical picture lies mainly in its judicious and
+accurate shading, and it is this art which the historian should
+especially cultivate. He will scarcely do so with success unless it
+becomes to him not merely a matter of duty, but also a pleasure and a
+pride. The kind of interest which he takes in his narrative should be
+much less that of a politician and an advocate than of a painter, who,
+now darkening and now lightening the picture, seeks by many delicate
+touches to catch with exact fidelity the tone and hue of the object he
+represents.</p>
+
+<p>The degree of certainty that it is possible to attain in history
+varies greatly in different departments. The growth of institutions
+and laws, military events, changes in manners and in creeds, can be
+described with much confidence, and although it is more difficult to
+depict the inner moral life of nations, the influences that form their
+characters and prepare them for greatness or decay, yet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>when the
+materials for our induction are sufficiently large this field of
+history may be studied with great profit. Diplomatic history and the
+more secret springs of political history can only be fully disclosed
+when the archives relating to them have been explored and when the
+confidential correspondence of the chief actors in them has been
+published. The biographical element in history is always the most
+uncertain. Even among contemporaries the judgment of character and
+motives depends largely on indications so slight and subtle that they
+rarely pass into books and are only fully felt by direct personal
+contact, and the smallest knowledge of life shows how quickly
+anecdotes and sayings are distorted, coloured, and misplaced when they
+pass from lip to lip. Most of the 'good sayings' of history are
+invention, and most of them have been attributed to different persons.
+A history which is plainly written under the influence of party bias
+has the value of an advocate's speech giving one side of the question.
+When our only materials for the knowledge of a period are derived from
+such histories, the saying of Voltaire should be remembered&mdash;that we
+can confidently believe only the evil which a party writer tells of
+his own side and the good which he recognises in his opponents. In
+judging the historian we must consider his nearness to the events he
+relates, his probable means of information and the internal evidence
+in his narrative of accuracy, honesty, and judgment, and we must also
+consider the standard of proof and the methods of historical writing
+prevailing in his time. A modern writer who placed in the mouths of
+his personages speeches which he himself invented would be justly
+discredited, but in antiquity it was a recognised custom for a
+historian to embody in fictitious speeches the reflections suggested
+by his narrative <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>and the motives which he believed to have actuated
+his heroes.</p>
+
+<p>Different ages differ enormously in the severity of proof which they
+exact, in the degree of accuracy which they attain. The credibility of
+a statement also depends not only on the amount of its evidence, but
+also on its own inherent probability. Everyone will feel that an
+amount of testimony that would be quite sufficient to persuade him
+that a butcher's boy had been seen driving along a highway is wholly
+different from that which would be required to persuade him that a
+ghost had been met there. The same rule applies to the history of the
+past, and it is complicated by the great difference in different ages
+of the measure of probability, or, in other words, by the strong
+predisposition in certain stages of knowledge to accept statements or
+explanations of facts which in later stages we know to be incredible
+or in a high degree improbable. Few subjects in history are more
+difficult than the laws of evidence in dealing with the supernatural
+and the extent to which the authority of historians in relating
+credible and probable facts is invalidated by the presence of a
+mythical element in their narratives.</p>
+
+<p>Connected with this subject is also the question how far it is
+possible by merely internal evidence to decompose an ancient document,
+resolving it into its separate elements, distinguishing its different
+dates and its different degrees of credibility. The reader is no doubt
+aware with what a rare skill this method of inquiry has been pursued
+in the present century, chiefly by great German and Dutch scholars, in
+dealing with the early Jewish writings. At the same time, without
+disputing the value of their work or the importance of many of the
+results at which they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>have arrived, I may be pardoned for expressing
+my belief that this kind of investigation is often pursued with an
+exaggerated confidence. Plausible conjecture is too frequently
+mistaken for positive proof. Undue significance is attached to what
+may be mere casual coincidences, and a minuteness of accuracy is
+professed in discriminating between the different elements in a
+narrative which cannot be attained by mere internal evidence. In all
+writings, but especially in the writings of an age when criticism was
+unknown, there will be repetitions, contradictions, inconsistencies
+and diversities of style which do not necessarily indicate different
+authorship or dates.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of the uncertainty of the biographical element in
+history. It must, however, be said that when a historian is dealing
+with men who have played a very prominent part on the stage of life,
+the general acceptance of his judgment is a strong corroboration of
+its truth. It may be added that the later judgment of men is not
+unfrequently more true than the contemporary judgment. The wisdom of a
+teaching or of a policy is shown by its results, and these results are
+in most cases very gradually disclosed. Great men are like great
+mountains which are surrounded by lower peaks that often obscure their
+grandeur and seem to a near observer to equal or even to overtop them.
+It is only when seen from far off that their true dimensions are fully
+realised and they soar to heaven above all rivals. In the page of
+history men are judged mainly by the net result of their lives, by the
+broad lines of their characters and achievements. Many injudicious
+words, many minor weaknesses of conduct, are forgotten. Faults of
+manner, deficiencies of tact, awkwardnesses of appearance, which tell
+so largely upon the judgments of contemporaries, are no longer seen.
+The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>conversational nimbleness and versatility of intellect, the charm
+or assurance or magnetism of manner, the weight of social position,
+all of which tend to secure to an inferior man a pre-eminence in the
+circle in which he moves, are equally evanescent, and the shy, rugged,
+and tactless recluse often emerges on the strength of his genuine and
+abiding performances to a position in the eyes of the world which he
+never attained during his lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>That fine saying of Cardan, 'Tempus mea possessio, tempus ager meus,'
+might be the motto of the historian. Time is the field which he
+cultivates, and a true sense of space and distance should be one of
+the chief characteristics of his work. Few things are more difficult
+to attain than a just perspective in history. The most dramatic
+incidents are not the most important, and in weighing the joys and
+sorrows of the past our measures of judgment are almost hopelessly
+false. The most humane man cannot emancipate himself from the law of
+his nature, according to which he is more affected by some tragic
+circumstance which has taken place in his own house or in his own
+street than by a catastrophe which has carried anguish and desolation
+over enormous areas in a distant continent. In history, too, there are
+vast tracts which are almost necessarily unrealised. We judge a period
+mainly by its great men, by its brilliant or salient incidents, by the
+fortunes of a small class; and the great mass of obscure, suffering,
+inarticulate humanity, whose happiness is often so profoundly affected
+by political and military events, almost escapes our notice. It should
+be the object of history to bring before us past events in their true
+proportion and significance, and one of the greatest improvements in
+modern history is the increased <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>attention which is paid to the
+social, industrial, and moral history of the poor. The paucity of our
+information and the difficulty of realising the conditions of obscure
+multitudes will always make this branch of history very imperfect, but
+it is one of the most essential to the just judgment of the past.</p>
+
+<p>Another task which lies before the historian is that of distinguishing
+proximate from ultimate causes. Our first natural impulse is to
+attribute a great change to the men who effected it and to the period
+in which it took place, and to neglect or underrate the long train of
+causes which had been, often through many generations, preparing its
+advent. A faithful historian must especially guard against this error.
+He must study the slow process of growth as well as the moment of
+efflorescence, the long progress of decay as well as the final
+catastrophe. He will probably find that the part played by statesmen
+and legislatures is less than he had imagined, and that the causes of
+the movements he relates must be sought over a wider area and through
+a longer period.</p>
+
+<p>Moral, intellectual, or economical movements very slightly connected
+with political life are often those which have most largely
+contributed to the good or evil fortunes of a nation; and even in the
+sphere of politics it is not the events which attract the most vivid
+contemporary interest that have the most enduring influence. Few
+things contribute so much to the formation of the social type as the
+laws regulating the succession of property and especially the
+agglomeration or division of landed property. The growth of militarism
+in a nation, besides its direct and obvious consequences, forms a type
+of character which will sooner or later show itself in almost every
+department of legislation, and the tendency <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>of politics to enlarge or
+narrow the sphere of individual liberty or of government control, will
+affect most deeply the habits of the people. Laws regulating private
+enterprises, substituting State control or initiative for individual
+action, encouraging or discouraging thrift, and above all interfering
+with free contracts, have much more than an immediate influence, for
+they become the prolific parents of many further extensions. In the
+words of an excellent observer, it will be found 'that our legislative
+interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions,
+every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects
+of the preceding.' It is by studying such tendencies through long
+periods of time that their good or evil influences may be best
+discovered, and this should be one of the great tasks of the
+historian.</p>
+
+<p>But, however large a part may be given to the impersonal influences in
+history, he will still be largely concerned with the record of
+individual achievements, and the great men of the past will form the
+most conspicuous landmarks of his narrative. I have often thought,
+however, that nations are judged too much by the great men they have
+produced and not sufficiently by the way in which they have
+discriminated among them and appreciated them. Genius is like the wind
+that bloweth where it listeth, and it often appears in strangely
+uncongenial quarters. The true nobility of a nation is shown by the
+men they choose, by the men they follow, by the men they admire, by
+the ideals of character and conduct they place before them. Tried by
+such tests, there is often much that is profoundly saddening in the
+history of countries that have been far from poor in the number of
+their great men.</p>
+
+<p>In the judgment of historical characters there are two <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>cautions on
+which it may not be useless to dwell. There is a large class of public
+men who show little capacity in dealing with or directing the present
+conditions of their time, but who see clearly the bourne to which
+existing forces or tendencies are moving and who, judged by their
+distant forecasts, will appear much wiser than their contemporaries.
+It is the natural bias of the historian to place them perhaps higher
+than they deserve. This power of just speculative foresight is no very
+rare gift, and in public affairs it is often as much a hindrance as a
+help. Forms of government and other great religious or political
+institutions, like the products of nature, have their times of
+immaturity, of growth, of ripeness and of decay, and it by no means
+follows because they at last become indefensible, that they have not
+during many generations discharged useful functions and that those who
+first assailed and condemned them are deserving of praise. Not
+unfrequently, indeed, a public man must take his choice whether by
+fully identifying himself with the existing conditions around him and
+employing them to the best advantages he will lead a useful and
+practical life, or whether as an advanced thinker he will associate
+himself with the cause that is one day to conquer, place himself in
+the van of progress and at the sacrifice of much present influence
+deserve the credit of foresight.</p>
+
+<p>Historians will probably always judge men and policies by their net
+results, by their final consequences, and this judgment is on the
+whole the most sure that we can attain. It is not, however, altogether
+infallible. Apart from the question of the moral character of the
+methods employed which a good historian should never omit from his
+consideration, success is not always a decisive proof of sagacity.
+Chance and the unexpected <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>play a great part in human affairs, and a
+judgment founded on a perfectly just estimate of probabilities will
+often prove wrong. The result which was the least probable will come
+true, some wholly unforeseen and unforeseeable occurrence will scatter
+dangers that were very real and give a new complexion to events. The
+rise of some pre-eminently great or of some pre-eminently mischievous
+personage among the guiding influences of a nation will derange the
+most sagacious calculations, and the reckless gambler or the obtuse
+obstructionist may prove more right than the most cautious, the most
+skilful, the most farseeing statesman.</p>
+
+<p>A fatal and very common error is that of judging the actions of the
+past by the moral standard of our own age. This is especially the
+error of novices in history and of those who without any wide and
+general culture devote themselves exclusively to a single period.
+While the primary and essential elements of right and wrong remain
+unchanged, nothing is more certain than that the standard or ideal of
+duty is continually altering. A very humane man in another age may
+have done things which would now be regarded as atrociously barbarous.
+A very virtuous man may have done things which would now indicate
+extreme profligacy. We seldom indeed make sufficient allowance for the
+degree in which the judgments and dispositions of even the best man
+are coloured by the moral tone of the time or society in which they
+live. And what is true of individuals is equally true of nations. In
+order to judge equitably the legislation of any people, we must always
+consider corresponding contemporary legislations and ideas. When this
+is neglected our judgments of the past become wholly false. How often,
+for example, has such a subject as the history of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>the penal laws
+against Irish Catholics been treated without the smallest reference to
+the contemporary laws against Protestants that existed in every
+Catholic nation and the contemporary laws against Catholics that
+existed in almost every Protestant country in Europe. How often have
+the English commercial restrictions on the American colonies been
+treated as if they were instances of extreme and exceptional tyranny,
+while a more extended knowledge would show that they were simply the
+expression of ideas of commercial policy and about the relation of
+dependencies to the mother-country which then almost universally
+prevailed.</p>
+
+<p>It is not merely the moral standard that changes. A corresponding
+change takes place in the moral type, or, in other words, in the class
+of virtues which is especially cultivated and especially valued. To
+know an age aright we should above all things seek to understand its
+ideal, the direction in which the stream of its self-sacrifice and
+moral energy naturally flowed. Few things in history are more
+interesting and more valuable than a study of the causes that produced
+and modified these successive ideals. Thus in the moral type of pagan
+antiquity the civic virtues occupied incomparably the foremost place.
+The idea of a supremely good man was essentially that of a man of
+action, of a man whose whole life was devoted to the service of his
+country. The life and death of Cato were for generations the favourite
+model. He was deemed, in the words of an old Latin historian, to be of
+all men the one 'most like to virtue.' This pattern retained its force
+till the softening influence of the Greek spirit, permeating Roman
+life, made the stoical ideal seem too hard and unsympathising; till
+the corruption and despotism of the Empire had withdrawn the best men
+from political <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>life and attached a certain taint or stigma to public
+employment; till new religions arose in the East, bringing with them
+new ideals to govern the world. Gradually we may trace the
+contemplative virtues rising to the foremost place until, about the
+fifth century, the ideal had totally changed. The heroic type was
+replaced by the saintly type. The supremely good man was now the
+ascetic. The first condition of sanctity was a complete abandonment of
+secular duties and cares and a complete subjugation of the body. A
+vast literature of legends arose reflecting and glorifying the
+prevailing ideal and holding up the hermit life as the supreme pattern
+of perfection, and this literature occupies a place in medi&aelig;valism
+very similar to that held by the 'Lives' of Plutarch in antiquity.</p>
+
+<p>Ancient art was essentially the glorification of the body, a
+representation of the full strength and beauty of developed manhood.
+The saint of the medi&aelig;val mosaic represents the body in its extreme
+maceration and humiliation. The rhetorician, Dio Chrysostom, in a
+somewhat whimsical passage, which was suggested by a remark of Plato,
+found a special moral significance in the fact that Homer, though he
+places his heroes on the the banks of what he calls 'the fishy
+Hellespont,' never makes them eat fish, but always flesh and the flesh
+of oxen, for this, as he says, is 'strength-producing food' and is
+therefore suited for the formation of heroes and the proper diet for
+men of virtue. Compare this judgment with the protracted, and indeed
+incredible, fasts which the monkish writers delighted in attributing
+to the saints of the desert, and we have a vivid picture of the change
+that had passed over the ideal.</p>
+
+<p>But as time moved on the ascetic ideal gradually <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>declined and was
+replaced by the very different ideal of chivalry. It consisted chiefly
+of three new elements. The first element was a spirit of gallantry
+which gave women a wholly new place in the imaginations of men. It was
+in part a reaction against the extreme austerity of the saints, and
+this reaction was much intensified after the cessation of the panic
+which had risen at the close of the tenth century about the
+approaching end of the world. It was in part produced by the softer
+and more epicurean civilisation which grew up in the country bordering
+on the Pyrenees. It was especially represented in the romances and
+poems of the Troubadours, and the new tendency even received some
+assistance from the Church when the Council of Clermont, which
+originated the Crusades, imposed on the knight the religious
+obligation of defending all widows and orphans.</p>
+
+<p>The second element was an increased reverence for secular rank, which
+grew out of the feudal system, when a great hereditary aristocracy
+arose and all European society was moulded into a compact hierarchy,
+of which the serf was the basis and the emperor the apex. The
+principle of subordination and obedience ran through the whole
+edifice, and a respect for rank was universally diffused. Men came to
+associate their ideal of greatness with regal or noble authority, and
+they were therefore prepared to idealise any great sovereign who might
+arise. Such a sovereign appeared in Charlemagne, who exercised upon
+Christendom a fascination not less powerful than that which Alexander
+had once exercised upon Greece, and he accordingly soon became the
+centre of a whole literature of romance.</p>
+
+<p>The third element was the fusion of religious enthusiasm with the
+military spirit. Christianity in its first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>phases was utterly opposed
+to the military spirit; but this opposition was naturally mitigated
+when the Church triumphed under Constantine and became associated with
+governments and armies. The hostility was still further qualified when
+many tribes of warlike barbarians embraced the faith, and the military
+obligation which was an essential element of feudalism acted in the
+same direction. But, above all, the rise and conquests of
+Mohammedanism awoke the military energies of Christendom and
+determined the direction it should take. In the Crusades the two great
+streams of military enthusiasm and of religious enthusiasm met, and
+the result was the formation of a new ideal which for a long period
+mainly governed the imagination of Christendom.</p>
+
+<p>It for a time absorbed, eclipsed, and transformed all purely national
+ideals. No poet was ever more intensely English in his character and
+sympathies than Chaucer, and he wrote when the dazzling glories of
+Cr&eacute;cy and Poitiers were still very recent. Yet it is not on these
+fields, but in the long wars with the Moslems, that his pattern knight
+had won his renown. The military expeditions of Charlemagne were
+directed almost exclusively against the Saxons and against Slavonic
+tribes. With the Spanish Mohammedans he came but very slightly in
+contact. He made in person but one expedition against them, and that
+expedition was both insignificant and unsuccessful. But in the
+Karlovingian romances, which were written when the crusading
+enthusiasm was at its height, the figure of the great emperor
+underwent a strange and most significant transformation. The German
+wars were scarcely noticed. Charlemagne is surrounded with the special
+glory that ought to have belonged to Charles Martel. He is represented
+as having passed his entire life <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>in a victorious struggle with the
+Mohammedans of Europe, and is even gravely credited with a triumphant
+expedition to Jerusalem. The three romances of the Crusades which are
+believed to be the oldest were all written by monks, and they all make
+Charlemagne their hero. Even geography was transformed by the new
+enthusiasm, and old maps sometimes represent Jerusalem as the centre
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p>In few periods has there been so great a difference between the ideals
+created by the popular imagination and the realities that are
+recognised by history. Few wars have been accompanied by more cruelty,
+more outrage, and more licentiousness than the Crusades or have
+brought a blacker cloud of disasters in their train. Yet the idea that
+inspired them was a lofty one, and they were so speedily transfigured
+by the imaginations of men that in combination with the other
+influences I have mentioned they created an ideal which is one of the
+most beautiful in the history of the world. We may trace it clearly in
+the romances of Arthur and Charlemagne and of the "Cid;" in the
+"Red-Cross Knight" of Tasso and Spenser; in the old ballads which
+paint so vividly the hero of chivalry, ever ready to draw his sword
+for his faith and his lady-love and in the cause of the feeble and the
+oppressed. The glorification of military courage and self-sacrifice
+which had been so prominent in antiquity was again in the ascendant,
+but it was combined with a new kind of honour and with a new vein of
+courtesy, modesty, and gentleness. When we apply the epithet
+'chivalrous' to a modern gentleman, this is no unmeaning term. There
+is even now an element in that character which may be distinctly
+traced to the ideal of chivalry which the Crusades made dominant in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>I do not propose to follow the history of other ideals that have in
+turn prevailed. What I have written will, I trust, be sufficient to
+illustrate a kind of history which appears to me to possess much
+interest and value. It will show, too, that a faithful historian is
+very largely concerned with the fictions as well as with the facts of
+the past. Legends which have no firm historical basis are often of the
+highest historical value as reflecting the moral sentiments of their
+time. Nor do they merely reflect them. In some periods they contribute
+perhaps more than any other influence to mould and colour them and to
+give them an enduring strength. The facts of history have been largely
+governed by its fictions. Great events often acquire their full power
+over the human mind only when they have passed through the
+transfiguring medium of the imagination, and men as they were supposed
+to be have even sometimes exercised a wider influence than men as they
+actually were. Ideals ultimately rule the world, and each before it
+loses its ascendancy bequeaths some moral truth as an abiding legacy
+to the human race.</p>
+
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3><a name="VALUE_OF_HISTORY" id="VALUE_OF_HISTORY"></a>THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>When, shortly after I had accepted the honourable task which I am
+endeavouring to fulfil to-night, I received from your Secretary a
+report of the annual proceedings of the Birmingham and Midland
+Institute,&mdash;when I observed the immense range and variety of subjects
+included within your programme, illustrating so strikingly the intense
+intellectual activity of this great town,&mdash;my first feeling was one of
+some bewilderment and dismay. What, I asked myself, could I say that
+would be of much real value, addressing an unknown audience, and
+relating to fields of knowledge so vast, so multifarious, and in many
+of their parts so far beyond the range of my own studies? On
+reflection, however, it appeared to me that in this, as in most other
+cases, the proverb was a wise one which bids the cobbler stick to his
+last, and that a writer who, during many years of his life, has been
+engaged in the study of English history could hardly do better than
+devote the time at his disposal to-night to a few reflections on the
+political value of history, and on the branches and methods of
+historical study that are most fitted to form a sound political
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Is history a study of real use in practical, and especially in
+political, life? The question, as you know, has been by no means
+always answered in the same way. In its earlier stages history was
+regarded chiefly as a form of poetry recording the more dramatic
+actions of kings, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>warriors, and statesmen. Homer and the early
+ballads are indeed the first historians of their countries, and long
+after Homer one of the most illustrious of the critics of antiquity
+described history as merely 'poetry free from the incumbrance of
+verse.' The portraits that adorned it gave some insight into human
+character; it breathed noble sentiments, rewarded and stimulated noble
+actions, and kindled by its strong appeals to the imagination high
+patriotic feeling; but its end was rather to paint than to guide, to
+consecrate a noble past than to furnish a key for the future; and the
+artist in selecting his facts looked mainly for those which could
+throw the richest colour upon his canvas. Most experience was in his
+eyes (to adopt an image of Coleridge) like the stern light of a ship,
+which illuminates only the path we have already traversed; and a large
+proportion of the subjects which are most significant as illustrating
+the true welfare and development of nations were deliberately rejected
+as below the dignity of history. The old conception of history can
+hardly be better illustrated than in the words of Savage Landor. 'Show
+me,' he makes one of his heroes say, 'how great projects were
+executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Show
+me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend
+to them in reverence.... Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as
+religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and measures in the
+market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the light they
+love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful throne,
+and at the sides of her Eloquence and War.'<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that a very different
+conception of history grew up. Historians then <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>came to believe that
+their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem;
+to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth,
+prosperity, and adversity. The history of morals, of industry, of
+intellect, and of art; the changes that take place in manners or
+beliefs; the dominant ideas that prevailed in successive periods; the
+rise, fall, and modification of political constitutions; in a word,
+all the conditions of national well-being became the subjects of their
+works. They sought rather to write a history of peoples than a history
+of kings. They looked specially in history for the chain of causes and
+effects. They undertook to study in the past the physiology of
+nations, and hoped by applying the experimental method on a large
+scale to deduce some lessons of real value about the conditions on
+which the well-being of society mainly depends.</p>
+
+<p>How far have they succeeded in their attempt, and furnished us with a
+real compass for political guidance? Let me in the first place frankly
+express my own belief that to many readers of history the study is not
+only useless, but even positively misleading. An unintelligent, a
+superficial, a pedantic or an inaccurate use of history is the source
+of very many errors in practical judgment. Human affairs are so
+infinitely complex that it is vain to expect that they will ever
+exactly reproduce themselves, or that any study of the past can enable
+us to predict the future with the minuteness and the completeness that
+can be attained in the exact sciences. Nor will any wise man judge the
+merits of existing institutions solely on historic grounds. Do not
+persuade yourself that any institution, however great may be its
+antiquity, however transcendent may have been its uses in a remote
+past, can permanently justify its existence, unless it can be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>shown
+to exercise a really beneficial influence over our own society and our
+own age. It is equally true that no institution which is exercising
+such a beneficial influence should be condemned, because it can be
+shown from history that under other conditions and in other times its
+influence was rather for evil than for good.</p>
+
+<p>These propositions may seem like truisms; yet how often do we hear a
+kind of reasoning that is inconsistent with them! How often, for
+example, in the discussions on the Continent on the advantages and
+disadvantages of monastic institutions has the chief stress of the
+argument been laid upon the great benefits which those institutions
+produced in ages that were utterly different from our own,&mdash;in the
+dark period of the barbarian invasions, when they were the only
+refuges of a pacific civilisation, the only libraries, the only
+schools, the only centres of art, the only refuge for gentle and
+intellectual natures; the chief barrier against violence and rapine;
+the chief promoters of agriculture and industry! How often in
+discussions on the merits and demerits of an Established Church in
+England have we heard arguments drawn from the hostility which the
+Church of England showed towards English liberty in the time of the
+Stuarts; although it is abundantly evident that the dangers of a royal
+despotism, which were then so serious, have utterly disappeared, and
+that the political action of the Church of England at that period was
+mainly governed by a doctrine of the Divine right of kings, and of the
+duty of passive obedience, which is now as dead as the old belief that
+the king's touch could cure scrofula! How often have the champions of
+modern democracy appealed in support of their views to the glories of
+the democracies of ancient Greece, without ever reminding their
+hearers <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>that these small municipal republics rested on the basis of
+slavery, and that the bulk of those who would exercise the chief
+controlling influence over affairs in a pure democracy of the modern
+type were absolutely excluded from political power! How often in
+discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of Home Rule in
+Ireland do we find arguments drawn from the merits or demerits of the
+Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century, with a complete
+forgetfulness of the fact that this Parliament consisted exclusively
+of a Protestant gentry; that it represented in the highest degree the
+property of the country, and the classes who are most closely attached
+to English rule; that it was constituted in such a manner that the
+English Government could exercise a complete control over its
+deliberations, and that for good or for ill it was utterly unlike any
+body that could now be constituted in Ireland!</p>
+
+<p>Or again, to turn to another field: it is quite certain that every age
+has special dangers to guard against, and that as time moves on these
+dangers not only change, but are sometimes even reversed. There have
+been periods in English history when the great dangers to be
+encountered sprang from the excessive and encroaching power of a
+monarchy or of an aristocracy. The battle to be then fought was for
+the free exercise of religious worship and expression of religious
+opinion, for a free parliament, for a free press, for a free platform,
+for an independent jury-box. All the best patriotism, all the most
+heroic self-sacrifice of the nation, was thrown into defence of these
+causes; and the wisest statesmen of the time made it the main object
+of their legislation to protect and consolidate them.</p>
+
+<p>These things are now as valuable as they ever were, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>but no reasonable
+man will maintain that they are in the smallest danger. The battles of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been definitely won. A
+kind of language which at one period of English history implied the
+noblest heroism is now the idlest and cheapest of clap-trap. The
+sycophant and the self-seeker bow before quite other idols than of
+old. The dangers of the time come from other quarters; other
+tendencies prevail, other tasks remain to be accomplished; and a
+public man who in framing his course followed blindly in the steps of
+the heroes or reformers of the past would be like a mariner who set
+his sails to the winds of yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>It is difficult, I think, to doubt that the judgments of all of us are
+more or less affected by causes of this kind. It is, I imagine, true
+of the great majority of educated men that their first political
+impression or bias is formed much less by the events of their own time
+than by childish recollections of the more dramatic conflicts of the
+past. We are Cavaliers or Roundheads before we are Conservatives or
+Liberals; and although we gradually learn to realise how profoundly
+the condition of affairs and the balance of forces have altered, yet
+no wise man can doubt the power which the first bias of the
+imagination exercises in very many cases through a whole life.
+Language which grew out of bygone conflicts continues to be used long
+after those conflicts and their causes have ended; but that which was
+once a very genuine voice comes at last to be little more than an
+insincere echo.</p>
+
+<p>The best corrective for this kind of evil is a really intelligent
+study of history. One of the first tasks that every sincere student
+should set before himself is to endeavour to understand what is the
+dominant idea or characteristic of the period with which he is
+occupied; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>what forces chiefly ruled it, what forces were then rising
+into a dangerous ascendancy, and what forces were on the decline; what
+illusions, what exaggerations, what false hopes and unworthy
+influences chiefly prevailed. It is only when studied in this spirit
+that the true significance of history is disclosed, and the same
+method which furnishes a key to the past forms also an admirable
+discipline for the judgment of the present. He who has learnt to
+understand the true character and tendencies of many succeeding ages
+is not likely to go very far wrong in estimating his own.</p>
+
+<p>Another branch of history which I would especially commend to the
+attention of all political students is the history of Institutions. In
+the constantly fluctuating conditions of human life no institution
+ever remained for a long period unaltered. Sometimes with changed
+beliefs and changed conditions institutions lose all their original
+utility. They become simply useless, obstructive, and corrupt; and
+though by mere passive resistance they may continue to exist long
+after they have ceased to serve any good purpose, they will at last be
+undermined by their own abuses. Other institutions, on the other hand,
+show the true characteristic of vitality&mdash;the power of adapting
+themselves to changed conditions and new utilities. Few things in
+history are more interesting and more instructive than a careful study
+of these transformations. Sometimes the original objects almost wholly
+disappear, and utilities which were either never contemplated by the
+founders or were only regarded as of purely secondary importance take
+the first place on the scene. The old plan and symmetry almost
+disappear as the institution is modified now in this direction and now
+in that to meet some pressing want. The first architects, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>if they
+could rise from the dead, would scarcely recognise their
+creation&mdash;would perhaps look on it with horror. The indirect
+advantages of an institution are sometimes greater than its direct
+ones; and institutions are often more valuable on account of the evils
+they avert than on account of the positive advantages they produce.
+Not unfrequently in their later and transformed condition they
+exercise wider and greater influence than when they were originally
+established; for the strength derived from the long traditions of the
+past and from the habits that are formed around anything that is
+deeply rooted in the national life gives them a vastly increased
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>There is probably no better test of the political genius of a nation
+than the power which it possesses of adapting old institutions to new
+wants; and it is, I think, in this skill and in this disposition that
+the political pre-eminence of the English people has been most
+conspicuously shown. It is difficult to overrate its importance. It is
+the institutions of a country that chiefly maintain the sense of its
+organic unity, its essential connection with its past. By their
+continuous existence they bind together as by a living chain the past
+with the present, the living with the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Few greater calamities can befall a nation than to cut herself off, as
+France did in her great Revolution, from all vital connection with her
+own past. This is one of the chief lessons you will learn from
+Burke&mdash;the greatest and truest of all our political teachers. Bacon
+expressed in an admirable sentence the best spirit of English politics
+when he urged that 'men in their innovations should follow the example
+of Time itself, which indeed innovated greatly, but quietly, and by
+degrees scarcely to be perceived.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>There is a third department of history which appears to me especially
+valuable to political students. It is the history of those vast
+Revolutions for good or for ill which seem to have transformed the
+characters or permanently changed the fortunes of nations, either by a
+sudden and violent shock or by the slow process of gradual renovation.
+You will find on this subject, in our country, two great and opposite
+exaggerations. There is a school of writers, of which Buckle is an
+admirable representative, who are so struck by the long chain of
+causes, extending over many centuries, that preceded and prepared
+Revolutions, that they teach a kind of historic fatalism, reducing
+almost to nothing the action of Individualities; and there is another
+school, which is specially represented by Carlyle, who reduce all
+history into biographies, into the action of a few great men upon
+their kind.</p>
+
+<p>The one class of writers will tell you with great truth that the Roman
+Republic was not destroyed by C&aelig;sar, but by the long train of
+influences that made the career of C&aelig;sar a possibility. They will show
+how influences working through many generations had sapped the
+foundations of the Republic&mdash;how the beliefs and habits on which it
+once rested had passed away&mdash;how its institutions no longer
+corresponded with the prevailing wants and ideas&mdash;how a form of
+government which had proved excellently adapted for a restricted
+dominion failed when the Roman eagles flew triumphantly over the whole
+civilised world, and how in this manner the strongest tendencies of
+the time were preparing the downfall of the Republic, and the
+establishment of a great empire upon its ruins. They will show how the
+intellectual influences of the Renaissance, the invention of printing,
+and a crowd of other causes, many of them at first sight very remote
+from <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>theological controversies, had in the sixteenth century so
+shaken the power of the Roman Catholic Church, that the way was
+prepared for the Reformation, and it became possible for Luther and
+Calvin to succeed, where Wyckliffe and Huss had failed. They will show
+how profoundly our theological beliefs are affected by our general
+conception of the system of the universe, and how inevitably, as
+Science changes the latter, the former will undergo a corresponding
+process of modification. Creeds that are no longer in harmony with the
+general spirit of the time may long continue, but a new spirit will be
+breathed into the old forms. Those portions which are most discordant
+with our fresh knowledge will be neglected or attenuated. Although
+they may not be openly discarded, they will cease to be realised or
+vitally operative.</p>
+
+<p>In the sphere of politics a similar law prevails, and the fate of
+nations largely depends upon forces quite different from those on
+which the mere political historian concentrates his attention. The
+growth of military or industrial habits; the elevation or depression
+of different classes; the changes that take place in the distribution
+of wealth; inventions or discoveries that alter the course or
+character of industry or commerce, or reverse the relative advantages
+of different nations in the competitions of life; the increase and,
+still more, the diffusion of knowledge; the many influences that
+affect convictions, habits and ideals, that raise, or lower, or modify
+the moral tone and type&mdash;all these things concur in shaping the
+destinies of nations. Legislation is only really successful when it is
+in harmony with the general spirit of the age. Laws and statesmen for
+the most part indicate and ratify, but do not create. They are like
+the hands of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>watch, which move obedient to the hidden machinery
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>In all this kind of speculation there is, I believe, great truth, and
+it opens out fields of inquiry that are of the utmost interest and
+importance. I have, however, long thought that it has been pushed by
+some modern writers to extravagant exaggeration. As you well know,
+there is another aspect of history, which, long before Carlyle, was
+enforced by some of the ablest and most independent intellects of
+Christendom. Pascal tells us that if Cleopatra's nose had been
+shorter, the whole face of the world might have been changed, and
+Voltaire is never tired of dwelling on the small springs on which the
+greatest events of history turn. Frederick the Great, who was probably
+the keenest practical intellect of his age, constantly insisted on the
+same view. In the vast field of politics, he maintained, casual events
+which no human sagacity can predict play by far the largest part. We
+are in most cases groping our way blindly in the dark. Occasionally,
+when favourable circumstances occur, there is a gleam of light of
+which the skilful avail themselves. All the rest is uncertainty. The
+world is mainly governed by a multitude of secondary, obscure, or
+impenetrable causes. It is a game of chance in which the most skilful
+may lose like the most ignorant. 'The older one becomes the more
+clearly one sees that King Hazard fashions three-fourths of the events
+in this miserable world.'</p>
+
+<p>My own view of this question is that though there are certain streams
+of tendency, though there is a certain steady and orderly evolution
+that it is impossible in the long run to resist, yet individual action
+and even mere accident have borne a very great part in modifying the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>direction of history. It is with History as with the general laws of
+Nature. We can none of us escape the all-pervading force of
+gravitation, or the influence of the climate under which we live, or
+the succession of the seasons, or the laws of growth and of decay; yet
+man is not a mere passive weed drifting helplessly upon the sea of
+life, and human wisdom and human folly can do and have done much to
+modify the conditions of his being.</p>
+
+<p>It is quite true that religions depend largely for their continued
+vitality upon the knowledge and intellectual atmosphere of their time;
+but there are periods when the human mind is in such a state of
+pliancy that a small pressure can give it a bent which will last for
+generations. If Mohammed had been killed in one of the first
+skirmishes of his career, I know no reason for believing that a great
+monotheistic religion would have arisen in Arabia, capable of moulding
+for more than twelve hundred years not only the beliefs, laws, and
+governments, but also the inmost moral and mental character of a vast
+section of the human race. Gibbon was probably right in his conjecture
+that if Charles Martel had been defeated at the famous battle near
+Tours, the creed of Islam would have overspread a great part of what
+is now Christian Europe, and in that case it might have ruled over it
+for centuries. No one can follow the history of the conversion of the
+barbarians to Christianity without perceiving how often a religion has
+been imposed in the first instance by the mere will of the ruler,
+which gradually took such root that it became far too strong for any
+political power to destroy. Persecution cannot annihilate a creed
+which is firmly established, or maintain a creed which has been
+thoroughly undermined, but there are intermediate stages <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>in which its
+influence on national beliefs has been enormously great. Even at the
+Reformation, though more general causes were of capital importance,
+political events had a very large part in defining the frontier line
+between the rival creeds, and the divisions so created have for the
+most part endured.</p>
+
+<p>In secular politics numerous instances of the same kind will occur to
+every thoughtful reader of history. If, as might easily have happened,
+Hannibal after the battle of Cannae had taken and burned Rome, and
+transferred the supremacy of the world to a maritime commercial State
+upon the Mediterranean; if, instead of the Regency, Louis XV. and
+Louis XVI., France had passed during the eighteenth century under
+sovereigns of the stamp of the elder branch of the House of Orange or
+of Henry IV., or of the Great Elector, or of Frederick the Great; if,
+at the French Revolution, the supreme military genius had been
+connected with the character of Washington rather than with the
+character of Napoleon&mdash;who can doubt that the course of European
+history would have been vastly changed? The causes that made
+constitutional liberty succeed in England, while it failed in other
+countries where its prospects seemed once at least as promising, are
+many and complex; but no careful student of English history will doubt
+the prominence among them of the accidental fact that James II., by
+embracing Catholicism, had thrown the Church feeling at a very
+critical moment into opposition to the monarchical feeling, and that
+in the last days of Anne, when the question of the succession was
+trembling most doubtfully in the balance, his son refused to conform
+to the Anglican creed.</p>
+
+<p>Laws are no doubt in a great degree inoperative when they do not
+spring from and represent the opinion of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>nation, but they have in
+their turn a great power of consolidating, deepening, and directing
+opinion. When some important progress has been attained, and with the
+support of public opinion has been embodied in a law, that law will do
+much to prevent the natural reflux of the wave. It becomes a kind of
+moral landmark, a powerful educating influence, and by giving what had
+been achieved the sanction of legality, it contributes largely to its
+permanence. Roman law undoubtedly played a great part in European
+history long after all the conditions in which it was first enacted
+had passed away, and the legislator who can determine in any country
+the system of national education, or the succession of property, will
+do much to influence the opinions and social types of many succeeding
+generations.</p>
+
+<p>The point, however, on which I would here especially insist is that
+there has scarcely been a great revolution in the world which might
+not at some stage of its progress have been either averted, or
+materially modified, or at least greatly postponed, by wise
+statesmanship and timely compromise. Take, for example, the American
+Revolution, which destroyed the political unity of the English race.
+You will often hear this event treated as if it were simply due to the
+wanton tyranny of an English Government, which desired to reduce its
+colonies to servitude by taxing them without their consent. But if you
+will look closely into the history of that time&mdash;and there is no
+history which is more instructive&mdash;you will find that this is a gross
+misrepresentation. What happened was essentially this. England, under
+the guidance of the elder Pitt, had been waging a great and most
+successful war, which left her with an enormously extended Empire, but
+also with an addition of more than seventy millions to her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>National
+Debt. That debt was now nearly one hundred and forty millions, and
+England was reeling under the taxation it required. The war had been
+waged largely in America, and its most brilliant result was the
+conquest of Canada, by which the old American colonies had benefited
+more than any other part of the Empire, for the expulsion of the
+French from North America put an end to the one great danger which
+hung over them. It was, however, extremely probable that if France
+ever regained her strength, one of her first objects would be to
+recover her dominion in America.</p>
+
+<p>Under these circumstances the English Government concluded that it was
+impossible that England alone, overburdened as she was by taxation,
+could undertake the military defence of her greatly extended Empire.
+Their object, therefore, was to create subsidiary armies for its
+defence. Ireland already raised by the vote of the Irish Parliament,
+and out of exclusively Irish resources, an army consisting of from
+twelve to fifteen thousand men, most of whom were available for the
+general purposes of the Empire. In India, under a despotic system, a
+separate army was maintained for the protection of India. It was the
+strong belief of the English Government that a third army should be
+maintained in America for the defence of the American colonies and of
+the neighbouring islands, and that it was just and reasonable that
+America should bear some part of the expense of her own defence. She
+was charged with no part of the interest of the National Debt; she
+paid nothing towards the cost of the navy which protected her coast;
+she was the most lightly taxed and the most prosperous portion of the
+Empire; she was the part which had benefited most by the late war, and
+she was the part which was most likely to be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>menaced if the war was
+renewed. Under these circumstances Grenville determined that a small
+army of ten thousand men should be kept in America, under the distinct
+promise that it was never to serve beyond that country and the West
+Indian Isles, and he asked America to contribute 100,000<i>l.</i> a year,
+or about a third part of its expense.</p>
+
+<p>But here the difficulty arose. The Irish army was maintained by the
+vote of the Irish Parliament; but there was no single parliament
+representing the American colonies, and it soon became evident that it
+was impossible to induce thirteen State legislatures to agree upon any
+scheme for supporting an army in America. Under these circumstances
+Grenville in an ill-omened moment resolved to revive a dormant power
+which existed in the Constitution, and levy this new war-tax by
+Imperial taxation. He at the same time guaranteed the colonists that
+the proceeds of this tax should be expended solely in America; he
+intimated to them in the clearest way that if they would meet his
+wishes by themselves providing the necessary sum, he would be
+abundantly satisfied, and he delayed the enforcement of the measure
+for a year in order to give them ample time for doing so.</p>
+
+<p>Such and so small was the original cause of difference between England
+and her colonies. Who can fail to see that it was a difference
+abundantly susceptible of compromise, and that a wise and moderate
+statesmanship might easily have averted the catastrophe? There are few
+sadder and few more instructive pages in history than those which show
+how mistake after mistake was committed, till the rift which was once
+so small widened and deepened; till the two sections of the English
+race were thrown into an irreconcilable antagonism, and the fair
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>vision of an United Empire in the East and in the West came for ever
+to an end.</p>
+
+<p>Or glance for a moment at the French Revolution. It is a favourite
+task of historians to trace through the preceding generations the long
+train of causes that made the transformation of French institutions
+absolutely inevitable; but it is not so often remembered that when the
+States-General met in 1789 by far the larger part of the benefits of
+the Revolution could have been attained without difficulty, without
+convulsion, and by general consent. The nobles and clergy had pledged
+themselves to surrender their feudal privileges and their privileges
+in taxation; a reforming king was on the throne, and a reforming
+minister was at his side. If the spirit of moderation had then
+prevailed, the inevitable transformation might probably have been made
+without the effusion of a drop of blood. Jefferson was at this time
+the Minister of the United States in Paris. As an old republican he
+knew well the conditions of free governments, and among the
+politicians of his own country he represented the democratic section.
+I know few words in history more pathetic than those in which he
+described the situation. 'I was much acquainted,' he writes, 'with the
+leading patriots of the Assembly. Being from a country which had
+successfully passed through a similar reformation, they were disposed
+to my acquaintance, and had some confidence in me. I urged most
+strenuously an immediate compromise to secure what the Government were
+now ready to yield.... It was well understood that the King would
+grant at this time (1) freedom of the person by Habeas Corpus; (2)
+freedom of conscience; (3) freedom of the press; (4) trial by jury;
+(5) a representative legislature; (6) annual meetings; (7) the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>origination of laws; (8) the exclusive right of taxation and
+appropriation; and (9) the responsibility of Ministers; and with the
+exercise of these powers they could obtain in future whatever might be
+further necessary to improve and preserve their constitution. They
+thought otherwise,' continued Jefferson; 'and events have proved their
+lamentable error; for after thirty years of war, foreign and domestic,
+the loss of millions of lives, the prostration of private happiness,
+and the foreign subjugation of their own country for a time, they have
+obtained no more, nor even that securely.'<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>Let me, in concluding these observations, sum up in a few words some
+other advantages which you may derive from history. It is, I think,
+one of the best schools for that kind of reasoning which is most
+useful in practical life. It teaches men to weigh conflicting
+probabilities, to estimate degrees of evidence, to form a sound
+judgment of the value of authorities. Reasoning is taught by actual
+practice much more than by any <i>a priori</i> methods. Many good
+judges&mdash;and I own I am inclined to agree with them&mdash;doubt much whether
+a study of formal logic ever yet made a good reasoner. Mathematics are
+no doubt invaluable in this respect, but they only deal with
+demonstrations; and it has often been observed how many excellent
+mathematicians are somewhat peculiarly destitute of the power of
+measuring degrees of probability. But history is largely concerned
+with the kind of probabilities on which the conduct of life mainly
+depends. There is one hint about historical reasoning which I think
+may not be unworthy of your notice. When studying some great
+historical controversy, place yourselves by an effort of the
+imagination alternately on each side <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>of the battle; try to realise as
+fully as you can the point of view of the best men on either side, and
+then draw up upon paper the arguments of each in the strongest form
+you can give them. You will find that few practices do more to
+elucidate the past, or form a better mental discipline.</p>
+
+<p>History, again, greatly expands our horizon and enlarges our
+experience by bringing us in direct contact with men of many times and
+countries. It gives young men something of the experience of old men,
+and untravelled men something of the experience of travelled ones. A
+great source of error in our judgment of men is that we do not make
+sufficient allowance for the difference of types. The essentials of
+right and wrong no doubt continue the same, but if you look carefully
+into history you will find that the special stress which is attached
+to particular virtues is constantly changing. Sometimes it is the
+civic virtues, sometimes the religious virtues, sometimes the
+industrial virtues, sometimes the love of truth, sometimes the more
+amiable dispositions, that are most valued, and occupy the foremost
+place in the moral type. The men of each age must be judged by the
+ideal of their own age and country, and not by the ideal of ours. Men
+look at life in very different aspects, and they differ greatly in
+their ways of reasoning, in the qualities they admire, in the aims
+which they chiefly prize. In few things do they differ more than in
+their capacity for self-government; in the kinds of liberty they
+especially value; in their love or dislike of government guidance or
+control.</p>
+
+<p>The power of realising and understanding types of character very
+different from our own is not, I think, an English quality, and a
+great many of our mistakes in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>governing other nations come from this
+deficiency. Some thirty or forty years ago especially it was the
+custom of English statesmen to write and speak as if the salvation of
+every nation depended mainly upon its adoption of a miniature copy of
+the British Constitution. Now, if there is a lesson which history
+teaches clearly, it is that the same institutions are not fitted for
+all nations, and that what in one nation may prove perfectly
+successful, will in another be supremely disastrous. The habits and
+traditions of a nation; the peculiar bent of its character and
+intellect; the degree in which self-control, respect for law, the
+spirit of compromise, and disinterested public spirit are diffused
+through the people; the relations of classes, and the divisions of
+property, are all considerations of capital importance. It is a great
+error, both in history and in practical politics, to attach too much
+value to a political machine. The essential consideration is by what
+men and in what spirit that machine is likely to be worked. Few
+Constitutions contain more theoretical anomalies, and even
+absurdities, than that under which England has attained to such an
+unexampled height of political prosperity; while a servile imitation
+of some of the most skilfully-devised Constitutions in Europe has not
+saved some of the South American States from long courses of anarchy,
+bankruptcy, and revolution.</p>
+
+<p>These are some of the political lessons that may be drawn from
+history. Permit me, in conclusion, to say that its most precious
+lessons are moral ones. It expands the range of our vision, and
+teaches us in judging the true interests of nations to look beyond the
+immediate future. Few good judges will deny that this habit is now
+much wanted. The immensely increased prominence in political life of
+ephemeral influences, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>especially of the influence of a daily
+press; the immense multiplication of elections, which intensifies
+party conflicts, all tend to concentrate our thoughts more and more
+upon an immediate issue. They narrow the range of our vision, and make
+us somewhat insensible to distant consequences and remote
+contingencies. It is not easy, in the heat and passion of modern
+political life, to look beyond a parliament or an election, beyond the
+interest of a party or the triumph of an hour. Yet nothing is more
+certain than that the ultimate, distant, and perhaps indirect
+consequences of political measures are often far more important than
+their immediate fruits, and that in the prosperity of nations a large
+amount of continuity in politics and the gradual formation of
+political habits are of transcendent importance. History is never more
+valuable than when it enables us, standing as on a height, to look
+beyond the smoke and turmoil of our petty quarrels, and to detect in
+the slow developments of the past the great permanent forces that are
+steadily bearing nations onwards to improvement or decay.</p>
+
+<p>The strongest of these forces are the moral ones. Mistakes in
+statesmanship, military triumphs or disasters, no doubt affect
+materially the prosperity of nations, but their permanent political
+well-being is essentially the outcome of their moral state. Its
+foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in
+a high standard of moral worth and of public spirit; in simple habits,
+in courage, uprightness, and self-sacrifice, in a certain soundness
+and moderation of judgment, which springs quite as much from character
+as from intellect. If you would form a wise judgment of the future of
+a nation, observe carefully whether these qualities are increasing or
+decaying. Observe especially what qualities <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>count for most in public
+life. Is character becoming of greater or less importance? Are the men
+who obtain the highest posts in the nation men of whom in private life
+and irrespective of party competent judges speak with genuine respect?
+Are they men of sincere convictions, sound judgment, consistent lives,
+indisputable integrity, or are they men who have won their positions
+by the arts of a demagogue or an intriguer; men of nimble tongues and
+not earnest beliefs&mdash;skilful, above all things, in spreading their
+sails to each passing breeze of popularity? Such considerations as
+these are apt to be forgotten in the fierce excitement of a party
+contest; but if history has any meaning, it is such considerations
+that affect most vitally the permanent well-being of communities, and
+it is by observing this moral current that you can best cast the
+horoscope of a nation.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Pericles and Aspasia.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Jefferson's <i>Memoirs</i>, i. 80.</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="THE_EMPIRE" id="THE_EMPIRE"></a>THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>I have been asked on the present occasion to deliver a short address
+which might serve as an introduction to the course of lectures and
+conferences on the history and resources of the different portions of
+the Empire which are to take place in the Imperial Institute. In
+attempting to discharge this task my first reflection is one which the
+very existence of the Institute can hardly fail to suggest to anyone
+with any knowledge of recent history. It is the great revolution of
+opinion which has taken place in England within the last few years
+about the real value to her both of her colonies and of her Indian
+Empire. Not many years ago it was a popular doctrine among a large and
+important class of politicians that these vast dominions were not
+merely useless but detrimental to the mother-country, and that it
+should be the end of a wise policy to prepare and facilitate their
+disruption. Bentham, in a pamphlet called 'Emancipate your Colonies,'
+advocated a speedy and complete separation. James Mill, who held a
+high place among these politicians, wrote an article on Colonies for
+the 'Encyclop&aelig;dia Britannica' which clearly expresses their view.
+Colonies, he contended, are very little calculated to yield any
+advantage whatever to the countries that hold them, and their chief
+influence is to produce and prolong bad government. Why, then, he
+asks, do European nations <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>maintain them? The answer is very
+characteristic, both of the man and of his school. Something, he
+charitably admits, is due to mere ignorance, to mistaken views of
+utility; but the main cause is of another kind. He quotes the saying
+of Sancho Panza, who desired to possess an island in order that he
+might sell its inhabitants as slaves, and put the money in his pocket;
+and he maintains that the chief cause of our Colonial Empire is the
+selfish interest of the governing few who valued colonies because they
+gave them places and enabled them to multiply wars. In more moderate
+and decorous language, Goldwin Smith wrote a book, the object of which
+was to show how desirable it was that this Empire should be gradually
+but steadily reduced to the sweet simplicity of two islands. Similar
+views prevailed very generally in the Manchester school. Cobden
+frequently expressed them. The question of the colonies, he
+maintained, was mainly a question of pounds, shillings, and pence; he
+proved, as he imagined, by many figures that they were a very bad
+bargain; and he expressed his confident hope that one of the results
+of free trade would be 'gradually and imperceptibly to loosen the
+bands which unite our colonies to us.' About our Indian Empire he
+entertained much stronger opinions. He described it as a calamity and
+a curse to the people of England. He looked on it, in his own words,
+'with an eye of despair,' and declared that it was destroying and
+demoralising the national character. It was the belief of his school
+of politicians that all the nations of the world would speedily follow
+the example of England and adopt a policy of perfect free trade; that
+when all men were able to sell their industries with equal facility in
+all countries, it would become a matter of little consequence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>to them
+under what flag they lived, and that this complete commercial
+assimilation would soon be followed by a general movement for
+disarming, which would put an end to all fear of future war.</p>
+
+<p>Many politicians who certainly cannot be classified with the
+Manchester school held views tending in some degree in the same
+direction. Even Sir Cornewall Lewis in his treatise on the 'Government
+of Dependencies,' which was published in 1841, summed up the
+advantages and disadvantages of a great empire in a manner that gives
+the impression that in his own judgment the disadvantages on the whole
+predominated. In the Autobiography of that great writer and excellent
+public servant Sir Henry Taylor, who for many years exercised much
+influence in the Colonial Office, we have a curious picture of the
+opinions which were held on this subject about thirty years ago, both
+by Sir Henry Taylor himself and by Sir Frederick Rogers, who was at
+this time permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. They
+both agreed that all our North American colonies were a kind of
+<i>damnosa hereditas</i>, and that it was in a high degree desirable that
+they should be amicably separated from Great Britain. Sir Henry Taylor
+wrote his views on the subject with great frankness to the Duke of
+Newcastle, who was then Secretary of State. 'When your Grace and the
+Prince of Wales,' he said, 'were employing yourselves so successfully
+in conciliating the colonists, I thought that you were drawing closer
+ties which might better be slackened, if there were any chance of
+their slipping away altogether. I think that a policy which has regard
+to a not very far off future should prepare facilities and
+propensities for separation.... In my estimation the worst consequence
+of the late dispute with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>the United States has been that of involving
+this country and its North American provinces in closer relations and
+a common cause.'<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> 'I have always believed,' wrote Sir Frederick
+Rogers in 1885&mdash;'and the belief has so confirmed and consolidated
+itself, that I can hardly realise the possibility of anyone seriously
+thinking the contrary&mdash;that the destiny of our colonies is
+independence; and that in this point of view the function of the
+Colonial Office is to secure that our connection while it lasts shall
+be as profitable to both parties, and our separation when it comes as
+amicable as possible.'</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe that opinions of this kind, though they were held by
+a large and powerful section of English politicians, ever penetrated
+very deeply into the English nation. One of the causes of Mr. Cobden's
+'despair' was his conviction that the English people would never be
+persuaded to surrender India except at the close of a disastrous and
+exhausting war, and in his day the policy of national surrender was
+certainly not that of the statesmen who led either party in
+Parliament. No one would attribute it to Mr. Disraeli, in whose long
+political life the note of Imperialism was perhaps that which sounded
+with the clearest ring, and it was quite as repugnant to Lord
+Palmerston and Lord John Russell. In an admirable speech which was
+delivered in the beginning of 1850, Lord John Russell disclaimed all
+sympathy with it, and I can well remember the indignation with which
+in his latter days he was accustomed to speak of the views on the
+subject which were then frequently expressed. 'When I was young,' he
+once said to me, 'it was thought the mark of a wise statesman that he
+had turned a small kingdom into a great empire. In my old age it
+appears <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>to be thought the object of a statesman to turn a great
+empire into a small kingdom.'</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that anyone who has watched the current of English
+opinion will doubt that the views of the Manchester school on this
+subject have within the last few years steadily lost ground, and that
+a far warmer and, in my opinion, nobler and more healthy feeling
+towards India and the colonies has grown up. The change may be
+attributed to many causes. In the first place, what Carlyle called
+'The Calico Millennium' has not arrived. The nations have not adopted
+free trade, but nearly all of them, including unfortunately many of
+our own colonies, have raised tariff walls against our trade. The
+Reign of Peace has not come. National antipathies and jealousies play
+about as great a part in human affairs as they ever did, and there are
+certainly not less than three and a half millions, there are probably
+nearly four millions, of men under arms in what are called the peace
+establishments of Europe. It is beginning to be clearly seen that,
+with our vast, redundant, ever-growing population, with our enormous
+manufactures, and our utterly insufficient supply of home-grown food,
+it is a matter of life and death to the nation, and especially to its
+working classes, that there should be secure and extending fields open
+to our goods, and in the present condition of the world we must mainly
+look for these fields within our own Empire. The gigantic dimensions
+that Indian trade has assumed within the last few years, and the
+extraordinary commercial development of some other parts of our
+Empire, have pointed the moral, and it has been made still more
+apparent by the eagerness with which other Powers, and especially
+Germany, have flung themselves <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>into the path of colonisation. In an
+age, too, when all the paths of professional and industrial life in
+our country are crowded to excess, the competitive system has combined
+with our new acquisitions of territory to throw open noble fields of
+employment, enterprise and ambition to poor and struggling talent, and
+India is proving a school of inestimable value for maintaining some of
+the best and most masculine qualities of our race. It is the great
+seed-plot of our military strength; and the problems of Indian
+administration are peculiarly fitted to form men of a kind that is
+much needed among us&mdash;men of strong purpose and firm will, and high
+ruling and organising powers, men accustomed to deal with facts rather
+than with words, and to estimate measures by their intrinsic value,
+and not merely by their party advantages, men skilful in judging human
+character under its many types and aspects and disguises.</p>
+
+<p>If again we turn to our great self-governing colonies, we have learnt
+to feel how valuable it is, in an age in which international
+jealousies are so rife, that there should be vast and rapidly growing
+portions of the globe that are not only at peace with us, but at one
+with us; how unspeakably important it is to the future of the world
+that the English race, through the ages that are to come, should cling
+as closely as possible together. As a distinguished statesman who
+lately represented the United States in England<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> has admirably said,
+'If it is not always true that trade follows flag, it is at least true
+that "heart follows flag,"' and the feeling that our fellow-subjects
+in distant parts of the Empire bear to us is very different from the
+feeling even of the most friendly foreign nation. Our great colonies
+have readily <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>undertaken the responsibility of providing for their own
+defence by land, and even in some degree by sea. If the protection of
+their coasts in time of war might become a great strain upon our navy,
+this disadvantage is largely balanced by the importance of distant
+maritime possessions to every nation that desires to maintain an
+efficient fleet; by the immense advantage to a great commercial Power
+of secure harbours and coaling stations scattered over the world. It
+is not difficult to conceive circumstances in which the destruction of
+some of our main industries, occurring, perhaps, in the midst of a
+great war, might make it utterly impossible for our present population
+to live upon British soil, and when the possession of vast territories
+under the British flag, and in the hands of the British race, might
+become a matter of transcendent importance. Think for a moment of the
+colossal, and indeed appalling, proportions which our great towns are
+assuming! Think of all the vice and ignorance and disease, of all the
+sordid abject misery, of all the lawless passions that are festering
+within them! And then consider how precarious are many of the
+conditions of our industrial prosperity, how grave and how numerous
+are the dangers that threaten it both from within and from without.
+Who can reflect seriously on these things without feeling that the day
+may come&mdash;perhaps at no distant date&mdash;when the question of emigration
+may overshadow all others? To many of us, indeed, it seems one of the
+greatest errors of modern English statesmanship that when the great
+exodus from Ireland took place after the famine, Government took no
+step to aid it, or to direct it to quarters where it would have been
+of real benefit to the Empire. Many good judges think that the
+advantages of such interference in allaying <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>bitter feelings,
+softening a disastrous crisis, and permanently strengthening the
+Empire, might have been well purchased even if they cost as much as
+England has sometimes lost by one comparatively insignificant war or
+by one disastrous strike. In dealing with this question of emigration
+in the future, colonial assistance may be of supreme importance. And
+those who have understood the significance of that memorable incident
+in our recent history&mdash;the despatch of Australian troops to fight our
+battles in the Soudan&mdash;may perceive that there is at least a
+possibility of a still closer and more beneficent union between
+England and her colonies&mdash;a union that would vastly increase the
+strength of both, and by doing so become a great guarantee of peace in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a calumny to suppose that the change of feeling I have
+described was solely due to a calculation of interests. Patriotism
+cannot be reduced to a mere question of money, and a nation which has
+grown tired of the responsibilities of empire, and careless of the
+acquisitions of its past and of its greatness in the future, would
+indeed have entered into a period of inevitable decadence. Happily we
+have not yet come to this. I believe the overwhelming majority of the
+people of these islands are convinced that an England reduced to the
+limits which the Manchester school would assign to it would be an
+England shorn of the chief elements of its dignity in the world, and
+that no greater disgrace could befall them than to have sacrificed
+through indifference, or negligence, or faint-heartedness, an Empire
+which has been built up by so much genius and so much heroism in the
+past. Railways and telegraphs and newspapers have brought us into
+closer touch with our distant possessions, have enabled us to realise
+more vividly both <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>their character and their greatness, and have thus
+extended the horizon of our sympathies and interests. The figures of
+illustrious colonial statesmen are becoming familiar to us. Men formed
+in Indian and colonial spheres are becoming more numerous and
+prominent in our own public life. The presence in England of a High
+Commissioner from Canada, and of Agents-General from our other
+colonies, constitutes a real though informal colonial representation,
+and on more than one recent occasion our foreign policy has been
+swayed by colonial pressure. These young democracies, with their vast
+undeveloped resources, their unwearied energies, their great social
+and industrial problems, are beginning to loom largely in the
+imaginations of Europe. They feel, we believe, a just pride in being
+members of a great and ancient Empire, and heirs to the glories of its
+past. We, in our turn, feel a no less just pride in our union with
+those coming nations which are still lit with the hues of sunrise and
+rich in the promise of the future.</p>
+
+<p>It has been suggested to me that I should on the present occasion say
+something about the methods by which this great Empire was built up,
+but it is obvious that in a short address like the present it is only
+possible to touch on so large a subject in the most cursory manner.
+Much is due to our insular position and our command of the sea, which
+gave Englishmen, in the competition of nations, a peculiar power both
+of conquering and holding distant dependencies. Being precluded,
+perhaps quite as much by their position as by their desire, from
+throwing themselves, like most continental nations, into a long course
+of European aggression, they have largely employed their redundant
+energies in exploring, conquering, civilising, and governing distant
+and half-savage lands. They have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>found, like all other nations, that
+an Empire planted amid the shifting sands of half-civilised and
+anarchical races is compelled for its own security, and as a mere
+matter of police, to extend its borders. The chapter of
+accidents&mdash;which has played a larger part in most human affairs than
+many very philosophical enquirers are inclined to admit&mdash;has counted
+for something. But, in addition to these things, there are certain
+general characteristics of English policy which have contributed very
+largely to the success of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>It has been the habit of most nations to regulate colonial governments
+in all their details according to the best metropolitan ideas, and to
+surround them with a network of restrictions. England has in general
+pursued a different course. Partly on system, but partly also, I
+think, from neglect, she has always allowed an unusual latitude to
+local knowledge and to local wishes. She has endeavoured to secure,
+wherever her power extends, life and property, and contract and
+personal freedom, and, in these latter days, religious liberty; but
+for the rest she has meddled very little; she has allowed her
+settlements to develop much as they please, and has given, in practice
+if not in theory, the fullest powers to her governors. It is
+astonishing, in the history of the British Empire, how large a part of
+its greatness is due to the independent action of individual
+adventurers, or groups of emigrants, or commercial companies, almost
+wholly unassisted and uncontrolled by the Government at home. An
+Empire formed by such methods is not likely to exhibit much symmetry
+and unity of plan, but it is certain to be pervaded in an unusual
+degree, in all its parts, by a spirit of enterprise and self-reliance;
+it will probably be peculiarly fertile in men not only of energy but
+of resource, capable of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>dealing with strange conditions and
+unforeseen exigencies. England in the past periods of her history has,
+on the whole, been singularly successful in adapting her different
+administrations to widely different national circumstances and
+characters, and governments of the most various types have arisen
+under her rule. Nothing in the history of the world is more wonderful
+than that under the flag of these two little islands there should have
+grown up the greatest and most beneficent despotism in the world,
+comprising nearly two hundred and thirty millions of inhabitants under
+direct British rule, and more than fifty millions under British
+protectorates; while at the same time British colonies and settlements
+that are scattered throughout the globe number not less than fifty-six
+distinct subordinate governments.</p>
+
+<p>This system would have been less successful if it had not been for two
+important facts. The original stuff of which our Colonial Empire was
+formed was singularly good. Some of the most important of our colonies
+were founded in the days of religious war, and the early settlers
+consisted largely of religious refugees&mdash;a class who are usually
+superior to the average of men in intellectual and industrial
+qualities, and are nearly always greatly superior to them in strength
+of conviction, and in those high moral qualities which play so great a
+part in the well-being of nations. Besides this, in those distant
+days, the difficulties of emigration were so great that they were
+rarely voluntarily encountered except by men of much more than average
+courage, enterprise and resource. These early adventurers were
+certainly often of no saintly type, but they were largely endowed with
+the robuster qualities that are most needed for grappling with new
+circumstances and carving out the empires of the future.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>The second fact is the high standard of patriotism and honour which we
+may, I think, truly say has nearly always prevailed among English
+public servants. It is not an easy thing to secure honest and faithful
+administration in remote countries, far from the supervision and
+practical control of the central government. I think we may boast with
+truth that England has attained this end, not indeed perfectly, but at
+least to a greater degree than most other nations. The history of
+Indian and colonial governors has never been written as a whole, but
+it is well worthy of study. In the appointment of these men party has
+always counted for something, and family has counted for something;
+but they have never been the only considerations, and, on the whole, I
+believe it will be found, if we consider the three elements of
+character, capacity and experience, that our Indian and colonial
+governors represent a higher level of ruling qualities than has been
+attained by any line of hereditary sovereigns, or by any line of
+elected presidents. In the period of the foundation of our Indian
+Empire much was done that was violent and rapacious, but the best
+modern research seems to show that the picture which a few years ago
+was generally accepted had been greatly overcharged. The history of
+Warren Hastings and his companions has been recently studied with
+great knowledge and ability, and with the result that the more serious
+opinions on the subject have been considerably modified. Much
+exaggeration undoubtedly grew up in the last century, partly through
+ignorance of Oriental affairs, and partly also through the eloquence
+of Burke. There is no figure in English political history for which I
+at least entertain a greater reverence than Edmund Burke. I believe
+him to have been a man of transparent honesty, as well as of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>transcendent genius; but his politics were too apt to be steeped in
+passion, and he was often carried away by the irresistible force of
+his own imagination and feelings. Misrepresentations were greatly
+consolidated by the Indian History of James Mill, which was for a long
+time the main, and indeed almost the only, source from which
+Englishmen obtained their knowledge of Indian history. It was written,
+as might be expected, with the strongest bias of hostility to the
+English in India, yet I suspect that many superficial readers imagined
+that a history which was so unquestionably dull must be at least
+impartial and philosophical. Unfortunately, Macaulay relied greatly on
+it, and, without having made any serious independent studies on the
+subject, he invested some of its misrepresentations with all the
+splendour of his eloquence. I believe all competent authorities are
+now agreed that his essay on Warren Hastings, though it is one of the
+most brilliant of his writings, is also one of the most seriously
+misleading.</p>
+
+<p>I am not prepared to say that the reaction of opinion produced by the
+new school of Indian historians has not been sometimes carried too
+far, but these writers have certainly dispelled much exaggeration and
+some positive falsehood. They have shown that, although under
+circumstances of extreme difficulty and extraordinary temptation, some
+very bad things were done by Englishmen in India, these things were
+neither as numerous nor as grave as has been alleged.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, too, it may be truly said that English colonial policy
+in its broad lines has to a remarkable degree avoided grave errors.
+The chief exception is to be found in the series of mistakes which
+produced the American Revolution, and ended in the loss of our chief
+American <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>colonies. Yet even in this instance it is, I believe, coming
+to be perceived that there is much more to be said for the English
+case than the historians of the last generation were apt to imagine.
+In imposing commercial restrictions on the colonies and endeavouring
+to secure for the mother-country the monopoly of their trade, we
+merely acted upon ideas that were then almost universally received,
+and our commercial code was on the whole less illiberal than that of
+other nations. Both Spain and France imposed restrictions on their
+colonies which were far more severe, and the English restrictions were
+at least mitigated by frequent partial relaxations and exceptions, by
+some important monopolies granted in favour of the colonies in the
+English market and by bounties encouraging several branches of
+colonial produce. It is at least certain that under the large measure
+of political liberty granted by the English Government to the English
+colonies their material prosperity, even in the worst period of
+commercial restriction, steadily and rapidly advanced. This has been
+clearly shown by more than one writer on our side of the Atlantic, but
+the subject has never been treated with more exhaustive knowledge and
+more perfect impartiality than by an American writer&mdash;Mr. George
+Beer&mdash;whose work on the Commercial Policy of England has recently been
+published by Columbia College, in New York. No one will now altogether
+defend Grenville's policy of taxing America by the Imperial
+Parliament, but it ought not to be forgotten that it was expressly
+provided that every farthing of this taxation was to be expended in
+America, and devoted to colonial defence. England had just terminated
+a great war, which, by expelling the French from Canada, had been of
+inestimable advantage to her colonies, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>which had left the
+mother-country almost crushed by debt. All that Grenville desired was,
+that the American colonies should provide a portion of the cost of
+their own defence, as our great colonies are doing at the present
+time, and he only resorted to Imperial taxation because he despaired
+of achieving this end by any other means. The step which he took was
+no doubt a false one. As is so often the case in England, it was made
+worse by party changes and by party recriminations, and many later
+mistakes aggravated and embittered the original dispute; but I think
+an impartial reader of this melancholy chapter of English history will
+come to the conclusion that these mistakes were by no means all on one
+side.</p>
+
+<p>It is a story which is certainly not without its lesson to our own
+time. It is very improbable that any future statesman will follow the
+example of George Grenville, and endeavour by Act of Parliament to
+impose taxation on a self-governing colony; but it would be a grave
+error to suppose that the danger of unwise parliamentary interference
+in Indian and colonial affairs has diminished. Great as are the
+advantages of telegraphs and newspapers in the government of the
+Empire, they are not without their drawbacks. Government by telegraph
+is a very dangerous thing, and there is, I fear, an increasing
+tendency to override local knowledge, and to apply English standards
+and methods of government to wholly un-English conditions.
+Ill-considered resolutions of the House of Commons, often passed in
+obedience to some popular fad, and without any real intention of
+carrying them into effect; language used in Parliament which is often
+due to no deeper motive than a desire to win the favour of some class
+of voters in an English constituency, may do as much as serious
+misgovernment to alienate <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>great masses of British subjects beyond the
+sea. All really competent judges are agreed that one of the first
+conditions of successful government in India has been that Indian
+questions have for the most part been kept out of the range of English
+party politics, and that Indian government has been conducted on
+principles essentially different from democratic government at home.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, however, it is impossible to review the colonial history
+of England without being struck with the many serious dangers that
+might easily have shattered the Empire, which were averted by wise
+statesmanship and timely&mdash;or at least not fatally tardy&mdash;concession.
+There was the question of the criminal population which we once
+transported to Australia. In the early stage of the colony, when the
+population was very sparse and the need for labour very imperative,
+this was not regarded as in any degree a grievance; but the time came
+when it became a grievance of the gravest kind, and the Imperial power
+had at length the wisdom to abandon it. There was the question of the
+different and hostile religious bodies existing in different portions
+of the Empire, at a time when the monopoly of political power by the
+members of a single Established Church, the exclusive endowment of its
+clergy, and the maintenance of the purely Protestant character of the
+English Government were cherished as religious duties by politicians
+at home. Yet at this very time an established and endowed Roman
+Catholic Church was flourishing in Canada, and there were numerous
+examples throughout the British dominions of the concurrent endowment
+of different forms of religious belief by the State,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> while in India
+it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>abstained, with an extreme, and sometimes even an exaggerated,
+scrupulousness, from all measures that could by any possibility offend
+the native religious prejudices. There was the question of
+Slavery&mdash;though we were freed from the most difficult part of this
+problem by the secession of America. In addition, however, to its
+moral aspects, it affected most vitally the material prosperity of
+some of our richest colonies; it raised the very dangerous
+constitutional question of the right of the Imperial Parliament to
+interfere with the internal affairs of a self-governing colony, and it
+brought the Home Government into more serious collision with the local
+Governments than any question since the American Revolution. Whatever
+may be thought of the wisdom of the measures by which we abolished
+slavery in our West Indian colonies, no one at least can deny the
+liberality of a Parliament which voted from Imperial resources twenty
+millions for the accomplishment of the work. There was the conflict of
+race and creed which between 1830 and 1840 had brought Canada to
+absolute rebellion, and threatened a complete alienation of Canadian
+feeling from the mother-country. This discontent was effectually
+allayed and dispelled by the union of Upper and Lower Canada under a
+system of constitutional government of the most liberal character,
+which gave the colonists on all subjects of internal legislation a
+legislative independence that was in practice almost complete.
+Considered as a measure of conciliation this has proved one of the
+most successful of the nineteenth century, and in spite of a few
+discordant notes it may be truly said that there are few greater
+contrasts in the present reign than are presented between Canadian
+feeling towards the mother-country when Queen Victoria ascended the
+throne and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>Canadian feeling at the present hour. There was also the
+great and dangerous task to be accomplished of adapting the system of
+colonial government to the different stages of colonial development.
+There was a time when the colonies were so weak that they depended
+mainly on England for their protection; but, unlike some of the great
+colonising Powers of ancient and modern times, England never drew a
+direct tribute from her colonies, and, in spite of much unwise and
+some unjust legislation, I believe there was never a time when they
+were not on the whole benefited by the connection. Soon, however, the
+colonies grew to the strength and maturity of nationhood, and the
+mother-country speedily recognised the fact, and allowed no unworthy
+or ungenerous fears to restrain her from granting them the fullest
+powers, both of self-government and of federation. It is true that she
+still sends out a governor&mdash;usually drawn from the ranks of
+experienced and considerable English public men&mdash;to preside over
+colonial affairs. It is true that she retains a right of veto which is
+scarcely ever exercised except to prevent some intercolonial or
+international dispute, some act of violence, or some grave anomaly in
+the legislation of the Empire. It is true that colonial cases may be
+carried, on appeal, to an English tribunal, representing the very
+highest judicial capacity of the mother-country, and free from all
+possibility and suspicion of partiality; but I do not believe that any
+of these light ties are unpopular with any considerable section of the
+colonists. On the other hand, though it would be idle to suppose that
+our great colonies depend largely upon the mother-country, I believe
+that most colonists recognise that there is something in the weight
+and dignity attaching to fellow-membership and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>fellow-citizenship in
+a great Empire&mdash;something in the protection of the greatest navy in
+the world&mdash;something in the improved credit which connection with a
+very rich centre undoubtedly gives to colonial finance.</p>
+
+<p>It is the custom of our friends and neighbours on the Continent to
+bestow much scornful remark on the egotism of English policy, which
+attends mainly to the interests of the British Empire, and is not
+ready to make war for an idea and in support of the interests of
+others. I think, if it were necessary, we might fairly defend
+ourselves by showing that in the past we have meddled with the affairs
+of other nations quite as much as is reasonable. For my own part, I
+confess that I distrust greatly these explosions of military
+benevolence. They always begin by killing a great many men. They
+usually end in ways that are not those of a disinterested
+philanthropy. After all, an egotism that mainly confines itself to the
+well-being of about a fifth part of the globe cannot be said to be of
+a very narrow type, and it is essentially by her conduct to her own
+Empire that the part of England in promoting the happiness of mankind
+must be ultimately judged. It is indeed but too true that many of the
+political causes which have played a great part on platforms, in
+parties, and in Parliaments are of such a nature that their full
+attainment would not bring relief to one suffering human heart, or
+staunch one tear of pain, or add in any appreciable degree to the real
+happiness of a single home. But most assuredly Imperial questions are
+not of this order. Remember what India had been for countless ages
+before the establishment of British rule. Think of its endless wars of
+race and creed, its savage oppressions, its fierce anarchies, its
+barbarous customs; and then consider what it is to have established
+for so <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>many years over the vast space from the Himalayas to Cape
+Comorin a reign of perfect peace; to have conferred upon more than two
+hundred and fifty millions of the human race perfect religious
+freedom, perfect security of life, liberty, and property; to have
+planted in the midst of these teeming multitudes a strong central
+government, enlightened by the best knowledge of Western Europe, and
+steadily occupied in preventing famine, alleviating disease,
+extirpating savage customs, multiplying the agencies of civilisation
+and progress. This is the true meaning of that system of government on
+which Mr. Cobden looked with 'an eye of despair.' What work of human
+policy&mdash;I would even say what form of human philanthropy&mdash;has ever
+contributed more largely to reduce the great sum of human misery and
+to add to the possibilities of human happiness?</p>
+
+<p>And if we turn to the other side of our Empire, although it is quite
+true that our great free colonies are fully capable of shaping their
+destinies for themselves, may we not truly say that these noble
+flowers have sprung from British and from Irish seeds? May we not say
+that the laws, the Constitutions, the habits of thought and character
+that have so largely made them what they are, are mainly of English
+origin? May we not even add that it is in no small part due to their
+place in the British Empire that these vast sections of the globe,
+with their diverse and sometimes jarring interests, have remained at
+perfect peace with us and with each other, and have escaped the curse
+of an exaggerated militarism, which is fast eating like a canker into
+the prosperity of the great nations of Europe?</p>
+
+<p>When responsible government was conceded by the British Government to
+her more important colonies, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>it was done in the fullest and largest
+measure. Although the mother-country remained burdened with the task
+of defending them she made no reservation securing for herself free
+trade with her colonies or even preferential treatment, and she
+surrendered unconditionally to the local legislatures the waste and
+unoccupied lands which had long been regarded in England as held in
+trust for the benefit of the Empire as a whole. The growing belief
+that the connection with the colonies was likely to be a very
+transitory one, and also the belief that free-trade doctrines were
+likely speedily to prevail, no doubt influenced English statesmen, and
+it is not probable that any of them foresaw that both Canada and
+Australia would speedily make use of their newly acquired power to
+impose heavy duties on English goods. The strongly protectionist
+character which the English colonies assumed at a time when England
+had committed herself to the most extreme free-trade policy tended no
+doubt to separation, and when the English Government adopted the
+policy of withdrawing its garrisons from the colonies, when the North
+American colonies, with the full assent of the mother-country, formed
+themselves into a great federation, and when a movement in the same
+direction sprang up in Australia, it was the opinion of some of the
+most sagacious statesmen and thinkers in England that the time of
+separation was very near.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>On the whole, however, these predictions have hitherto been falsified.
+The federation of North America and, at a later period, the federation
+of Australia have been followed by an increased and not a diminished
+disposition on the side of the colonists to draw closer the ties with
+the mother-country, while in England the popular <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>imagination has been
+more and more impressed with the growing magnitude and importance of
+her colonial dominions. The tendency towards great political
+agglomerations based upon an affinity of race, language and creed,
+which has produced the Pan-Slavonic movement and the Pan-Germanic
+movement, and which chiefly made the unity of Italy, has not been
+without its influence in the English-speaking world, and it is felt
+that a close union between its several parts is essential if it is
+fully to maintain its relative position under the new conditions of
+the world. The English-speaking nations comprise the most rapidly
+increasing, the most progressive, the most happily situated nations of
+the earth, and if their power and influence are not wasted by internal
+quarrels their type of civilisation must one day become dominant in
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>Whether their harmony and unity are likely to be attained is one of
+the great problems of the future, but the ideal is one which every
+patriotic Englishman should at least set before him. It is not one
+which can be called an assured destiny, and to many the chances seem
+on the whole against it. Unexpected collisions of interest or passion
+or ambition may at any time mar the prospects, and in great
+democracies largely influenced by demagogues and by an irresponsible
+and anonymous Press there are always powerful agencies that do not
+make for peace. Immediate party interests both at home and in the
+colonies too frequently blind men to distant and ulterior
+consequences, and the many ill-wishers to the British Empire are sure
+to direct their policy largely to its disruption. The natural bond of
+union of a great Empire is economical unity, binding its several parts
+together by a common system of free trade and by a common commercial
+policy towards other Powers. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>Unfortunately the profoundly different
+policy adopted on these matters in England and her colonies has made
+such a Union almost impracticable, and it is quite possible for the
+English colonies to be united by closer commercial ties with foreign
+countries than with the mother-country. The question of the common
+defence of the Empire and the question of the representation of the
+colonies in Imperial politics are also questions of great difficulty
+and of pressing importance.</p>
+
+<p>Something has been done showing at least a disposition to meet them.
+The concession of preferential duties in favour of England by some of
+our most important colonies, the small subsidies made to the
+maintenance of the British navy, and the far more important military
+assistance given by the colonies to the mother-country in the Egyptian
+and the South African wars are indicative of the feeling of closer
+unity which has grown up between England and her colonies, and in
+addition to the appointment of Agents-General, the introduction of a
+few eminent colonial judges into the Judicial Committee of the Privy
+Council, which is the Supreme Court of Appeal of the Empire, has given
+the colonies some real representation in Imperial affairs. Much more,
+however, in this direction may be done. There have been several
+instances of eminent colonials obtaining seats in the English House of
+Commons to the great advantage of the Empire, but a regular
+representation of the colonies in this assembly may, I think, be
+dismissed as altogether impracticable. The mere distance is a
+sufficient objection, and at least nine-tenths of the business of the
+House of Commons deals with purely English questions depending for
+their wise solution on inherited English habits and on compromises
+with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>existing institutions, and a large proportion of them are
+problems which have been already dealt with in the colonies on other
+grounds and without any of the complexities of an old country. What
+reason could there be for calling in the colonists to adjudicate,
+perhaps even to turn the balance, on questions relating to English
+education, English licensing laws, English taxation, English
+dispositions of property? The difficulty of distinguishing between
+Imperial and local questions would be insuperable. The division of the
+House into two categories of members with distinct spheres of voting
+power would prove unworkable, and the colonial representatives would
+during most of their time in Parliament have nothing to do. An
+increase in the number of peers drawn from the colonies would be less
+impracticable, but there would be much that is invidious in the
+choice; much danger that the colonial peers living in England would
+get out of touch with the colonies and become an object of envy and
+jealousy; and English lawyers do not think that a large infusion of
+colonial law peers would raise the competence of the Supreme Judicial
+Tribunal of the Empire, which represents at present the highest legal
+talent and attainments in England and deals mainly with English legal
+questions. A Consultative Council, however, consisting of the
+Agents-General and perhaps reinforced by additional colonial
+representatives and dealing exclusively with Imperial questions, does
+not seem wholly impracticable, and many competent judges believe that
+a supreme legal tribunal for dealing with inter-colonial and
+international conflicts might be constructed which would be both more
+efficient and more representative than any that now exists.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable, however, that the true tie that must unite the
+different portions of the Empire must be mainly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>a moral one. In the
+conditions of modern life no power is likely to maintain long a vast,
+scattered, heterogeneous Empire if the central governing power within
+it has declined; if through want of efficiency, or moral energy, or
+moral purity, it ceases to win the respect of its several parts. It is
+no less true that the cohesion can only be permanently maintained by
+the wide diffusion of a larger and Imperial patriotism, pervading the
+whole like a vital principle; binding men by the ties of pride and of
+affection to the great Empire to which they belong, and subordinating
+to its maintenance local and party and class interests. If this spirit
+dies out, the movement of disintegration is sure to begin. No
+political machinery, no utilitarian calculation, will in the long run
+be powerful enough to arrest it.</p>
+
+<p>What may be the future place of these islands in the government of the
+world no human being can foretell. Nations, as history but too plainly
+shows, have their periods of decay as well as their periods of growth.
+The balance of power in the world is constantly shifting. Maxims and
+influences very different from those which made England what she is
+are in the ascendant, and the clouds upon the horizon are neither few
+nor slight. But, whatever fate may be in store for these islands, and
+for the political unity we so justly prize, we may at least
+confidently predict that no revolution in human affairs can now
+destroy the future ascendancy of the English language and of the
+Imperial race. Whatever misfortunes, whatever humiliations the future
+may reserve to us, they cannot deprive England of the glory of having
+created this mighty Empire.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But what has been, has been&mdash;and we have had our hour.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> <i>Autobiography</i>, ii. pp. 234, 235.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Mr. Bayard.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> See the enumeration of these endowments in Gladstone's
+<i>State and Church</i>, Ch. IX.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> See Cairnes' <i>Political Essays</i>, 49-50, 56.</p></div>
+
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="LIGHT_OF_HISTORY" id="LIGHT_OF_HISTORY"></a>IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The kind of interest which belongs to Irish history is curiously
+different from that which attaches to the history of England and to
+that of most of the great nations of the Continent. In very few
+histories do we find so little national unity or continuous progress,
+or such long spaces which are almost wholly occupied by perplexed,
+petty internal broils, often stained by atrocious crimes, but turning
+on no large issue and leading to no clear or stable results. Except
+during the great missionary period of the sixth and seventh centuries,
+and during a brief portion of the eighteenth century, we have little
+of the interest that arises from dramatic situations or shining
+characters, and in few countries has the highest intellect been, on
+the whole, so slightly connected with the administration of affairs.
+To a philosophical student of politics, however, Irish history
+possesses an interest of the highest order. It is an invaluable study
+of morbid anatomy. In very few histories can we trace so clearly the
+effects of political and social circumstances in forming national
+character; the calamity of missed opportunities and of fluctuating and
+procrastinating policy; the folly of attempting to govern by the same
+methods and institutions nations that are wholly different in their
+characters and their civilisation.</p>
+
+<p>The idea which still floats vaguely in many minds that Ireland, before
+the arrival of the Normans, was a single <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>and independent nation, is
+wholly false. Ireland was not a nation, but a collection of separate
+tribes and kingdoms, engaged in almost constant warfare. In this
+respect, however, she resembled many countries which have since
+attained the most perfect unity, and there can be little doubt that,
+if her development had been impeded by no extraneous influences,
+Ireland would have followed the same path as England or France. Much
+stress has been justly laid on the disorganising influence of a long
+succession of Danish invasions, though it must be remembered that
+Ireland owes to the Danes the foundation of some of her most important
+cities. Roman conquest, which introduced into most of Europe
+invaluable elements of order, organisation, and respect for law, never
+extended to Ireland. The Anglo-Norman invasion and conquest produced
+consequences which were almost wholly evil. If the invaders had been
+driven from the Irish shore, the natural course of development would,
+no doubt, have been in time continued. If the invaders had completely
+conquered Ireland, a fusion might have taken place as complete and as
+healthy as in England. Neither of these two events occurred. The
+English conquest was prolonged over nearly four hundred years. A
+hostile and separate power was planted in the centre of Ireland
+sufficiently powerful to prevent the formation of another
+civilisation, yet not sufficiently powerful to impose a civilisation
+of its own. Feudalism was introduced, but the keystone of the system,
+a strong resident sovereign, was wanting, and Ireland was soon torn by
+the wars of great Anglo-Norman nobles, who were, in fact, independent
+sovereigns, much like the old Irish kings. The Scotch invasion of the
+fourteenth century added enormously to the anarchy and confusion; the
+English power as a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>living reality contracted to the narrow limits of
+the pale; in outlying districts the Anglo-Norman assimilated quickly
+with the Celtic element, while the English legislators in Ireland,
+alarmed at the tendency, made it the main object of their policy, in
+the words of Sir John Davies, 'to make a perpetual separation and
+enmity between the English and Irish, pretending no doubt that the
+English should in the end root out the Irish.'</p>
+
+<p>Such a state of things continued till the long and terrible wars of
+Henry VIII. and Elizabeth broke the power of the independent chiefs
+and of the Celtic clans, and gave Ireland, for the first time, a
+political unity. It is one of the great infelicities of Irish history
+that this result was obtained at the very period of the Reformation.
+The conquerors adopted one religion, while the conquered retained the
+other, and thus a new and most enduring barrier was raised between the
+two nations in Ireland, and a pernicious antagonism was established
+between law and religion.</p>
+
+<p>Another influence not less powerful than religion had at the same time
+come into play. It had become the English policy to place great bodies
+of English and Scotch settlers on the land that was confiscated in
+consequence of rebellion, and under the impulse of the strong spirit
+of adventure which grew up in the generation that followed the
+Reformation, streams of English and Scotch adventurers poured over.
+The great settlement of Ulster under James I. proved ultimately a
+success, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of that province.
+Other plantations were in time absorbed and assimilated by the Celtic
+population; but vast revolutions in the ownership of land, accompanied
+by the subversion of the old tribal customs, laid the foundation of an
+agrarian war which still continues.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>Religious and agrarian causes combined with the civil war in England
+to produce the great rebellion of 1641 and the eleven years of
+ghastly, exterminating war which followed. Hardly any page in human
+history is more appalling. A full third of the population of Ireland
+perished. Thirty or forty thousand of the most energetic left the
+country and took service in foreign armies. Great tracts were left
+absolutely depopulated, and after the rearrangement of land, which was
+accomplished by the Act of Settlement, the immense preponderance of
+landed property remained in the hands of the Protestant nation.</p>
+
+<p>New elements, however, of great energy had been planted in Ireland,
+and the field had been thrown open to their exertions. The excellence
+of Irish wool and the cheapness of Irish labour laid the foundation of
+a flourishing woollen manufacture, and with peace, mild
+administration, and much practical tolerance, the wounds of the
+country seemed gradually healing. The later Stuart reigns, which form
+a dark page in English history, were a period of considerable
+prosperity in Ireland, but that period was soon interrupted by the
+Revolution. There was no general or passionate rising in Ireland
+resembling that of 1641, but it was inevitable that the Irish
+Catholics should have adopted the side of the Catholic King, and it
+was equally inevitable that when a Catholic Parliament, consisting
+largely of sons of the men whose properties had recently been
+confiscated, had assembled at Dublin, its members should have made a
+desperate effort to reverse their fortunes and replace the land of the
+country mainly in Catholic hands. The battle of the Boyne shattered
+the Catholic hopes, and it was followed by a new confiscation, by a
+new emigration <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>of the ablest and most energetic Catholics, by a long
+period of commercial restraints, penal laws, and complete Protestant
+ascendancy.</p>
+
+<p>The commercial restraints formed part of a protective policy which was
+at that time general in Europe, and which was severely felt in the
+American colonies. Though it did not absolutely originate in, it was
+greatly intensified by, the Revolution, which gave the manufacturing
+and commercial classes a new power in English government. The linen
+manufacture was spared, but the total destruction by law of the
+flourishing woollen manufacture, followed by a number of restrictions
+imposed on other branches of industry, deprived Ireland of her most
+promising sources of wealth, drove great multitudes of energetic
+Protestants out of the country, and threw the people more and more
+upon the soil as almost their sole means of support.</p>
+
+<p>The penal laws against the Catholics accompanied or closely followed
+the commercial restraints. The blame of them may be divided with some
+equality between the Government of England and the Parliament of
+Ireland. It was the Irish Parliament which enacted these laws, but an
+English Act first made the Irish Parliament exclusively Protestant,
+and the whole legislation was carried at a time when the Irish
+Parliament was completely dependent, and incompetent even to discuss
+any measure without the previous approbation of the English
+Government. In order to judge this legislation with equity, it must be
+remembered that in the beginning of the eighteenth century restrictive
+laws against Protestantism in Catholic countries, and against
+Catholicism in Protestant ones, almost universally prevailed. The laws
+against Irish Catholics were, on the whole, less stringent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>than those
+against Catholics in England. They were largely modelled after the
+French legislation against the Huguenots, but persecution in Ireland
+never approached in severity that of Louis XIV., and was absolutely
+insignificant compared with that which had extirpated Protestantism
+and Judaism from Spain. The code, however, was not mainly the product
+of religious feeling, but of policy, and in this respect it has been
+defended in its broad outlines, though not in all its details, by such
+Irishmen as Charlemont, Flood, and Parsons. They argued that at the
+close of a long period of savage civil war it was absolutely necessary
+for a small minority, who found themselves in possession of the
+government and land of the country, to deprive the conquered and
+hostile majority of every element of political and military strength.
+This was the real object of the code. It was a measure of self-defence
+justified by necessity and by the fact that it produced in Ireland for
+the space of about eighty years the most perfect tranquillity.</p>
+
+<p>There is much truth in these considerations, but it is also true that
+the penal code produced more pernicious moral, social, and political
+effects than many sanguinary persecutions. In other countries
+disqualifying or persecuting laws were directed against small
+fractions of the nation. In Ireland they were directed against the
+bulk of the community. Being supported by little or no genuine
+religious fanaticism or proselytising ardour, they made few
+Protestants except in the upper orders, where many conformed in order
+to keep their land or to enter professions; but they drove nearly all
+the best and most energetic Catholics to the Continent; they
+discouraged industry; closed the door of knowledge; taught the people
+to look upon law as something hostile to religion; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>introduced
+division and immorality into families by the rewards they offered to
+apostasy; and condemned the whole country to poverty and impotence by
+fatally depressing the great majority of its people. Under the
+influence of the penal laws the Catholics inevitably acquired the
+vices of serfs, and the Protestants the vices of monopolists. A great
+portion of the code was pronounced, with good reason, to be flagrantly
+opposed to the articles of the Treaty of Limerick, and it completed
+the work of the confiscations by making the landlord class in Ireland
+almost wholly Protestant, while the great majority of the tenantry
+were Catholics.</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment, however, in the beginning of the century when the
+whole current of Irish history might easily have changed. Scotland had
+suffered, like Ireland, from the protective policy that followed the
+Revolution, and her independent Parliament had retaliated by measures
+which threatened the speedy separation of the two crowns, and soon led
+to a legislative Union. In Ireland such a Union was ardently desired
+by enlightened Irishmen, and there is every reason to believe that it
+could then have been carried with universal consent. The Catholics
+were perfectly passive, and would gladly have accepted a change which
+withdrew them from the direct government of the conquerors in a recent
+civil war. The Protestants had as yet no distinctively national
+feeling, and a legislative Union would have emancipated their industry
+and added enormously to their security. Molyneux, the first great
+champion of the legislative independence of Ireland, emphatically
+declared that he and those who thought with him would gladly have
+accepted the alternative of a Union, and both the Irish Houses of
+Parliament voted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>addresses in favour of such a measure. If it had
+been carried, Ireland would have been at least saved from the evils
+that rose from the commercial restrictions and from the extreme
+jobbing that grew up around the local legislature, and she would,
+perhaps, have been saved from some parts of the penal code. But the
+golden opportunity was lost. The English commercial classes dreaded
+Irish competition in their markets, and the petition of the Irish
+legislature was disregarded.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly seventy years of quiet followed. The establishment of the
+Hanoverian dynasty, the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, the
+different wars in which England was engaged, left Ireland absolutely
+undisturbed. The House of Commons then sat for a whole reign and met
+only every second year. It was completely subservient to the English
+Privy Council, and it consisted so largely of nomination boroughs that
+a few great nobles commanded a decisive preponderance, and they
+practically conducted the government and administered the patronage of
+Ireland. There was great jobbing and corruption, but taxation, on the
+whole, was exceedingly light, and there was no tendency to throw it
+unduly on the poor, or to create in Ireland any of the many feudal
+burdens that prevailed in France and Germany. The practical evil most
+felt was the system of tithes for the support of the Protestant
+establishment, and it was aggravated by a very unfair exemption of
+pasture land, and also by the prevailing system of farming out tithes
+to a class of men known as tithe proctors. In the country districts
+all power was concentrated in the hands of the landlords, who, with
+many faults and under many difficulties, at least succeeded in
+attaining a large measure of genuine popularity.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>There was an Irish army of twelve thousand men, but the greater part
+of it was always sent abroad in time of war, and Ireland was then
+often left with not more than five thousand soldiers. No militia and
+no constabulary force existed, but when Whiteboy or other disturbances
+arose, the landlords put themselves at the head of their tenantry, and
+usually succeeded in suppressing them. Law was very little observed;
+industrial virtues were at the lowest ebb; there was abundance of
+drunkenness, idleness, turbulence, neglect of duty, extreme ignorance,
+and extreme poverty; but there was not much real oppression or
+religious bigotry, and there were no signs of political disturbance or
+conspiracy. After a few years the portions of the penal code which
+restricted the Catholic worship became a dead letter, and Catholic
+chapels were everywhere rising on the Protestant estates. The
+monopoly, however, of place and power continued, though the legal
+profession was full of professing converts. The theological
+temperature in both sects had greatly subsided. Land was usually let
+by the owner on long leases, and at very low rents, to tenants who
+almost invariably divided and sublet their tenancies.</p>
+
+<p>At a later period of the century, when population pressed closely on
+subsistence, the system of middlemen produced a fierce competition
+which raised rent in the lower grades to an enormous height, but this
+evil was less felt with a scanty population, and the hierarchy of
+tenants at least saved the landlords from the dangerous isolation
+which their circumstances tended to produce. Arthur Young, who
+examined the condition of the country very carefully between 1776 and
+1778, perceived great signs of growing prosperity, especially in the
+towns, and, although agriculture was far behind that of England, he
+found a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>considerable number of active, intelligent, and improving
+landlords. In the opinion of Young the rental of Ireland was unduly
+and unnaturally low, but he urged the landlords to exercise a more
+direct and controlling influence over their estates, and he
+recommended them, for this purpose, to give leases for shorter periods
+and gradually to abolish the system of middlemen and subletting.</p>
+
+<p>In the north there was a powerful, intelligent Protestant community,
+with a strong leaning to republicanism. They were chiefly
+Presbyterians, and they resented bitterly the commercial restrictions
+and the obligation of paying tithes to an Episcopal church. The Irish
+Parliament was so constituted that they had no political power at all
+equivalent to their importance, and, like the Presbyterians in
+England, they were burdened by the Test Act, and their marriages were
+only valid if celebrated in the Established Church. The great power of
+the bishops, both in the Privy Council and in the House of Lords,
+formed a very serious obstacle to church reform. In all classes of
+Protestants, however, in the closing years of George II., there was a
+strong resentment at the political subjection of Ireland, and a
+determination to obtain, if possible, those constitutional rights
+which the Revolution of 1688 had secured for England.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible, within the narrow limits assigned to me, to give
+even a sketch of the successive stages by which the independence of
+the Irish Parliament was established. The movement began with the
+Octennial Act, limiting the duration of Parliament, and it came to
+full maturity during the war of the American Revolution. Among the
+Irish Catholics there appears to have been absolutely no sympathy with
+the American cause, but Ulster Protestantism was enthusiastically on
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>the side of America. Presbyterians from Ulster bore a considerable
+part in the American armies, and under the influence of American
+example public opinion in Ireland rapidly advanced. The great
+Volunteer movement of 1778 and the following years was originated by
+the fact that the Government could supply no troops for the defence of
+Ulster at a time when it was in imminent danger of attack from France.
+The Protestant gentry called their people to arms; and a great
+Protestant force was created, which not only secured the country
+against foreign danger and maintained the most perfect internal order,
+but also exercised a decisive influence over Irish politics. Volunteer
+conventions were assembled which represented both property and
+educated Protestant opinion much more truly than the borough
+Parliament, and which loudly demanded free trade and Parliamentary
+independence. Grattan made himself the mouthpiece of the popular
+feeling; and the English Government and Parliament yielded to the
+demand. The whole system of commercial restraints, which prevented
+Ireland from developing her resources and trading with foreign
+countries and the British colonies, was abolished, leaving the
+commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland to be
+regulated by special Acts. The power of the Privy Council over
+legislation was abolished. The appellate jurisdiction of the Irish
+House of Lords was restored, and, above all, the sole competence of
+the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to legislate for Ireland was
+recognised. The Irish Parliament nearly at the same time made great
+steps towards uniting the people by relieving the Presbyterians from
+the Test Act and from the restrictions on their marriages, and the
+Catholics from those parts of the penal code which chiefly restrained
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>their worship, their education, and their industry. At the same time
+the Protestant monopoly of political power and of the higher offices
+remained.</p>
+
+<p>Ireland thus found herself in possession of a Parliament which was, in
+name at least, perfectly independent. It was a purely Protestant
+Parliament, elected by Protestants, consisting mainly of landlords and
+great Protestant lawyers, and representing pre-eminently the property
+of the country. It was intensely and exclusively loyal, and always
+ready to adopt far more stringent coercive measures against anarchy
+and sedition than have ever been adopted by an Imperial Parliament. It
+included many men of great talents and great liberality, and through
+the county constituencies and the representatives of the chief towns
+educated public opinion was seriously felt within its walls; but the
+large majority of its members sat for nomination boroughs within the
+control of the government, and places and pensions were inordinately
+multiplied for the purpose of securing a majority.</p>
+
+<p>Could this constitution last? In framing the course of foreign and
+Imperial policy, in all questions of peace or war, of negotiations or
+alliances, the Irish Parliament had no voice. Yet it might in time of
+war, by withholding its concurrence, withdraw the whole weight of
+Ireland from the forces and fatally dislocate the policy of the
+Empire. It might pursue a commercial policy absolutely inconsistent
+with Imperial interests, and bring Ireland into intimate commercial
+connection with the enemies of England; and if English party spirit
+extended to Ireland and ran in opposite directions in the two
+legislatures, a collision was inevitable. The Lord Lieutenant and
+Chief Secretary, who administered the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>government of Ireland, were
+appointed by a British Ministry representing the dominant British
+party; the counsels of the Irish Government were framed in a British
+Cabinet; the royal consent was given to every Irish Bill under the
+Great Seal of Great Britain and upon the advice of a British Minister.
+If a machine so constituted could work as long as it was in the hands
+of a small and undoubtedly loyal and largely influenced class, could
+it work if Parliamentary reform made the Irish Parliament subject to
+the fierce and fluctuating tides of popular opinion? above all, if
+Catholic enfranchisement brought a vast, ignorant, and possibly
+seditious element into political life?</p>
+
+<p>It was the recorded opinion of each successive Lord Lieutenant who
+administered the Irish Government after 1782 that it could not, and
+that it must sooner or later end either in a union or a separation.
+They said this, though they fully acknowledged the perfect loyalty
+hitherto shown by the Irish Parliament; the liberality with which it
+voted its supplies; the care with which it subordinated its particular
+measures to the general interests of the Empire. The failure&mdash;not
+solely or even mainly through Irish fault&mdash;of an attempt to establish
+a fixed commercial arrangement between England and Ireland, and a
+difference between the British and Irish Parliaments on the Imperial
+question of a regency, strengthened the opinion of the English
+Government, and for many years before the Union was enacted it was in
+contemplation. On the two great and pressing questions at issue this
+policy exercised a powerful influence. The Government obstinately
+resisted every serious attempt to reform the Parliament, lest they
+should lose that controlling power which they believed to be essential
+to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>permanence of the connection. On the Catholic question their
+views were more fluctuating, but their dominant impression was that
+emancipation could only be safely conceded in an Imperial Parliament,
+and that it ought to be reserved as a boon which might one day make a
+legislative Union acceptable to the Irish people.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland, or at least in Protestant Ireland, the idea of a Union was
+now intensely unpopular, but the reformers in the Irish Parliament
+were seriously divided. Flood and Charlemont desired Parliamentary
+reform on a purely Protestant basis. They believed that this would
+include in political life the bulk of the property, loyalty,
+intelligence, and energy of the country, and that the Irish Catholics
+could not for a long period be safely admitted to political power.
+Grattan, on the other hand, believed that it was the first interest of
+Ireland to efface the political distinction between the two creeds and
+nations, and that an introduction of a certain proportion of Catholic
+gentry into the Irish Parliament would be in the highest degree
+beneficial. He, at the same time, always taught that Ireland was
+utterly unfit for democracy, and that under her peculiar conditions no
+policy could be more disastrous than one which would 'destroy the
+influence of landed property'; 'set population adrift from the
+influence of property'; subvert or weaken the guiding influence of the
+loyal and educated. When the United Irishmen proposed a Reform Bill
+which would have made the Irish Parliament a purely democratic body,
+Grattan denounced it with the greatest vehemence. 'This plan of
+personal representation,' he said, 'from a revolution of power, would
+speedily lead to a revolution of property, and become a plan of
+plunder as well as a scene of confusion.... Of such a representation
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>first ordinance would be robbery, accompanied with the
+circumstance incidental to robbery, murder.' He believed, however,
+that with a substantial property qualification independent
+constituencies might be formed which would safely represent the best
+elements of both creeds.</p>
+
+<p>The denial of parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation, and the
+refusal of the Irish Parliament to deal with the still more pressing
+question of tithes, produced much disaffection; but still the country
+was steadily improving, and no serious danger was felt till the French
+Revolution burst upon Europe. In every country it stimulated the
+smouldering elements of disorder. In few countries was its influence
+more fatal than in Ireland. I have very lately described at length the
+terrible years of growing conspiracy, anarchy, and crime; of
+fluctuating policy, and savage repression, and revived religious
+animosity, and maddening panic, deliberately and malignantly fomented,
+that preceded and prepared the rebellion. It is sufficient here to say
+that in the beginning of 1798 three provinces were organised to assist
+a French invasion. But at the last moment the leaders were betrayed
+and arrested; the French did not arrive; the rebellion was almost
+confined to a few Leinster counties, and it broke out without leaders
+and without a plan. In most places the rebels proved to be wretched
+bands of marauders intent only on plunder, and, although they
+committed many murders, they were utterly incapable of meeting the
+loyalists in the field. But in Wexford, priests put themselves at the
+head of the movement and turned it into a religious war, deriving its
+main force from religious fanaticism, and waged with desperate courage
+and ferocity. The massacre of Protestants on Vinegar Hill, in
+Scullabogue Barn, and on Wexford Bridge, and the general <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>character
+the rebellion in Leinster assumed, at once and for ever checked all
+that tendency to rebellion which had so long existed among the
+Protestants of Ulster. Some twenty thousand persons perished before
+the flame was extinguished. The repression was as savage as the
+rebellion, and it left Ireland torn by fiercer religious animosities
+than at any period since the Restoration.</p>
+
+<p>It will dispel many illusions if the reader will remember that the
+great Irish rebellion was directed mainly against the Irish
+Parliament, and that it received its death-blow from Irish loyalists
+acting under that Parliament before any assistance arrived from
+England. The conspiracy began among Protestants and Deists, who aimed
+at a union of sects for the purpose of obtaining a democratic
+republic. It turned into a war which was scarcely less essentially
+religious than the wars of the Cevennes or of the Anabaptists. Yet two
+great Catholic provinces remained quiet during the struggle, and a
+great proportion of the loyalist force which crushed the rebellion
+consisted of Catholic militia.</p>
+
+<p>The English Government thought that the time had now come for carrying
+a legislative Union, and, in the eyes of Lord Cornwallis at least, one
+of its chief recommendations was that it would take the government of
+Ireland out of the hands of the triumphant party, and would make
+Catholic emancipation a possibility. The Catholic bishops were sounded
+and found to be very favourable. They declared their full willingness
+to accept an endowment for the priesthood and to give the English
+Government a right of veto on episcopal appointments, and they warmly,
+efficiently, and unanimously supported the Union. The great majority
+of the Catholic landed gentry and probably of the lower priests were
+on the same <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>side; but in general the Catholic laity seem to have
+shown little interest and to have taken little part in the contest. In
+Dublin, Catholics as well as Protestants were generally hostile, but
+Catholic Cork was decidedly favourable, and an assurance that the
+Government desired to carry emancipation in an Imperial Parliament
+proved sufficient to prevent any serious Catholic opposition. The
+United Irishmen seem to have witnessed rather with pleasure than the
+reverse the dethronement of the body which had defeated them, and the
+Presbyterians showed scarcely any interest in the question.</p>
+
+<p>Yet outside the ranks of the Catholic clergy the measure found few
+active supporters, while the Protestants of the Established Church
+were in general ardently and passionately hostile. The great majority
+of the county members and the great preponderance of petitions were
+against the Union, and the opposition to it, which was led by Foster,
+Grattan, Parsons, and Plunket, comprised nearly all the independent
+and unbribed talent in Parliament. The very eminent ability of that
+small group of Protestant gentlemen never flashed more brightly than
+in the closing scenes, and there was a moment when the attitude of the
+Orangemen and the yeomanry was so menacing that the Government were
+seriously alarmed. But a lavish distribution of peerages and places
+purchased a majority, and the troops stationed in Ireland were too
+numerous for armed opposition to be possible. In truth, however, no
+opposition beyond the dimensions of a riot was to be feared. Outside
+Dublin, Catholic, Presbyterian, and seditious Ireland remained almost
+indifferent. Even before the measure had passed, opposition speakers
+complained bitterly that they were deserted by popular support; and it
+is a memorable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>fact that in the general election that followed the
+Union not a single Irish member of Parliament was defeated because he
+had voted for it.</p>
+
+<p>Pitt intended the Union to be immediately followed by measures
+admitting the Catholics into the Imperial Parliament, paying the
+priests, and commuting the tithes. If these three measures, or even if
+the last two (which were, in truth, the most important), had been
+promptly carried, the Union might have become popular. The Catholic
+question had, of late, been greatly mismanaged. The chief men who
+directed the government in Ireland were bitterly opposed to any
+concession of political power to the Catholics, but the views of the
+English Ministers had been materially changed. They desired above all
+things to separate the Catholics from the United Irishmen, and in 1793
+they forced upon their reluctant advisers in Ireland an Act which
+extended the suffrage to the vast ignorant Catholic masses, though it
+left the Catholic gentry still excluded from Parliament. Two years
+later Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over with instructions to postpone the
+question if possible, but with authority, as he believed, to carry
+emancipation if it could not be postponed, and he found the Irish
+Parliament perfectly prepared to pass it. But the opposition of the
+King and a question of patronage produced a fatal division and led to
+the recall of the Viceroy. The passions aroused by the rebellion
+greatly increased the difficulties of admitting Catholics to a
+separate Parliament, but there is clear evidence that at the time of
+the Union the Irish Protestants were in favour of their admission into
+the Imperial one. The dispositions of the King were well known, but it
+was believed that, if the scheme of Pitt was submitted to him as the
+matured policy of a united Cabinet, he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>must have yielded. It is well
+known how the plan was prematurely revealed; how Pitt resigned office
+when the King refused his consent; how the agitation of the question
+threw the King into an access of insanity; and how Pitt then promised
+that he would not again raise it during the reign. Pitt's conduct on
+this occasion is, and probably always will be, differently judged.
+There can be but one opinion of its calamitous effect upon Irish
+history.</p>
+
+<p>Ninety years have passed since the Union, and the conditions of
+Ireland have completely changed. The whole system of religious
+disqualification and commercial disability has long since passed away.
+Every path has been thrown open, and English professions, as well as
+the great Colonial and Indian services, are crowded with Irishmen. The
+Established Church no longer exists. Representation has been placed on
+a broadly democratic basis, giving Ireland, however, an absurdly
+disproportioned weight in the representation of the kingdom, and its
+poorest and most backward districts an absurdly disproportioned weight
+in the representation of Ireland. Finally, an attempt has been made to
+put down agrarian agitation by legislation to which there is no real
+parallel in English history, and some parts of which would have been
+impossible under the Constitution of the United States. Landlords who
+possessed by the clearest title known to English law the most absolute
+ownership of their estates have been converted into mere
+rent-chargers. Tenants who entered upon their tenancies under formal
+written contracts for limited periods have been rooted for ever on the
+soil. Rents have been reduced by judicial sentence, with complete
+disregard both to previous contracts and to market value, and the
+legal owner has had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>no option of refusing the change and re-entering
+on the occupation of his land. A scheme of purchase, too, based upon
+Imperial credit, has been established and will probably soon be
+largely extended, which is so extravagantly and almost grotesquely
+favorable to the tenant that it enables him by paying for the space of
+forty-nine years, instead of his reduced judicial rent, an annual sum
+which is considerably smaller, to purchase the freehold of his farm.
+It is a simple and incontestable truth that neither in the United
+States, nor in England, nor in any portion of the Continent of Europe,
+is the agricultural tenant so favoured by law as in Ireland, or
+anything of the nature of landlord oppression made so impossible. But
+though agitation has diminished, it has not ceased, and the great body
+of the poorer Catholics still follow the banner of Home Rule.</p>
+
+<p>About a third of the population of Ireland, on the other hand, regard
+Home Rule as the greatest catastrophe that could befall themselves,
+their country, or the Empire; and it is worthy of notice that they
+include almost all the descendants of Grattan's Parliament, and of the
+volunteers and of those classes who in the eighteenth century
+sustained the spirit of nationality in Ireland. Belfast and the
+surrounding counties, which alone in Ireland have attained the full
+height and vigour of English industrial civilisation; almost all the
+Protestants, both Episcopalian and Nonconformist; almost all the
+Catholic gentry; the decided preponderance of Catholics in the lay
+professions, and a great and guiding section of the Catholic
+middle-class are on the same side. Their conviction does not rest upon
+any abstract doctrine about the evil of federal governments or of
+local parliaments. It rests upon their firm persuasion that in the
+existing conditions of Ireland no Parliament <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>could be established
+there which could be trusted to fulfil the most elementary conditions
+of honest government&mdash;to maintain law; to protect property; to observe
+or enforce contracts; to secure the rights and liberties of
+individuals and minorities; to act loyally in times of difficulty and
+danger in the interests of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>They know that the existing Home Rule movement has grown up by the
+guidance and by the support of men who are implacable enemies to the
+British Empire; that it has been for years the steady object of its
+leaders to inspire the Irish masses with feelings of hatred to that
+Empire, contempt for contracts, defiance of law and of those who
+administer it; that, having signally failed in rousing the
+agricultural population in a national struggle, those leaders resolved
+to turn the movement into an organised attack upon landed property;
+that in the prosecution of this enterprise they have been guilty, not
+only of measures which are grossly and palpably dishonest, but also of
+an amount of intimidation, of cruelty, of systematic disregard for
+individual freedom scarcely paralleled in any country during the
+present century; and finally that, through subscriptions which are not
+drawn from Ireland, political agitation in Ireland has become a large
+and highly lucrative trade&mdash;a trade which, like most others, will no
+doubt continue as long as it pays.</p>
+
+<p>The nature, methods, and objects of the organisation which would
+probably exercise a dominant influence over an Irish Parliament have
+been established by overwhelming evidence and beyond all reasonable
+doubt, after a long, careful, and most impartial judicial
+investigation. The report of the late Special Commissioners<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> and the
+evidence on which it is founded have been published; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>and their
+conclusions have very recently been summed up in an admirable work by
+Professor Dicey, perhaps the ablest of living writers on political
+subjects. Readers may find in these works abundant evidence of the
+true character of the Irish Home Rule movement. If they read them with
+impartiality they will, I believe, have little difficulty in
+concluding that there have been few political movements in the
+nineteenth century which are less deserving of the respect or support
+of honest men.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> The Parnell Commission.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ed.</span></p></div>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+</p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="FORMATIVE_INFLUENCES" id="FORMATIVE_INFLUENCES"></a>FORMATIVE INFLUENCES<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>It was about four years before the great upheaval of beliefs in
+England, which was partly caused and partly disclosed by the
+publication of the 'Essays and Reviews,' in 1860, that I entered
+Trinity College, Dublin. I had then a strong leaning toward
+theological studies and looked forward to a peaceful clerical life in
+a family living near Cork; and in addition to the ordinary university
+course, I went through that appointed for divinity students. I found
+my life at the university one of more than common intellectual
+activity, for although circumstances and temperament made me perhaps
+culpably indifferent to college ambitions and competitions, I soon
+threw myself with intense eagerness into a long course of private
+reading, chiefly relating to the formation and history of opinions.
+The great High Church wave which had a few years before been so
+powerful, had been broken when Newman and many other leaders of the
+party had passed to Catholicism. Darwin and Herbert Spencer had not
+yet risen above the horizon. Mill was in the zenith of his fame and
+influence. The intellectual atmosphere was much agitated by the recent
+discoveries of geology, by their manifest bearing on the Mosaic
+cosmogony and on the history of the Fall, and by the attempts of Hugh
+Miller, Hitchcock, and other writers to reconcile them with the
+received theology. In poetry, Tennyson and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>Longfellow reigned, I
+think with an approach to equality which has not continued. In
+politics, the school of orthodox political economy was almost
+unchallenged. In spite of the protests of Carlyle, all sound Liberals
+in England then desired to restrict as much as possible the functions
+of government, and to enlarge as much as possible the sphere of
+individual liberty; and they regarded unrestrained competition and
+inviolable contracts as the chief conditions of material progress.</p>
+
+<p>The first great intellectual influence which I experienced was, I
+believe, that of Bishop Butler, who was at that time probably studied
+more assiduously at Dublin than in any other university in the
+kingdom. There were few sermons in the college chapel in which some
+allusion to his writings might not be found, and few serious students
+whose modes of thought were not at least coloured by his influence.
+That influence now appears to me to have been not only various, but
+even in some measure contradictory. The 'Analogy' is perhaps the most
+original, if not the most powerful, book ever written in defence of
+the Christian creed; but it has probably been the parent of much
+modern Agnosticism, for its method is to parallel every difficulty in
+revealed religion by a corresponding difficulty in natural religion,
+and to argue that the two must stand or fall together. Butler's
+unrivalled sermons on human nature, on the other hand, have been
+essentially conservative and constructive, and their influence has
+been at least as strong on character as on belief. Their doctrine is
+that consciousness reveals in the inner principles of our being a
+moral hierarchy, 'a difference in nature and kind altogether distinct
+from strength'; and that among these principles conscience has, by the
+very structure of our nature, a recognised <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>supremacy or guiding
+authority which clearly distinguishes it from all others.</p>
+
+<p>'The principle of reflection or conscience being compared with the
+various appetites, affections, and passions in men, the former is
+manifestly supreme and chief, without regard to strength.... From its
+very nature it manifestly claims superiority over all others, so that
+you cannot form a notion of this faculty, conscience, without taking
+in judgment, direction, superintendency. To preside and govern, from
+the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it
+strength as it has right, it would govern the world.'</p>
+
+<p>It was a noble philosophy, well fitted to strengthen and elevate the
+character, and it has supported many amid the dissolution of positive
+beliefs. Utilitarian theories of morals move very smoothly as long as
+their only task is to define the course which it is in the interests
+of society that each man should pursue. They are less successful in
+furnishing any firm and adequate reason why a man should pursue that
+course when individual interests and individual passion are opposed to
+it. It is the merit of the schools of Kant and of Butler, that they
+raise the idea of duty above all the calculations of self-interest,
+and make it the supreme and guiding principle of life.</p>
+
+<p>Among living men, the strongest intellectual influence at that time in
+Dublin was, I think, Whately, our archbishop, an original and powerful
+thinker who has scarcely obtained a place in the literary and
+intellectual history of his time commensurate with the wide and deep
+influence he undoubtedly exercised. For this there are many reasons.
+Unlike the High Church leaders who flourished with him at Oxford in
+the second quarter of the nineteenth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>century, he never identified
+himself with any organised party or school of thought, and he thus
+deprived himself of many echoes and of much support. It was, indeed,
+one of his first principles that there is no more fatal obstacle to
+the discovery of truth than the deflecting influence of party and
+system, and that the jealous maintenance of an independent judgment is
+the first element of intellectual honesty. Few considerable writers
+have appealed less to common passions or wide sympathies; and the only
+passion&mdash;if it can be called so&mdash;that appears strongly in his
+writings, is the love of truth for its own sake, which is the rarest
+and highest of all. He was accustomed to speculate much upon that
+strange power of intellectual magnetism which enables some men to draw
+others to their views apart from any process of definite reasoning;
+and he acknowledged with truth that he was wholly destitute of it;
+that he had never produced any effect which could not be clearly
+accounted for, or altered any judgment except by distinct reasons. As
+a writer, his style, though wholly without grace, was admirable in its
+lucidity. He had a singular felicity of illustration, and especially
+of metaphor, and a rare power of throwing his thoughts into terse and
+pithy sentences; but his many books, though full of original thinking
+and in a high degree suggestive to other writers, had always a certain
+fragmentary and occasional character, which prevented them from taking
+a place in standard literature. He was conscious of it himself, and
+was accustomed to say that it was the mission of his life to make up
+cartridges for others to fire. The little volume of 'Miscellanies,'
+including his commonplace book and his notes for his books, which was
+published by his daughter, exhibits with great clearness the character
+of his mind. Though a very candid and, in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>the best sense of the word,
+a very tolerant man, and an excellent scholar, he had, I think, little
+power of reproducing the modes of thought of men whose mental
+structure was widely different from his own, or of entering into the
+intellectual conditions of other ages; but he touched a large circle
+of subjects, social, political, and even scientific, as well as moral
+and religious, with an original and most independent judgment; and he
+raised greatly the moral standard of love of truth and the
+intellectual standard of severe reasoning wherever his influence
+extended. He delighted in that fine saying of Hobbes that, 'words are
+the counters of the wise man, but the money of the fool'; he believed
+that most controversies might be resolved into verbal ambiguities; and
+his hatred of vagueness, grandiloquence, affected obscurity, and
+rhetorical exaggeration exercised a very useful influence over young
+men. He was also a most attentive and sagacious observer of human
+nature, and few modern writers have written so wisely on the
+diversities and the management of character and on the science of
+life. In this respect he had a strong affinity to Bacon&mdash;the Bacon not
+of the 'Organon,' but of the 'Essays'&mdash;and perhaps still more to
+Benjamin Franklin. In theology he challenged the severest inquiry, and
+believed that if honestly pursued it would lead only to orthodox
+belief. 'A good man,' he once wrote, 'will indeed wish to find the
+evidence of the Christian religion satisfactory; but a wise man will
+not for that reason think it satisfactory, but will weigh the evidence
+the more carefully on account of the importance of the question.'</p>
+
+<p>His strongest antipathy was to the teaching of the Oxford 'Tracts,'
+and he wrote about them with great severity, but more from the moral
+than the intellectual <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>side. He believed the Tractarian doctrines of
+'reserve' and 'economy' to be essentially disingenuous; he considered
+that there was good reason to conclude that leading members of the
+Oxford school had remained in the Church of England for a considerable
+time after they had adopted the Roman theology, had used language
+deliberately intended to mask their position, and had employed their
+influence as English clergymen to sap the English Church; and he
+especially denounced as the grossest dishonesty the attempt that was
+made in Tract XC. to show that a man was justified in subscribing to
+the Articles of the Church of England and at the same time holding
+everything laid down by the Council of Trent, 'though the Articles
+were expressly drawn up to condemn the authoritative teaching of the
+Roman Church, and after the Council of Trent had held 22 out of its
+whole number of 25 sessions.' The quibbling, special-pleading,
+equivocating mind which is consciously or half-consciously
+endeavouring by subtle distinctions to maintain an untenable position,
+was of all things the most abhorrent to him, and while the
+Evangelicals denounced the Tractarians as leading men to Rome,
+Whately, perhaps alone among his contemporaries, steadily predicted
+that their teachings would be followed by a great period of religious
+scepticism. This, he said, would be the result of the discredit they
+were throwing on the evidential school, of their habit of coupling
+ecclesiastical with Scripture miracles, and of their doctrine that it
+is the function of faith to supply the missing links of imperfect
+evidence and to impart the character of certainty to propositions
+which in reason rest only on probabilities. He himself was of the
+school of Grotius and Paley, and believed that simple historical
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>evidence established supernatural facts. This subject long held a
+foremost place in my thoughts and studies, and I afterward wrote much
+upon it in connection with the history of witchcraft and the miracles
+of the Saints.</p>
+
+<p>I owed much to Whately, but I was studying concurrently with him
+teachers of very opposite schools, among others Coleridge, Newman, and
+Emerson in English; Pascal, Bossuet, Rousseau, and Voltaire in French.
+Locke's writings formed part of the college course, and I became very
+familiar with them, and fully shared Hallam's special admiration for
+the little treatise 'On the Conduct of the Understanding,' while
+Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh, and Mill opened out wide and various
+vistas in moral philosophy. The following passage from Coleridge,
+which I chose as the motto of almost my first published writing,
+exercised so great an influence over my later studies, and shows so
+happily the direction in which I was endeavoring to turn my mind, that
+I may be excused from quoting it at length:</p>
+
+<p>'Let it be remembered by controversialists on all subjects, that every
+speculative error which boasts a multitude of advocates has its golden
+as well as its dark side; that there is always some truth connected
+with it, the exclusive attention to which has misled the
+understanding; some moral beauty which has given it charms for the
+heart. Let it be remembered that no assailant of an error can
+reasonably hope to be listened to by its advocates, who has not proved
+to them that he has seen the disputed subject in the same point of
+view and is capable of contemplating it with the same feelings as
+themselves; for why should we abandon a cause at the persuasion of one
+who is ignorant of the reasons which have attached us to it?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>Adopting an illustration which had been employed by Bossuet for
+another purpose, I came to believe that religious systems resemble
+those pictures occasionally seen in the museums of the curious, which
+appear at first to be mere incongruous assemblages of unconnected and
+unmeaning figures, till they are regarded from one particular point of
+view, when these figures immediately mass themselves into a regular
+form, and the whole picture assumes a coherent and symmetrical
+appearance. To discover in each system this point of view; to
+cultivate that peculiar form of imagination which makes it possible to
+realise how different forms of opinions are held by their more
+intelligent adherents, appeared to me the first condition of
+understanding them.</p>
+
+<p>In this method of inquiry I was, at a little later period, much aided
+by the writings of Bayle, a great critic who brought to the study of
+opinions an almost unrivalled knowledge, and one of the keenest and
+most detached of human intellects. Gradually, however, by a natural
+and insensible process I passed into the habit of examining opinions
+mainly from an historical point of view&mdash;investigating the
+circumstances under which they grow up; their relation to the general
+conditions of their time; the direction in which they naturally
+develop; the part, whether for good or ill, which during long spaces
+of time they have played in the world. It was first of all in
+connection with the Roman Catholic controversy, with which we were
+much occupied in Ireland, that I learnt to pursue this course. Of the
+enormous and essential difference between matured Catholicism and the
+Christianity of the New Testament, I never doubted, and my convictions
+were much deepened by long travels in Italy, France, and Spain, during
+which I endeavoured to study <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>carefully Catholicism in its actual
+workings as a popular religion, and not as it appears clarified and
+rationalised in such books as the 'Exposition,' by Bossuet. I often
+asked myself, who could have imagined from a perusal of the New
+Testament that Christianity was intended to be a highly centralised
+monarchy, governed with supreme divine authority by the Bishop of
+Rome; that this bishop was to be connected, not with the great author
+of the Epistle to the Romans, but with St. Peter; that the figure
+which was to occupy the most prominent place in the devotions and
+imaginations of millions of Christian worshippers was to be the Virgin
+Mary, who is not so much as mentioned in the Epistles; that in the
+immediate neighbourhood, and with the full sanction of the highest
+ecclesiastical authorities, graven images were to be employed in
+devotion as conspicuously as in a pagan temple, particular images
+being singled out from all others for particular devotion by special
+indulgences and by special miracles? I soon convinced myself that
+popular Catholicism, as it exists in southern Europe and as it has
+existed through a long course of centuries, is as literally
+polytheistic and idolatrous as any form of paganism, though it has
+many beauties, and though much of its very mingled influence has been
+for good. In the teaching of my early youth, this transformation of
+Christianity was described as the great predicted apostasy, the
+mystery of iniquity, the work of Antichrist among mankind. Under the
+influence of the historic method it assumed a different aspect, and
+the mystery became very explicable. Hobbes had struck the keynote in a
+passage of profound truth as well as of admirable beauty:</p>
+
+<p>'If a man consider the original of this great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>ecclesiastical
+dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the
+ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave
+thereof.'</p>
+
+<p>Few evolutions in history, indeed, can be more clearly traced than the
+successive stages through which Rome, by a gradual and very natural
+process, obtained the primacy of Christendom. In the condition of
+Europe, again, at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire, the
+invasion, the triumph, and the rapid conversion of the barbarians, the
+chief causes of the materialising transformation which Christian ideas
+underwent appeared abundantly evident; and it became clear to me that
+some such transformation was inevitable, and essential to their enduring
+influence. Was it possible, I asked myself, that in ages of anarchy and
+convulsion, any religion resembling Protestant Christianity could have
+prevailed among great masses of wild and ignorant barbarians, with all
+the associations and mental habits of idolaters, at a time when neither
+rag paper nor printing was invented, and when a wide diffusion of the
+Bible was absolutely impossible? But such methods of reasoning could not
+stop there. I was naturally led to consider how different are the
+measures of probability, the predispositions toward the miraculous, the
+canons of evidence and proof, the standards and ideals of morals in
+different ages, and how largely these differences affect the whole
+question of evidence. I began to realise the existence of climates of
+opinion; to observe how particular forms of belief naturally grow and
+flourish in certain stages of intellectual development, and fade when
+these conditions have changed; how much that is called apostasy and
+imposture is in reality anachronism, the survival in one age of forms of
+belief that were the appropriate product of an earlier one.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>A writer of extraordinary brilliancy and power was at this time
+exercising a great influence either of attraction or repulsion on all
+serious students of history. Those who are old enough to remember the
+appearance of the first volume of Buckle's 'History,' in 1857, and of
+the second volume, in 1861, will remember also how rapidly and how
+passionately it divided opinion. It was in truth a book in which
+extraordinary merits were balanced by extraordinary defects. On the
+special subject of the growth of religions, which most interested me,
+it was peculiarly deficient, for with all his great gifts Buckle was
+almost colour-blind to the devotional and reverential aspect of things,
+and he had little more power than Whately of projecting himself into
+the beliefs, ideals, and modes of thought of other men and ages. His
+unqualified, undiscriminating contempt for the ages of superstition is
+the more remarkable, because fifteen years before the appearance of his
+first volume, Comte, with whom Buckle had some affinity, and for whom
+he expressed great admiration, had been placing those ages on a
+pinnacle of extravagant eulogy. His doctrine that there is no real
+progress in moral ideas and no real history of morals, I have always
+believed to be profoundly untrue, and to have vitiated a large part of
+his conclusions; and although he rendered valuable service in showing
+by ample illustrations that the capital changes in history are much
+less due to the great men who directly effected them than to the long
+train of intellectual, political, or industrial tendencies that had
+prepared them, he pushed this, like many of his other generalisations,
+to exaggeration and even to extravagance. Individuals, and even
+accidents, have had a great modifying and deflecting influence in
+history, and sometimes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>the part they have played can scarcely be
+over-estimated. If, as I have elsewhere said, a stray dart had struck
+down Mohammed in one of the early skirmishes of his career, there is no
+reason to believe that the world would have seen a great military and
+monotheistic religion arise in Arabia, powerful enough to sweep over a
+large part of three continents, and to mould during many centuries the
+lives and characters of about a fifth part of the human race. In one
+respect, too, Buckle was singularly unfortunate in the time in which he
+appeared. From the days of Bacon and Locke to the days of Condillac and
+Bentham, it had been the tendency of advanced liberal thinkers to
+aggrandise as much as possible the power of circumstances and
+experience over the individual, and to reduce to the narrowest limits
+every influence that is innate, transmitted, or hereditary. They
+represented man as essentially the creature of circumstances, and his
+mind as a sheet of blank paper on which education might write what it
+pleased. Buckle pushed this habit of thought so far that he even
+questioned the reality of such an evident and well-known fact as
+hereditary insanity. But only two years after the appearance of the
+first volume of the 'History of Civilisation,' Darwin published his
+'Origin of Species,' which gradually effected a revolution in
+speculative philosophy almost as great as it effected in natural
+science; and from that time the supreme importance of inborn and
+hereditary tendencies has become the very central fact in English
+philosophy. It must be added that Buckle had many of the distinctive
+faults of a young writer; of a writer who had mixed little with men,
+and had formed his mind almost exclusively by solitary, unguided study.
+He had a very imperfect appreciation of the extreme complexity of
+social <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>phenomena, an excessive tendency to sweeping generalisations,
+and an arrogance of assertion which provoked much hostility. His wide
+and multifarious knowledge was not always discriminating, and he
+sometimes mixed good and bad authorities with a strange indifference.</p>
+
+<p>This is a long catalogue of defects, but in spite of them Buckle
+opened out wider horizons than any previous writer in the field of
+history. No other English historian had sketched his plan with so bold
+a hand, or had shown so clearly the transcendent importance of
+studying not merely the actions of soldiers, politicians, and
+diplomatists, but also those great connected evolutions of
+intellectual, social, and industrial life on which the type of each
+succeeding age mainly depends. To not a few of his contemporaries he
+imparted an altogether new interest in history, and his admirable
+literary talent, the vast range of topics which he illuminated with a
+fresh significance, and the noble enthusiasm for knowledge and for
+freedom that pervades his work, made its appearance an epoch in the
+lives of many who have passed far from its definite conclusions. The
+task which he had undertaken was almost too vast for the longest life,
+and when he died at Damascus, in 1862, he had not yet completed his
+fortieth year, and his judgment was probably still far from its full
+maturity. A few lines of Pliny which I wrote on the title-page of his
+history, will suffice to show the feelings with which I heard of his
+death:</p>
+
+<p>'Mihi autem videtur acerba semper et immatura mors eorum qui immortale
+aliquid parant. Nam qui voluptatibus dediti quasi in diem vivunt,
+vivendi causas quotidie finiunt; qui vero posteros cogitant et
+memoriam sui operibus extendunt, his nulla mors non repentina est, ut
+qu&aelig; semper inchoatum aliquid abrumpat.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>I do not purpose to pursue these recollections further. I had drifted
+far from my Cork living and very decisively into the ways of
+literature, and after I left the university I spent about four years
+on the Continent. I read much in foreign libraries, and I also derived
+great profit as well as keen pleasure from the study of Italian art,
+which throws an invaluable light on the branches of history I was then
+investigating. In its earlier phase especially, before the sense of
+beauty dominates over the idea, art represents with a singular
+fidelity not only the religious beliefs of men, but also the far more
+delicate and evanescent shades of their realisations, ideals, and
+emotions.</p>
+
+<p>The result of those years of study was my 'History of the Spirit of
+Rationalism in Europe,' which appeared in the early part of 1865. With
+many defects, it had at least the merit of describing with great
+sincerity the process by which the opinions of its author had been
+formed, and to this sincerity it probably owed no small part of its
+success.</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CARLYLES_MESSAGE" id="CARLYLES_MESSAGE"></a>CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>When Carlyle came to London in 1831, bringing with him the 'Sartor
+Resartus,' which is now perhaps the most famous of all his works, it
+is well known that he applied in turn to three of the principal
+publishers in London, and that each of them, after due deliberation,
+positively refused to print his manuscript. When at last, with great
+difficulty, he procured its admission into 'Fraser's Magazine,'
+Carlyle was accustomed to say that he only knew of two men who found
+anything to admire in it. One of them was the great American writer,
+Emerson, who afterwards superintended its publication in America. The
+other was a priest from Cork, who wrote to say that he wished to take
+in 'Fraser's Magazine' as long as anything by this writer appeared in
+it. On the other hand, several persons told Fraser that they would
+stop taking in the magazine if any more of such nonsense appeared in
+it. The editor wrote to Carlyle that the work had been received with
+'unqualified disapprobation.' Five years elapsed before it was
+reprinted as a separate book, and in order that it should be reprinted
+it was found necessary for a number of Carlyle's private friends to
+club together and guarantee the publisher from loss by engaging to
+take three hundred copies. But when, a few years before his death, a
+cheap edition of Carlyle's works was published, 'Sartor Resartus' had
+acquired such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>a popularity that thirty thousand copies were almost
+immediately sold, and since his death it has been reprinted in a
+sixpenny form; it has penetrated far and wide through all classes, and
+it is now, I suppose, one of the most popular and most influential of
+the books that were published in England in the second quarter of the
+century.</p>
+
+<p>Such a contrast between the first reception and the later judgment of
+a book is very remarkable, and it applies more or less to all
+Carlyle's earlier writings. It is a memorable fact in the literary
+history of the nineteenth century that one of the greatest and most
+industrious writers in England lived for many years in such poverty
+that he often thought of abandoning literature and emigrating to the
+colonies, and he would probably have done so if he had not found in
+public lecturing a means of supplying his frugal wants. The cause of
+this long-continued neglect is partly, no doubt, to be found in his
+style, for, like Browning, Carlyle wrote an English which was so
+contorted and sometimes so obscure that his readers had to be slowly
+educated into understanding, or at least enjoying, it. But there are
+other and deeper causes which I propose to devote the short time at my
+disposal to indicating.</p>
+
+<p>It has been truly said that there are two great classes among writers.
+There are those who are echoes and there are those who are voices.
+There are some writers who represent faithfully and express strongly
+the dominant tendencies, opinions, habits, characteristics of their
+age, collecting as in a focus the half-formed thoughts that are
+prevailing around them, giving them an articulate voice, and by the
+force of their advocacy greatly strengthening them. There are others
+who either start new ways of thinking for which the public <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>around
+them are still unprepared, or who throw themselves in opposition to
+the dominant tendencies of their times, pointing out the evils and
+dangers connected with them, and dwelling specially on neglected
+truths. It is not surprising that the first class are by far the most
+popular. The public is much like Narcissus in the fable, who fell in
+love with his own reflection in the water. All men like to find their
+own opinions expressed with a power and eloquence they cannot
+themselves attain, and most men dislike a writer who, in the first
+flush of a great enthusiasm, points out all that can be said on the
+other side. But when the first enthusiasm is over&mdash;when the prevailing
+tendency has fully triumphed and the evils and defects connected with
+it are disclosed&mdash;the words of this unpopular or neglected teacher
+will begin to gather weight. It will be found that although he may not
+have been wiser than those who advocated the other side, yet his words
+contained exactly that kind of truth which was most needed or most
+generally forgotten, and his reputation will steadily rise.</p>
+
+<p>This appears to me to have been very much the position which Carlyle
+occupied towards the chief questions of his day, and it explains, I
+think, in a great degree the growth of his influence. It is
+remarkable, indeed, how many things there are in his writings which
+appeared paradoxes when he wrote, and which now seem almost truisms.
+Thus at a time when the political and intellectual ascendency of
+France over the Continent was at its height, Carlyle was one of the
+few men who clearly recognised the essential greatness that lay hid in
+Germany, and especially in Prussia&mdash;a greatness which after the wars
+of 1866 and 1870 became very evident to the world. He was one of the
+first men in England to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>recognise the importance of German
+literature, and especially the supreme greatness of Goethe. His
+translation of 'Wilhelm Meister' was published in 1824, and his noble
+essay on Goethe in 1832; but at first it seemed to find scarcely any
+echo. The editor for whom he wrote it reported that all the opinions
+he could gather about this essay were 'eminently unfavourable.' De
+Quincey, who of all English critics was believed to know Germany best,
+and Jeffrey, who exercised the greatest influence on English literary
+opinion, combined to depreciate or ridicule Goethe. But there is now
+no educated man who disputes that Carlyle in this matter was
+essentially right, and that his critics were wholly wrong. And to turn
+to subjects more directly connected with England, Carlyle wrote at a
+time when the whole school of what was called advanced thought rested
+upon the theory that the province of Government ought to be made as
+small as possible, and that all the relations of classes should be
+reduced to simple, temporary contracts founded on mutual interest.
+According to this theory, it was the one duty of Government to keep
+order. For the rest it should stand aside, and not attempt to meddle
+in social or industrial questions. The most complete liberty of
+thought and action should be established, and everything should be
+left to unrestricted competition&mdash;to the free play of unprivileged,
+untrammelled, unguided social forces. This was the theory which was
+called orthodox political economy&mdash;the <i>laisser-faire</i> system&mdash;the
+philosophy of competition or supply and demand, and it was incessantly
+denounced by Carlyle as Mammon worship, as 'devil take the hindmost,'
+as 'pure egoism'; 'the shabbiest gospel that had been taught among
+men.' He declared that in the long run no society could flourish, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>or
+even permanently cohere, if the only relation between man and man was
+a mere money tie. He maintained that what he called the condition of
+England question, or, in other words, the great mass of struggling,
+anarchical poverty that was growing up in the chief centres of
+population, was a question which imperiously demanded the most
+strenuous Government intervention&mdash;which was, in fact, far more
+important than any of the purely political questions. The whole system
+of factory legislation, the whole system of legislation about working
+men's dwellings, which has taken place in this century, has been a
+realisation of the ideas of Carlyle. When Carlyle first wrote, it was
+the received opinion that the education of the people was a matter in
+which the Government should in no degree interfere, and that it ought
+to be left altogether to individuals, or Churches, or societies. In
+his work on Chartism, which was published as early as 1834, Carlyle
+argued that the 'universal education of the people' was an
+indispensable duty of the Government. It was not until about twenty
+years ago that this duty was fully recognised in England. In the same
+work he maintained that State-aided, State-organised, State-directed
+emigration must one day be undertaken on a large scale, as the only
+efficient agent in coping with the great masses of growing pauperism.
+In his 'Past and Present,' which was published in 1843, he threw out
+another idea which has proved very prolific, and which is probably
+destined to become still more so. It is that it may become both
+possible and needful for the master worker 'to grant his workers
+permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs.'</p>
+
+<p>It is evident how much less strange those ideas appear now than they
+did when they were first put out some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>fifty years ago. One of the
+most remarkable changes that has taken place during the lives of men
+who are still of middle age has been in the opinion of advanced
+thinkers about the function of Government. In the early days of
+Carlyle the whole set, or lie, of opinion in England was towards
+cutting in all directions the bands of Government control, diminishing
+as much as possible the sphere of Government functions or
+interference. It was a revolt against the old Tory system of paternal
+Government, against the system of Guilds, against the State
+regulations which once prevailed in all departments of industrial
+life. In the present generation it is not too much to say that the
+current has been absolutely reversed. The constantly increasing
+tendency, whenever any abuse of any kind is discovered, is to call
+upon Parliament to make a law to remedy it. Every year the network of
+regulation is strengthened; every year there is an increasing
+disposition to enlarge and multiply the functions, powers, and
+responsibilities of Government. I should not be dealing sincerely with
+you if I did not express my own opinion that this tendency carries
+with it dangers even more serious than those of the opposite
+exaggerations of a past century: dangers to character by sapping the
+spirit of self-reliance and independence; dangers to liberty by
+accustoming men to the constant interference of authority, and
+abridging in innumerable ways the freedom of action and choice. I wish
+I could persuade those who form their estimate of the province of
+Government from Carlyle's 'Past and Present' and 'Latter-day
+Pamphlets' to study also the admirable little treatise of Herbert
+Spencer, called 'The Man and the State,' in which the opposite side is
+argued. What I have said <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>however, is sufficient to show how
+remarkably Carlyle, in some of the parts of his teaching that were
+once the most unpopular, anticipated tendencies which only became very
+apparent in practical politics when he was an old man or after his
+death.</p>
+
+<p>The main and fundamental part of his teaching is the supreme sanctity
+of work; the duty imposed on every human being, be he rich or be he
+poor, to find a life-purpose and to follow it out strenuously and
+honestly. 'All true work,' he said, 'is religion'; and the essence of
+every sound religion is, 'Know thy work and do it.' In his conception
+of life all true dignity and nobility grows out of the honest
+discharge of practical duty. He had always a strong sympathy with the
+feudal system which annexed indissolubly the idea of public function
+with the possession of property. The great landlord who is wisely
+governing large districts and using all his influence to diffuse
+order, comfort, education, and civilisation among his tenantry; the
+captain of industry who is faithfully and honestly organising the
+labour of thousands, and regarding his task as a moral duty; the rich
+man who, with all the means of enjoyment at his feet, devotes his
+energies 'to make some nook of God's creation a little fruitfuller,
+better, more worthy of God&mdash;to make some human hearts a little wiser,
+manfuller, happier, more blessed,' always received his admiration and
+applause. No one, on the other hand, spoke with more contempt of a
+governing class which had ceased to govern; of titles which had lost
+their original meaning, and no longer implied or expressed duties
+performed; of wealth that was employed solely or mainly in selfish
+enjoyment or in idle show. It was Carlyle's deep conviction that the
+best test of the moral worth of every nation, class, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>individual,
+is to be found in their standard of work and in their dislike to a
+useless and idle life. As is well known, he had no sympathy with the
+prevailing political ideas. He believed that men were not only not
+equal, but were profoundly unequal; that it was the first interest of
+society that the wisest men should be selected as its leaders, and
+that the popular methods of finding the wisest were by no means those
+which were most likely to succeed. 'No British man,' he complained,
+'can attain to be a statesman or chief of workers till he has first
+proved himself a chief of talkers.' 'The two greatest nations in the
+world, the English and American, are all going to wind and tongue.' He
+believed much more than his contemporaries did that there was need and
+room in our modern English life for strong Government organisation,
+guidance, discipline, reverence, obedience, and control. 'Wise
+command, wise obedience,' he wrote in one of his 'Latter-day
+Pamphlets,' 'the capability of these two is the best measure of
+culture and human virtue in every man.'</p>
+
+<p>There is another class of workers to which he himself belonged&mdash;the
+men who are the teachers of mankind. He taught them by his example as
+well as by his precepts. Whatever else may be said about Carlyle, no
+one can question that he took his literary vocation most seriously. He
+was for a long time a very poor man, but he never sought wealth by
+advocating popular opinions, by pandering to common prejudices, or by
+veiling most unpalatable beliefs. In the vast mass of literature which
+he has bequeathed to us there is no scamped work, and every competent
+judge has recognised the untiring and conscientious accuracy with
+which he verified and sifted the minutest fact. His standard of
+truthfulness was extremely <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>high, and one of his great quarrels with
+his age was that it was an age of half-beliefs and insincere
+professions. He maintained that religious beliefs which had once been
+living realities had too often degenerated into mere formulas, untruly
+professed or mechanically repeated with the lips only, and without any
+genuine or heartfelt conviction. He often repeated a saying of
+Coleridge: 'They do not believe&mdash;they only believe that they believe.'
+He used to speak of men who 'played false with their intellects'; or,
+in other words, turned away their minds from unwelcome truths and by
+allowing their wishes or interests to sway their judgments, persuaded
+or half-persuaded themselves to believe whatever they wished. A firm
+grasp of facts, he maintained, was the first characteristic of an
+honest mind; the main element in all honest, intellectual work. His
+own special talent was the gift of insight, the power of looking into
+the heart of things, piercing to essential facts, discerning the real
+characters of men, their true measure of genuine, solid worth. Creeds,
+professions, opinions, circumstances, all these are the externals or
+clothes of men. It is necessary to look behind them and beyond them if
+we would reach the genuine human heart. One of the reasons why he
+detested what he called stump oratory was because he believed it to be
+a great school of insincerity. Its end was not truth, but
+plausibility. It was the effort of interested men to throw opinions
+into such forms as might most captivate uninstructed men; to keep back
+every unpopular side; to magnify everything in them that was
+seductive. He once said to me that two great curses seemed to him
+eating away the heart and worth of the English people. One was drink.
+The other was stump oratory, which accustomed men to say without
+shame <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>what they did not in their hearts believe to be true, and
+accustomed their hearers to accept such a proceeding as perfectly
+natural. And the same strong passion for veracity he carried into his
+judgment of other forms of work. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that
+the standard of conscientious work had been lowered in England through
+the feverish competition of modern times, and under the system of what
+he called 'cheap and nasty'; that English work had lost something of
+its old solidity and worth, and was now made rather to captivate than
+to wear. Carlyle saw in this much more than an industrial change. He
+maintained that the love and pride of thorough work had long been a
+pre-eminently English quality, that it was the very tap-root of the
+moral worth of the English character, and that anything that tended to
+weaken it was a grave moral evil.</p>
+
+<p>It is worth while trying to understand what truth underlay those parts
+of his teaching which seem most repulsive. The worship of force, which
+is so apparent in many of his writings, is a striking example. He was
+often accused of teaching that might is right. He always answered that
+he had not done so&mdash;that what he taught was that right is might; that
+by the providential constitution of the Universe truth in the long run
+is sure to be stronger than falsehood; that good will prevail over
+evil, and that right and might, though they differ widely in short
+periods of time, would in long spaces prove to be identical. Nothing,
+he was accustomed to say, seemed weaker than the Christian religion
+when the disciples assembled in the upper room; yet it was in truth
+the strongest thing in the world, and it accordingly prevailed. It was
+one of his favourite sayings 'that the soul of the Universe is just,'
+and he believed therefore that the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>ultimate fate of nations, whether
+it be good or bad, was very much what they deserved. It is curious to
+observe the analogy between this teaching and the doctrine of the
+survival of the fittest, which a very different teacher&mdash;Charles
+Darwin&mdash;has made so conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>He scandalised&mdash;and I think with a good deal of reason&mdash;most of his
+contemporaries by the ridicule which he threw upon the career of
+Howard, and upon the great movement for prison reform which was so
+actively pursued in his time. Much of what he wrote on this subject
+is, to me at least, very repulsive; but you will generally find in the
+most extravagant utterances of Carlyle that there is some true meaning
+at bottom. He maintained that the passion for reforming and improving
+prisons and prison-life had been carried in England to such a point
+that the lot of a convicted criminal was often much better than that
+of an honest and struggling artisan. He believed that a just and wise
+distribution of compassion is a most important element of national
+well-being, and that the English people are very apt to be indifferent
+to great masses of unobtrusive, struggling, honourable, unsensational
+poverty at their very doors, while they fall into paroxysms of emotion
+about the actors in some sensational crime, about some seductive
+murderess, about the wrongs of some far-off and often half-savage
+race. 'In one of these Lancashire weavers dying with hunger there is
+more thought and heart, a greater arithmetical amount of misery and
+desperation, than in whole gangs of Quashees.' He maintained, too,
+that a strain of sentiment about criminals was very prevalent in his
+day, which tended seriously to obliterate or diminish the real
+difference between right and wrong. He hated with an intense hatred
+that whole system of philosophy which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>denied that there was a deep,
+essential, fundamental difference between right and wrong, and turned
+the whole matter into a mere calculation of interests. He was
+accustomed to say that one of the chief merits of Christianity was
+that it taught that right and wrong were as far apart as Heaven and
+Hell, and that no greater calamity can befall a nation than a
+weakening of the righteous hatred of evil.</p>
+
+<p>The parts of Carlyle's teaching on which I have dwelt to-day will be
+chiefly found in his 'Past and Present,' his 'Heroes and Hero
+Worship,' his 'Latter-day Pamphlets,' his 'Chartism,' and in the two
+admirable essays called 'Signs of the Times' and 'Characteristics.' In
+my own opinion, though Carlyle teaches much, his writings are most
+valuable as a moral force. Very few great writers have maintained more
+steadily that the moral element is the deepest and most important part
+of our being, deeper and stronger than all intellectual
+considerations. In his writings, amid much that has imperishable
+value, there is, I think, much that is exaggerated, much that is
+one-sided, much that is unwise. But no one can be imbued with his
+teaching without finding it a great moral tonic, and deriving from it
+a nobler, braver, and more unworldly conception of human life.</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="ISRAEL" id="ISRAEL"></a>ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Among the strange and unforeseen developments that have characterised
+the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, few are likely to be
+regarded by the future historian with a deeper or more melancholy
+interest than the anti-Semite movement, which has swept with such a
+portentous rapidity over a great part of Europe. It has produced in
+Russia by far the most serious religious persecution of the century.
+It has raged fiercely in Roumania, the other great centre of the
+Oriental Jews. In enlightened Germany it has become a considerable
+parliamentary force. In Austria it counts among its adherents men of
+the highest social station. Even France, which from the days of the
+Revolution has been specially distinguished for its liberality to the
+Jews, has not escaped the contagion. General Boulanger found the
+anti-Jewish sentiment sufficiently powerful to make an appeal to it
+one of the articles of his programme, and the extraordinary popularity
+of the writings of Drumont shows that Boulanger had not altogether
+miscalculated its force.</p>
+
+<p>It is this movement which has been the occasion of the very valuable
+work of M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu on 'Israel among the Nations.' The
+author, who is universally recognised as one of the greatest of living
+political writers, has special qualifications for his task. With an
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>exceedingly wide knowledge of the literature relating to his subject
+he combines much personal knowledge of the Jews in Palestine and in
+many other countries, and especially in those countries where the
+persecution has most furiously raged.</p>
+
+<p>That persecution, he justly says, unites in different degrees three of
+the most powerful elements that can move mankind&mdash;the spirit of
+religious intolerance; the spirit of exclusive nationality; and the
+jealousy which springs from trade or mercantile competition. Of these
+elements M. Leroy-Beaulieu considers the first to be on the whole the
+weakest. In that hideous Russian Persecution which 'the New Exodus' of
+Frederic has made familiar to the English reader, the religious
+element certainly occupies a very leading place. Pobedonosteff, who
+shared with his master the chief guilt and infamy of this atrocious
+crime, belonged to the same type as the Torquemadas of the past, and
+the spirit that animated him has entered largely into the anti-Semite
+movement in other lands. The 'Gloria' of Galdos, perhaps the most
+powerful religious novel of our time, describes the conflict in modern
+Spain of the fanaticism of Catholicism with the fanaticism of Judaism.
+Even the old calumny that the Jews are accustomed at Easter to murder
+Christian children in order to mix their blood with the passover
+bread, is still living in many parts of Europe. M. Leroy-Beaulieu has
+collected much curious evidence on the subject. It is a calumny which
+appears first to have become popular about 1100 <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> It is
+embodied in a well-known tale of Chaucer. It is the subject of one of
+the great frescoes that were painted around the Cathedral of Toledo to
+commemorate the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Two Popes of the
+thirteenth century, to their great honour, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>declared its falsehood,
+and by the order of Benedict XIV. Ganganelli wrote a full memoir
+examining and refuting it. But in spite of all condemnations, in spite
+of many exposures in the law courts, it is still a popular belief in
+Russia, Poland, Roumania, Hungary, and Bohemia, and even within the
+last ten years it has been the direct cause of many outrages against
+the Jews.</p>
+
+<p>Another element to which M. Leroy-Beaulieu attaches considerable
+importance is the Kultur Kampf in Germany. When the German Government
+was engaged in its fierce struggle with the Catholics, these
+endeavoured to effect a diversion and to avenge themselves on papers,
+which were largely in the hands of Jews, by raising a new cry. They
+declared that a Kultur Kampf was indeed needed, but that it should be
+directed against the alien people who were undermining the moral
+foundations of Christian societies; who were the implacable enemies of
+the Christian creed and of Christian ideals. The cry was soon taken up
+by a large body of Evangelical Protestants. The 'Germania' and the
+'Civilt&agrave; Cattolica,' which were the chief organs of Ultramontanism in
+Germany and Italy, and the 'Kreuz Zeitung,' which represented the
+strictest forms of German Protestantism, agreed in fomenting it.</p>
+
+<p>Still more powerful, in the opinion of our author, has been the spirit
+of intense and exclusive nationality which has in the present
+generation arisen in so many countries and which seeks to expel all
+alien or heterogeneous elements, and to mould the whole national being
+into a single definite type. The movement has been still further
+strengthened by the greater keenness of trade competition. In the
+midst of many idle, drunken, and ignorant populations the shrewd,
+thrifty, and sober Jew stands conspicuous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>as the most successful
+trader. His rare power of judging, influencing, and managing men, his
+fertility of resource, his indomitable perseverance and industry,
+continually force him into the foremost rank, and he is prominent in
+occupations which excite much animosity. The tax-gatherer, the agent,
+the middleman, and the moneylender are very commonly of Jewish race,
+and great Jewish capitalists largely control the money markets of
+Europe at a time when capital is the special object of socialistic
+attacks.</p>
+
+<p>The most valuable portion of this work is, I think, that examining the
+part which the Jewish race is now playing in the world, and tracing
+the action of historical causes on the formation of their character.
+On the old problem of the continued existence of the race through so
+many ages M. Leroy-Beaulieu has much to say. He reminds us that in the
+East the idea of nationality is habitually absorbed in the idea of
+religion, and that there are many examples of the long survival of
+peoples or tribes which have lost their political individuality. He
+instances the Copts of Egypt, the Maronites and Druses of Lebanon, the
+Parsees of India, the Armenians and Greeks of Asia as displaying,
+though in a less degree, the same phenomenon as the Jews. He
+attributes the long continuance of the Jews as a separate people
+mainly to two causes. One of them is Christian hatred, which compelled
+the Jews for many centuries to remain a separate people, unmixed with
+surrounding nations; living in a separate quarter; marrying among
+themselves; strengthened and disciplined in the struggle of life by
+enormous difficulties and by the constant elimination through
+persecution of the weaker elements. The other is the very elaborate
+Jewish ritual extending to all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>departments of life, which has stamped
+upon them an intensely distinctive character.</p>
+
+<p>The force of these causes is undoubted, but they are not, I think, the
+only elements to be considered. M. Leroy-Beaulieu appears to me to
+have somewhat underrated the physiological force and tenacity of the
+Jewish race-type. Following the line of reasoning of a remarkable
+essay of Renan, he shows very clearly that the modern Jews are far
+from being pure Semites. He proves from Josephus and from other
+sources that there was a considerable period, both before and after
+the Christian era, when great numbers of Greeks, Latins, and Egyptians
+adopted the Jewish faith; that much alien blood afterward poured into
+the race through conversions among the barbarians and through the
+circumcision of the slaves of Jewish masters, and that there is even
+reason to believe that, in some periods of history, marriages with
+Christians were not infrequent. It is probable, however, that most
+alien elements that were introduced into the race sooner or later
+mingled with the old stock, and no fact is more clearly shown than the
+extraordinary power of the Jewish type to survive and dominate in a
+mixed race. A single instance of a marriage with a Jewess will be
+sufficient to perpetuate it in a family for many generations. In this
+fact the Jews possess an element of stability which is wholly
+independent of all considerations of creed and ritual. Few things are
+more curious than the effect of persecution on the Jewish element in
+Spain and Portugal. Tens of thousands of Jews in those countries were
+burned at the stake or driven into exile, but great numbers also
+conformed. They mixed in a few generations with the old Christian
+population, and Spain and Portugal, M. Leroy-Beaulieu truly says, are
+now <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>among the countries in which the Jewish blood is most evidently
+and most widely diffused.</p>
+
+<p>Another consideration, which M. Leroy-Beaulieu has omitted to mention,
+but which appears to me to have much weight, is the condemnation of
+lending money at interest by the Church. This condemnation, which
+lasted many centuries, had two important consequences. One of them was
+that the Jews became almost the only moneylenders in Europe. The trade
+was deemed sinful for a Christian, but it was found to be a very
+necessary one; and the Jews (as some Catholic theologians observed)
+being already damned, were allowed to practise it. The other
+consequence was that on account of the stigma which the Church
+attached to moneylending, the amount of money to be lent was greatly
+diminished, or in other words, the rate of interest was enormously and
+artificially raised. At a time, therefore, when Catholic intolerance
+made it impossible for the Jews to mingle with and be absorbed in
+surrounding nations they acquired one of the greatest elements of
+power and stability that a race can possess&mdash;a monopoly of the most
+lucrative trade in the world.</p>
+
+<p>The physical characteristics of the race are very remarkable and they
+are especially displayed among the Eastern Jews, who still maintain
+scrupulously amid poverty and persecution the religious observances of
+their ancestors. It is now clearly shown that the Levitical code was
+in a high degree hygienic, and even anticipates some of the
+discoveries of modern physiology. Prescriptions about forbidden kinds
+of food and about the mode of cooking food, which only excited the
+ridicule of Voltaire, have a real hygienic value in the eyes of Claude
+Bernard and of Pasteur. The Jews have never adopted the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>Catholic
+notions about the sanctity of celibacy and virginity, but they lay
+great stress on the purity of marriage. Although they live chiefly in
+towns, illegitimate births are proportionately rarer among them than
+among either Protestants or Catholics. They have been as a rule
+singularly free from the kinds of vice that do most to enfeeble and
+corrode a race. They are distinguished for their domestic virtues,
+especially for care of their children, and they are nearly everywhere
+less addicted than Christian nations to intoxicating drinks. These
+things help to explain the curious fact that in nearly all countries
+the average duration of life is considerably longer among Jews than
+among Christians. This superiority is general, but, as M.
+Leroy-Beaulieu observes, it tends to diminish in Western countries
+where Jews, being freed from disabilities, are more assimilated to the
+surrounding populations. They now usually marry later than Christians;
+they have on the whole fewer children, but a proportionately larger
+number of Jewish than of Christian infants attain adult age. M.
+Leroy-Beaulieu mentions two curious facts which are less easy to
+explain. Still-born births are very rare among Jews, and there is
+among them a wholly abnormal preponderance of male births over female
+ones.</p>
+
+<p>It might be supposed from these facts that the Jews were a robust
+race, but no one who has come much in contact with them will share
+this delusion. Nothing is more conspicuous among them than their
+unhealthy colouring, their frail, bent, and feeble bodies. They
+develop early, but they have very little of the spring and buoyancy of
+youth and they have everywhere a low average of physical strength.
+Malformations and deformities are common among them; their nervous
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>organisation is extremely sensitive, and though they are as a race
+distinguished for their sound, clear, and practical judgment, they are
+very liable to insanity and to other nervous and brain disorders.
+Physical beauty as well as physical strength is much rarer among them
+than among Christians.</p>
+
+<p>The causes of this inferiority may be easily explained. Life pursued
+during many generations in the crowded Ghetto; the sordid habits that
+grow out of extreme poverty and out of the assumption of the
+appearance of poverty, which is natural in a persecuted and plundered
+race, go far to explain it; but there is another and, I think, a more
+important cause which M. Leroy-Beaulieu has rather strangely
+neglected. Physical strength and beauty can be maintained at a high
+level in crowded town populations only by a constant influx from the
+country. The pure air and the healthy labour of the fields are their
+main source. This great school of health the Jews have never known.
+For many centuries it would have been impossible for them to have
+lived in peace as farmers or agricultural labourers among a Christian
+peasantry, and if they ever possessed any aptitude or taste for
+agricultural pursuits they have long since wholly lost it.</p>
+
+<p>Their moral like their physical characteristics present strange
+contrasts. No natural want of moral elevation or tenderness or grace
+can be ascribed to the nation that has produced both the Old Testament
+and the Gospels, and has most largely shaped and inspired the moral
+life of the civilised world. In Christian times no race has maintained
+its faith with a more devoted courage, and it has encountered and
+survived persecutions before which the persecutions of other creeds
+dwindle almost into insignificance. M. Leroy-Beaulieu quotes the
+statement <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>of the grand Rabbi Lehmann, that it is a clearly attested
+fact that in two months of the year 1096 twelve thousand Jews, whose
+names have been preserved, were massacred in the towns of the Rhine
+alone, because they refused to accept a Christian baptism. The Spanish
+Jews who perished by one of the most excruciating deaths rather than
+forswear their faith may be numbered by thousands, and those who
+preferred exile and spoliation to apostasy, by hundreds of thousands.
+Even in our own sceptical and materialising age the conduct of the
+Russian Jews under the recent savage persecution shows that the old
+spirit is not extinct. In the face of the long and splendid roll of
+Jewish heroism, it is idle to dwell on the fact that in each great
+persecution some Jews have yielded to the fear of death and consented
+to perform the rites of a faith which they inwardly abhorred, or on
+the fact that a few Rabbis have under such circumstances justified
+these feigned conversions.</p>
+
+<p>Prolonged persecution, however, has had a profound influence on their
+character, and its influence in some respects has been very
+pernicious. Hatred naturally provokes hatred, and violent oppression
+against which there is no redress is naturally encountered by
+subterfuge and fraud. A race who were for centuries playing their part
+in life against overwhelming obstacles learned to avail themselves of
+every advantage. Adulation, servility, falsehood, and deception became
+common among them. They became at once hard, wily, and rapacious, and
+ready instruments in ignoble and oppressive callings. Shut out from
+open paths and honourable ambitions they haunted the obscurer byways
+of industry; they were to be found in many occupations which sharpen
+the intellect but blunt the moral sense, and they threw themselves
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>passionately into the acquisition of wealth and of secret power.
+Exposed for generations, even in lands where they were not more
+seriously persecuted, to constant insult and contempt, they often lost
+their self-respect and learned to acquiesce tamely in what another
+race would resent. Slavish conditions produced, as they always do,
+slavish characteristics, and, as is always the case, those
+characteristics did not at once disappear when the conditions that
+produced them had altered.</p>
+
+<p>M. Leroy-Beaulieu has dwelt with much force on this subject, and he
+ascribes considerable weight to the fact that the Jews have been
+wholly outside the system of feudalism and chivalry in which the
+modern conception of honour was chiefly formed. Perhaps the Jew might
+retort with some justice, that he has had at least the compensating
+moral advantage of having derived no part of his notions of right and
+wrong from a Church in which such an institution as the Spanish
+Inquisition was deemed a holy thing.</p>
+
+<p>Defects of another kind have contributed largely to his unpopularity.
+Great as is the power of assimilation which the Jewish race possesses,
+the charm and grace of manner seem to have been among the qualities
+they most slowly and most imperfectly acquire. It is natural that men
+who have been excluded from honours but not from wealth should value
+money and the ostentatious display of riches more than their
+neighbours. In the professions in which the Jews chiefly excel, men
+rise most rapidly from low origin and culture to conspicuous wealth.
+Direct money-making has some tendency to materialise and lower the
+character, and Jews have been for generations prominent in occupations
+which do much to impair those delicacies of feeling on which the charm
+of manner <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>largely depends. Besides this, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu truly
+remarks, though the oldest of the cultured races they are a race of
+<i>parvenus</i> in the good society of Europe. In nearly all countries they
+have till very recently been excluded from the kind of society and
+from the kind of education in which the best manners are formed. The
+exaggerations of bad taste; the love of the loud, the gaudy, the
+ostentatious, and the meretricious; the awkwardness of men who are ill
+at ease in an unaccustomed sphere, who have not yet mastered the happy
+mean between arrogance and obsequiousness and who are therefore
+somewhat prone to both extremes, still frequently characterise them.
+Few persons who know Germany will doubt that the tone of manners of
+the German Jews has contributed quite as much as any other cause to
+their unpopularity.</p>
+
+<p>It is probable that these defects will gradually diminish, and it
+would be a grave error to regard the Jewish race as wholly devoted to
+material ends. The multitude of their martyrs is a sufficient answer
+to the charge, and no people cherish more strongly the ideals of their
+past and have more of the pride both of race and of creed. They have
+at all times, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu observes, been distinguished for
+their reverence for learning, and it is an undoubted fact that Jewish
+families and families mixed with Jewish blood have produced an amount
+and variety of ability that far exceed the average of men. The ability
+goes rather with the race than with the religion. Spinosa, Heine,
+Ricardo, and Disraeli&mdash;to quote but a few of the most illustrious
+names&mdash;were not believers in the synagogue. Some of the forms in which
+the Jews have most excelled are such as might have been expected from
+their past. It is natural that the descendants of the most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>nomadic
+and cosmopolitan of races should have been great masters of language
+and in the foremost rank of philologists, and it is not surprising
+that the descendants of the chief moneylenders and calculators of the
+world should have produced great financiers, and have shown a very
+eminent aptitude for mathematics. Medicine more than most professions
+depends on individual ability, and has been exercised independently of
+the favour of Churches and Governments, and in medicine the Jews were
+for a long period pre-eminent. Their marked taste and turn for music
+may appear more surprising. It is universally recognised and is
+sufficiently evident to anyone who will look at the faces of the chief
+orchestras of Europe. Besides a crowd of lesser names they have
+produced among composers Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and Hal&eacute;vy, and among
+contemporary performers Rubinstein, Joachim, Hermann Levy, and Lucca.
+A Jewess is the most popular tragic actress on the contemporary stage,
+and another Jewess was probably the greatest tragic actress of the
+century. M. Leroy-Beaulieu notices that in painting and sculpture the
+Jews have been less conspicuous, and he attributes this to their
+horror of idolatry. I should rather ascribe it to the fact that
+European art in its best period was mainly devoted to depicting
+Christian subjects for Christian churches. At all events several
+considerable Jewish names may be cited in contemporary art, and the
+Dutch painter who bears the name of Israels is perhaps the greatest
+living master of the pathetic in painting. In Western Europe, wherever
+public life has been opened to them, Jews have thrown themselves into
+almost all the great movements of their time and have distinguished
+themselves in nearly all. Cr&eacute;mieux, who was a leading figure in the
+French <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>Republic of 1848, was a Jew both by birth and by creed. David
+Manin and L&eacute;on Gambetta had Jewish blood in their veins. Lassalle and
+Marx, the chief names in German socialism, as well as great numbers of
+their followers belong to the same race, and more than one English
+example of political eminence will occur to the reader. In both German
+and Dutch literature Jewish names are frequent and they are nearly
+everywhere prominent in journalism. In the army they have been much
+less distinguished. Many Jews no doubt serve in the great continental
+armies with honour, but the Jew is naturally a pacific being, hating
+violence and recoiling with a peculiar horror from blood. The
+beneficence of the Jew was for a long time very naturally confined to
+his own race, but since the hand of persecution has been withdrawn,
+and wherever the Jews have been suffered to mingle freely with the
+Christian population, it has taken a wider range and Jewish names are
+conspicuous in some of the best forms of unsectarian philanthropy.</p>
+
+<p>It is the evident tendency of modern political life to split up into a
+number of distinct groups representing distinct interests or forms of
+thought. We find a Catholic party, a Nonconformist party, a Labour
+party, a Socialist party, a Temperance party, and many others. But in
+spite of the crusade that has arisen in so many countries against the
+Jews, we nowhere find a distinct and clearly defined Jewish party. The
+tendency of the race is rather to throw themselves ardently into
+existing movements, and their power of assimilation is one of their
+most remarkable gifts. As M. Leroy-Beaulieu shows by many
+illustrations, they are apt in most Western nations even to exaggerate
+the national characteristics, though they usually combine with them a
+certain flexibility of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>adaptation and a certain cosmopolitanism of
+view which is essentially their own.</p>
+
+<p>It was inevitable that with such tendencies the old rigidity of creed
+should be impaired and that the observances which completely severed
+the Jew from other people should be discarded. There can be little
+doubt that the dissolution of old beliefs which has been such a marked
+and ominous characteristic of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century has been even more common among the Western Jews than in
+Christian nations, and it appears to have spread quite as rapidly
+among the women as among the men. Many Jews have passed into complete
+religious indifference&mdash;into absolute and often very cynical negation.
+They have become, as Sheridan wittily said, like the blank page
+between the Old and the New Testament. Others have taken refuge in a
+kind of highly rationalised Judaism little different from pure Theism.
+Some of the most independent, scientific, and trenchant criticism of
+the Old Testament writings has proceeded from members of the race
+which was once distinguished for the most complete and superstitious
+worship of the letter of the law. Spinoza in his 'Tractatus
+Theologico-Politicus' led the way in this path, and in our own day I
+need only mention the writings of Salvador, Kalisch, and Darmesteter
+and the remarkable Hibbert Lectures of Mr. Montefiore.</p>
+
+<p>This movement, however, is chiefly confined to the Western Jews. The
+Oriental Jews have retained in a far greater measure their old creed
+and ritual, their old fanaticism and aspirations. To them Palestine is
+still the land of promise, and they still dream that it is destined to
+become once more a Jewish State. Few persons who consider the
+conditions of the East and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>power of the Jewish race will
+pronounce the realisation of this dream to be impossible or even in a
+very high degree improbable. Perhaps the most formidable obstacle is
+the poverty of the land and the total absence among the Jews of
+agricultural tastes and aptitudes. One thing, however, may be safely
+predicted. If Palestine is ever again to become a Jewish land, this
+will be effected only through the wealth and energy of the Western
+Jews, and it is not those Jews who are likely to inhabit it.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> Mr. Lecky had made various notes with the intention of
+bringing this essay up to date, but failing health prevented him from
+accomplishing it.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ed.</span></p></div>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="MADAME_DE_STAEL" id="MADAME_DE_STAEL"></a>MADAME DE STA&Euml;L<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Among the many important works which have lately been published on the
+Continent, reconstructing the history of France during the struggle of
+the Revolution and during the periods that immediately preceded and
+followed it, scarcely any have been so comprehensive, and not many
+have been so valuable, as 'The History of the Life and Times of Madame
+de Staël,' by Lady Blennerhassett. The author&mdash;a Bavarian lady who was
+an intimate friend and favourite pupil of Dr. Döllinger&mdash;has brought
+to her task a knowledge, which is scarcely rivalled in its
+completeness, of the French, German, English, and Italian literatures
+relating to the period; and she has produced a work of which it is in
+one sense the merit, but in another the defect, that it sweeps over a
+far wider field than might be expected from its title. It is seldom, I
+think, a judicious thing to confuse the provinces of history and
+biography by turning the life of an individual into an elaborate
+history of his time; and in the few cases in which this method has
+been successfully pursued, the biographer has selected as his subject
+some man like Cromwell, or Frederick the Great, or Napoleon, who was
+indisputably the chief mover of his age. When figures of less
+prominence are chosen, both the history and the biography are apt to
+suffer. The true perspective, or relative magnitude, of events is
+impaired, and the book is almost sure to lose something of its
+artistic charm and of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>its popularity. Mr. Masson, as it seems to me,
+committed a mistake of this kind in his 'Life of Milton,' when he
+grouped around the great Puritan poet&mdash;who, however illustrious, was
+certainly not the central figure of his time&mdash;a full and valuable
+history of the Commonwealth, and of large sections of the reigns of
+Charles I. and Charles II.</p>
+
+<p>In like manner, a great part of the work of Lady Blennerhassett is not
+biography, but history, and history of a very high order. Madame de
+Staël was so closely connected in her own person, and still more
+through her father, with the early events of the French Revolution,
+that we accept with gratitude the admirable sketch of that period
+which Lady Blennerhassett has given us; but we should scarcely expect
+to find in a work primarily devoted to Madame de Staël full and
+masterly accounts of the Ministry of Turgot, of the rise and teaching
+of the Economists, of the rival influence of the writings of
+Montesquieu and Rousseau on the French political character, of the
+effect of English influence and American example in preparing the
+Revolution, and of the part played by Germans and Swedes in French
+politics. At the same time, the pictures of the social and
+intellectual life prevailing in the different countries with which
+Madame de Staël was connected, and the full accounts given of a crowd
+of persons with whom she came into casual contact, though in
+themselves both interesting and valuable, often tend to divert the
+reader from the main subject of the book. In truth, Lady
+Blennerhassett has not been able to resist the temptation of a very
+full mind to pour out all its knowledge, and, while possessing many
+rare and brilliant literary gifts, she appears to me to want that
+restraining sense of literary perspective which gives <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>biography its
+true proportion and symmetry. This defect has, I fear, diminished the
+popularity of a most valuable book. In the original German, and in an
+excellent French translation which was revised by the author and which
+I especially commend to my readers, the work consists of three very
+substantial volumes.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> A hasty reader will readily conclude that, in
+this short and crowded life, such a space is far more than should be
+allotted to a long-vanished figure which, though interesting and
+brilliant, was not of the first magnitude. But if he has the courage
+to persevere, he will soon discover that few modern books have lighted
+up in so many directions the political, social, moral, and
+intellectual history of a momentous period, and have exhibited at once
+so many kinds of talent and so wide a range of sympathies and
+knowledge. The complete competence, the firm, sober, and&mdash;if I may use
+the expression&mdash;masculine judgment with which Lady Blennerhassett has
+grasped the great political problems of the period of the Revolution,
+is not less conspicuous than the truly feminine delicacy of
+observation and touch with which she has delineated social life in
+many different countries, and painted the finer shades of many widely
+dissimilar characters.</p>
+
+<p>Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born in Paris on April 22, 1766. Her
+father was at that time known only as a Swiss banker of high character
+and reputation, who had amassed a vast fortune and had come to Paris
+for his private affairs; but about two years after the birth of his
+daughter he was appointed to represent the interests of Geneva at
+Paris, and when she was ten years old he rose, for the first time, to
+a leading place in the Ministry of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>France. Her mother had been the
+Mademoiselle Curchod whose charms and accomplishments had captivated
+Gibbon when he was a young man at Lausanne. Every reader of his
+autobiography will remember the famous passage in which he describes
+his engagement, the opposition of his father, and the resignation with
+which he 'sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son.' M. d'Haussonville
+has published from the archives at Coppet some melancholy letters
+which show clearly that Gibbon exhibited more heartlessness and
+inflicted more suffering than might be gathered from his own stately
+narrative. But no lasting scar remained. After a few years of poverty
+and hardship, during which she was obliged to earn a livelihood as a
+schoolmistress, Mademoiselle Curchod found in Necker a husband who
+realised her fondest wishes; and when, soon after, she became the
+centre of a brilliant salon at Paris, her former lover, then in the
+zenith of his fame, was often among her guests. Madame Necker did not
+always abstain from slightly veiled allusions to the past, but it is
+pleasant to see that a warm and solid friendship seems to have grown
+up between Gibbon and both his host and hostess. A pretty anecdote is
+related of how, on one occasion, after he had left the house, they
+agreed in expressing the deep regret with which they looked forward to
+his approaching departure for England; when their little daughter, who
+was then just ten years old, gravely offered to prevent the
+catastrophe by marrying the illustrious, but by no means
+prepossessing, historian.</p>
+
+<p>It was a saying of Talleyrand that he who had not lived before 1789
+had never known the full charm of life. Germaine Necker grew up in the
+last bright flush of a society which had, perhaps, as many
+fascinations as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>any that the world has known. Her mother, however,
+though she occupied a prominent position in this brilliant world, was
+never altogether of it. She shared fully, indeed, its intellectual
+tastes, and had herself won some small place in literature. She threw
+herself ardently into its philanthropic movements, and especially into
+that for the reform of the hospitals. She formed a warm and true
+friendship with Buffon and Thomas. She corresponded with Voltaire, and
+attracted to her house most of the best writers of the age. But to the
+last she remained eminently and characteristically Swiss, and she
+never acquired the light touch, or the easy, pliant grace, of the true
+Parisian. She was a little cold, a little prim, a little pedantic, a
+little self-conscious. Neither her reserved manners nor her strong
+domestic tastes, nor the vein of Puritanism that ran through her
+opinions, harmonised with the lax and sceptical society around her,
+and it was no sacrifice to her to exchange the splendours and the
+gaieties of Paris for her peaceful retreat on the Lake of Geneva.</p>
+
+<p>In this, as in most respects, her daughter was very different. In her
+the Swiss element had altogether disappeared, and, as is often the
+case with the eminent child of eminent parents, her character shot out
+in directions wholly unlike both that of her father and that of her
+mother. She was not beautiful, though her dark and eminently lustrous
+eyes, beaming with intelligence, and her rich brown tint, gave some
+charm to her large and rather coarse features; while her massive
+shoulders, arms, and breast, her full lips and the firm grasp of her
+vigorous hand, indicated a strong, frank, ruling, and passionate
+nature, overflowing with life and with many forms of energy. Her
+education was somewhat fitfully conducted, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>but she threw herself
+eagerly into literary enthusiasms. At fifteen we find her annotating
+Montesquieu. Raynal and Richardson were among her idols, but, like
+most of the more ardent spirits of her generation, her ideas and
+character were moulded chiefly by the genius of Rousseau. Her first
+work of importance was an exposition of his doctrines, and his
+influence left deep traces on both 'Corinne' and 'Delphine.' Her
+strong sane judgment, however, her genuine humanity, and the
+moderating influence of her father, saved her from being swept away,
+like Madame Roland and most of the disciples of Rousseau, by the
+sanguinary torrent of revolutionary enthusiasm; and in times of wild
+passion and exaggeration she usually exhibited a singular soundness
+and sobriety of political judgment. She was sometimes mistaken, but on
+the whole it may well be doubted whether there is any other French
+writer or politician of the period of the Revolution whose
+contemporary judgments of men and events have been more frequently
+ratified by posterity.</p>
+
+<p>In this respect she was not of the school of Rousseau. In another and
+less admirable way she was curiously untouched by his spirit, for few
+superior intellects have been so openly, so utterly, insensible to the
+charms of nature. She once spoke of 'the infernal peace' of her Swiss
+home, and she candidly acknowledged that if it were not for respect
+for the opinions of others she would not open her window to look for
+the first time on the Bay of Naples, though she would gladly travel
+five hundred leagues to make the acquaintance of a man of talent. On
+the borders of the Lake of Geneva, with one of the fairest scenes on
+earth expanding before her, she was incessantly pining for 'le
+ruisseau de la Rue du <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>Bac'&mdash;for the interest and the excitement of a
+society which had become the passion of her life.</p>
+
+<p>Her gifts of conversation were very wonderful, and she had a wide
+range of sympathies, keen insight into character, and great power of
+describing it by a few vivid words. She had, however, no reticence or
+reserve, she made many enemies by her unbounded frankness, and she
+often fatigued or overwhelmed by her exuberant animal spirits and by
+the torrent of her words. At the same time, unlike most great talkers,
+she possessed to a very eminent degree the gifts of learning from
+others, of grasping the characteristic features of their teaching, of
+awakening sympathies, of dispelling bashfulness, and of kindling
+latent intellect into a flame. Few women combined so remarkably a
+sound and moderate judgment with extreme vividness and impetuosity of
+emotion. She admired deeply, and she generally admired wisely; her
+first judgments and impulses were almost always generous; and,
+although she was subject to violent gusts of passion, she could be
+very patient with those she loved. Through her whole life she was the
+warmest and most self-sacrificing of friends, and her few antipathies
+were singularly devoid of rancour. One of those who knew her best
+pronounced her to be 'absolutely incapable of hatred.'</p>
+
+<p>She soon became the most attractive figure in the salon of Madame
+Necker, and as the health of her mother declined she became its
+central figure. Her rare accomplishments and her position as a great
+heiress naturally would have drawn many suitors around her, but in
+that age the determined Protestantism of her family was a formidable
+barrier. It appears from something that she wrote late in life to a
+German correspondent that, when a mere girl, she had come under the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>spell of Louis de Narbonne, who asked her hand, and with whom, in
+after years, she had relations which caused much scandal and which
+greatly coloured her political life. The story that her parents at one
+time contemplated a marriage between her and William Pitt, on the
+occasion of his visit to France in 1783, was discredited by Lord
+Stanhope; but M. d'Haussonville pronounces it to be quite true, though
+there is no clear evidence that Pitt was apprised of the wish of the
+Neckers. She was then only seventeen, and her vehement protest against
+an English marriage nipped the project in the bud. In 1786, however, a
+marriage was negotiated for her with the Swedish ambassador, the Baron
+de Staël, who was at that time a special favourite of Gustavus III. It
+was a marriage into which but little affection entered, and twelve
+years later it ended in a separation. There was afterward, it is true,
+a partial reconciliation, and she was present with her husband when he
+died, in 1802, on the way from Paris to Coppet.</p>
+
+<p>Her marriage gave her an independent position, and she mixed much in
+the politics of the early days of the Revolution. She corresponded
+regularly with the Swedish King, and formed intimate friendships with
+great numbers of the guiding politicians. The proudest moment of her
+life was in August 1788, when, amid a transport of transient
+enthusiasm and extravagant hopefulness, her father was for the second
+time called to the helm. Her devotion to him amounted almost to
+adoration, and she would never acknowledge, what the rest of the world
+soon perceived, that, though excellently adapted to be Minister in
+quiet, regular times, he had neither the daring nor the insight, nor
+the commanding power, that was needed to guide the bark of State
+through the fierce <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>storms of the Revolution. She fully shared the
+enthusiasm with which the opening of the States General was received.
+She mentions that on that occasion she was watching the procession
+from a window with Madame de Montmorin, wife of the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs, and that as she expressed her delight, her companion
+said: 'You are wrong in rejoicing; great calamities will follow from
+this to France and to us.' The words were truly prophetic. Madame de
+Montmorin perished on the scaffold with one of her sons; the other was
+drowned. Her husband was murdered in prison during the massacre of the
+second of September. Her eldest daughter died in the prison hospital.
+Her youngest daughter withered away when not yet thirty,
+broken-hearted by the calamities of her family.</p>
+
+<p>Madame de Staël, too, soon discovered that no millennium was at hand.
+She was an eye-witness of the terrible scenes of the fifth and sixth
+of October, when Versailles was invaded by a half-famished mob, when
+the guards were cut down and beheaded, and when the royal family were
+brought captive to Paris. She clearly saw that all power was passing
+from the Government to the clubs, and that the mob violence which
+reigned was either instigated or deliberately connived at by the very
+men whose first duty was to repress it. 'These gentlemen,' she once
+said, 'are like the rainbow; they always appear when the storm is
+over.' Under her influence the Swedish Embassy became the chief centre
+in which the 'Constitutional Party' was organised. Narbonne and
+Talleyrand were then completely devoted to her. S&eacute;gur, Choiseul, the
+Prince de Broglie, and other members of the party were constantly at
+her house; and at what were called her 'coalition dinners' she brought
+them in contact with leading men of other groups. She had a
+conspicuous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>talent for inspiring, encouraging, conciliating, and
+organising a party; and for some months she exercised a very real
+political influence. Her aim was a constitutional monarchy of the
+English type; but she came gradually to believe that a republic, or at
+least a change of Sovereigns, had become inevitable. She never wavered
+in her devotion to liberty, order, and justice; but on minor questions
+she always exhibited a spirit of compromise which was very rare in her
+age and in her country. 'The true line of conduct in politics,' she
+once said, 'is always to be ready to rally to the least obnoxious
+party among your adversaries, even though it is far from representing
+exactly your own point of view.' At the end of 1791 she had a moment
+of delicious triumph, when her favourite Narbonne became Minister of
+War. Marie Antoinette, who disliked her, clearly recognised her hand.
+'Count Louis de Narbonne,' she wrote to Fersen, 'has been Minister of
+War since yesterday. What a glory for Madame de Staël and what a
+pleasure for her to have the whole army at her disposal!'</p>
+
+<p>The triumphs of Madame de Staël, however, were very fleeting. Her
+father had fallen irretrievably, and in September 1790 he passed
+almost unnoticed out of the country where, but little more than a year
+before, he had been welcomed with such enthusiasm. The Ministry of
+Narbonne, to which she had attached her most ardent hopes, ended in
+four months, and before its conclusion her husband, whose views on
+French politics had been for some time diverging from those of his
+Sovereign, was recalled. He was not, however, replaced, and Madame de
+Staël remained alone in Paris till September 1792. Her position there
+was an extremely dangerous one. She had long been an object of
+incessant abuse in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>Royalist press, and now the red waves of
+Jacobinism were rising higher and higher, surging fiercely around
+those to whom she was most attached. Nothing in her life is so
+admirable as the courage with which, in this period of the Revolution,
+she devoted herself to saving the lives of the proscribed. Her purse
+was always open, and she often risked not only her fortune, but her
+life. The royal family had always disliked her; but she was filled
+with horror at the fate that was impending over them, and she herself
+organised a plan for their escape, in which, if it had been accepted,
+she would have borne a leading part, at the imminent risk of her head;
+and she afterward wrote an earnest and eloquent pamphlet in the hope
+of saving the life of the Queen. Sometimes by interceding with those
+in power, sometimes by concealing fugitives in the Swedish Embassy,
+very often by large and timely gifts of money, she saved many. Her own
+life, at the time of the September massacres, was in extreme danger,
+and she at last fled to Switzerland. Coppet then became a great centre
+of refugees, and many of them owed their lives to her help. Among
+others, Narbonne appears to have owed his escape, in part at least, to
+her assistance, and she chiefly managed the escape of his daughter.
+She was for a long time completely under his charm; but he is said to
+have been irritated by her often tactless impetuosity, and especially
+by the manner in which public opinion regarded him as her creature,
+and he seems to have treated her with much ingratitude. There was no
+violent breach, but there was a separation, and a wound which was long
+and bitterly felt. Many years later, Madame de Staël, when praising
+the Prince de Ligne, said of him: 'He had the manners of Monsieur de
+Narbonne&mdash;and a heart.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>A short visit to England, in 1793, the death of her mother in May
+1794, and the publication of her first purely political work,
+'Reflections on Peace, addressed to Mr. Pitt and to the French,' were
+the chief events of her life during the next few months. In this work
+she dwelt with much force on the absurdity of supposing that any
+foreign intervention could restore what the Revolution had destroyed,
+and she predicted that the inevitable effect of the prolongation or
+extension of the war would be to strengthen that militant Jacobinism
+which was now the greatest danger to Europe. In this year, too, she
+first came in contact with Benjamin Constant, and her acquaintance
+soon developed into a connection which gave her a new and powerful
+instrument for acting on French politics, but which also brought with
+it much suffering, many reproaches, and long and lasting discredit. In
+May 1795 we find her again in Paris, with her husband, who had once
+more been sent on a mission to France; again eagerly engaged in French
+politics; again largely occupied in defending the interests of her
+proscribed friends. Among others, Talleyrand appears to have owed his
+recall to her influence. As usual, she excited many antipathies, she
+was denounced in the Convention by Legendre for her political
+intrigues and especially for her efforts in favour of the emigrants,
+and she was obliged to leave Paris for about eighteen months. Her pen
+was at this time very active, and to this period belong her 'Essay on
+Novels' and her 'Treatise on the Passions.'</p>
+
+<p>The star of Bonaparte was now rapidly rising, and it profoundly
+affected the last years of her life. The pages in her 'Considerations
+on the French Revolution' in which she describes her first interview
+with him, after <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>the peace of Campo Formio, are among the most graphic
+she ever wrote, though something of the shadow of the picture was, no
+doubt, drawn from later experience and antipathy. She was at first
+dazzled; she was at all times profoundly impressed by his genius, but
+she soon came to perceive that his nature was wholly unlike that of
+other men. She had seen, she said, men worthy of all respect, and she
+had seen men noted for their ferocity; but the impression produced on
+her by Bonaparte was generically different from that produced by
+either of these classes. She found that such epithets as 'good,'
+'violent,' 'gentle,' and 'cruel' could not be applied to him in their
+ordinary senses. He was in truth a being who stood self-centred, and
+apart from the sympathies, passions, and enthusiasms of his kind,
+habitually regarding men, not as fellow-creatures, but as mere
+counters in a game; a will of colossal strength; an intellect of
+clear, cold, transcendent power, solely governed by the imperturbable
+calculation of the strictest egotism, and never drawn aside by love or
+hatred, by pity or religion, or by attachment to any cause. It was
+impossible, she found, to exaggerate his contempt for human nature and
+his disbelief in the reality of human virtue. A perfectly honest man
+was the only kind of man he never could understand. Such a man
+perplexed and baffled his calculations, acting on them as the sign of
+the cross acts on the machinations of a demon. The superiority which
+so clearly shone in his conversation was not that of a mind cultivated
+by study and by society; it was the supreme insight into the
+circumstances of life possessed by a mighty hunter of men. There was
+something in him, she said, like a cold and trenchant sword, which at
+the same moment could wound and chill.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>Such was the estimate she formed of the man who, nearly at the same
+time, was presented by Talleyrand to the Directory as 'the pacificator
+of Europe,' as a hero 'who despised luxury and pomp&mdash;the wretched
+ambition of common souls&mdash;and who loved the poems of Ossian,
+especially because they detach men from the earth'! That two such
+different natures should come into collision was very natural.
+Bonaparte always hated superior women, and especially women who
+meddled in politics. He well knew that the circle of Madame de Staël
+was the centre of ideas about freedom and constitutional government
+irreconcilably opposed to his ambition, and that the world of good
+society and good taste, of independent thought and independent
+characters, in which she played so great a part, remained unsubdued
+and undazzled by his power. Benjamin Constant had been placed in 'the
+Tribunate,' and in the beginning of 1800 he made a speech there,
+indicating a desire to establish in that body an opposition like the
+opposition in the English Parliament. Bonaparte was furious at his
+attitude, and at once ascribed it to the inspiration of Madame de
+Staël. A year later the last work of her father appeared, and it
+contained an earnest warning against growing despotism in France and a
+strong argument for the establishment of a republican constitution.
+The sayings of Madame de Staël that were repeated from lip to lip, and
+the atmosphere of thought that grew up around her, irritated and
+disquieted Bonaparte. 'She is moving the minds of men,' he said, 'in a
+direction that does not suit me.' 'They pretend that she does not
+speak of politics or of me, but somehow it always happens that those
+who have been with her become less attached to me.' Soon her salon was
+emptied by an emphatic intimation that those who entered it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>would
+incur the displeasure of the First Consul. Official scribes were
+busily employed in depreciating her, and these measures were speedily
+followed by the long exile which darkened the later years of her life.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible for me in this article to relate, even in outline,
+the story of this exile, and of her travels in England, Italy,
+Austria, Russia, and, above all, in Germany. Madame de Staël has
+herself described this period of her life in her 'Ten Years of Exile,'
+and all the details have been collected by Lady Blennerhassett with an
+industry that leaves nothing to be desired. A woman of a more heroic
+type would have borne with less repining an exclusion from Paris life
+which was mitigated by wealth, and fame, and abundant occupation, and
+a family that adored her, and troops of admiring friends. A woman who
+was less essentially noble would have assuredly accepted the overtures
+that were more than once made to her, and would have purchased her
+peace with Napoleon by burning a few grains of literary incense on his
+altar. But though, in a life of more than common vicissitude and
+temptation, Madame de Staël was betrayed into great weaknesses and
+into some serious faults, she never lost her sense of the dignity and
+integrity of literature, and her works are singularly free from
+unworthy flattery as well as from unworthy resentments and jealousies.
+The homage which Napoleon desired was never received, and in her great
+work on Italy and her still greater one on Germany there was no trace
+of his victories, influence, or animosities. 'In France,' he once
+said, 'there is a small literature and a great literature; the small
+literature is on my side, but the great literature is not for me.'</p>
+
+<p>The disfavour which thrust Madame de Staël out <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>of political
+influence, and then drove her into exile, proved a blessing in
+disguise, for it turned her mind decisively from political intrigues
+to those forms of literature in which she was most fitted to excel.
+Her treatise on 'Literature,' which was published in 1800, was
+conceived upon a scale too large for her own knowledge, and though she
+herself attributed to it the great and general favour that she enjoyed
+for a time in Paris society, it has not taken an enduring place in
+French literature. 'Delphine,' the most personal, and also the most
+censured, of her novels, had a still wider success, and made a deeper
+and more lasting impression. It appeared in 1802, and it was followed
+by a long interval, during which she appears to have published nothing
+except a short but admirable notice of her father, who died in the
+spring of 1804; but in 1807 'Corinne' burst upon the world, and at
+once obtained a European fame equalled by that of no French novel
+since 'La Nouvelle H&eacute;loise.' In this great work of imagination she
+embodied, in a highly poetic form, the impressions she had derived
+from her journeys in England and Italy, and its immense and
+instantaneous success placed her on the very pinnacle of fame. It is
+worthy of notice that a bitter attack upon 'Corinne' appeared in 'Le
+Moniteur,' based chiefly upon the fact that its hero was an
+Englishman; and there is good reason to believe that this attack was
+from the pen of Napoleon himself.</p>
+
+<p>A book of larger scope and of more serious influence soon followed.
+Germany at this time presented the singular spectacle of a people who
+had been reduced to the lowest depths of political depression, but
+who, at the same time, could boast of a contemporary literature that
+was the first in the world. In France a translation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>of 'Werther' had
+attained great popularity; some of the plays of Schiller, the idylls
+of Gessner, and a few other German works were well known; but scarcely
+any Frenchman had a conception of the magnitude and importance of the
+intellectual activity which was growing up beyond the Rhine, or of the
+vast place which Goethe, Schiller, and Kant were destined to take in
+European thought. It was one of the chief pleasures and occupations of
+Madame de Staël, during her exile, to explore this almost unknown
+field. It would scarcely have been thought that she was well fitted
+for the task. She learned the language late in life, and her
+characteristically French mind seemed very little in harmony with
+either the strength or the weakness of the Teutonic intellect. There
+was nothing very profound, or very subtle, or very poetical in her
+nature, and she had all that instinctive dislike to the vague, the
+disproportioned, the exaggerated, and the ambiguous, to fantastic and
+far-fetched conjecture, and to imposing edifices of speculation based
+upon scanty or shadowy materials, that pre-eminently distinguishes the
+best French thought. Very wisely, however, she placed herself in
+direct communication with the great writers of Germany, and a wholly
+new world of thought and sentiment gradually opened upon her mind. It
+is not too much to say that it was her pen that first revealed to the
+Latin world the intellectual greatness of Germany. In England,
+Coleridge had already laboured in the same field, and his admirable
+translation of 'Wallenstein' had appeared as early as 1800; but it had
+been completely still-born, and in England also it was reserved for
+the great Frenchwoman to give the first considerable impulse to the
+study of German literature. For the history, the merits, and the
+defects of her work on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>Germany, I cannot do better than to refer to
+the admirable pages which Lady Blennerhassett has devoted to the
+subject. With the doubtful exception of 'Le G&eacute;nie du Christianisme,'
+it was by far the most important French work which appeared during the
+reign of Napoleon. It is a characteristic fact that the whole of the
+first edition was confiscated by order of his Government. Happily the
+manuscript was saved, and about three years later it was printed in
+England.</p>
+
+<p>After some discreditable scenes, on which a recently published
+correspondence has thrown a painful though somewhat doubtful light,
+the connection of Madame de Staël with Benjamin Constant was broken.
+The two continued occasionally to correspond, and as late as 1815 we
+find her lending him a large sum of money; but their relations were
+never again what they had been, and on the side of Constant there
+appears to have been a large amount of positive malevolence. 'O
+Benjamin,' she wrote to him in one of her later letters, 'you have
+destroyed my life! For ten years not a day has passed that my heart
+has not suffered for you&mdash;and yet I loved you so much!' A strong
+affection, such as she had not found in her marriage with the Baron de
+Staël, was an imperious necessity of her existence, and after her
+breach with Constant she soon found an object in a young officer from
+Geneva named Rocca, who had returned to his native town badly wounded
+after brilliant service in Spain. When they first met, in 1810, Madame
+de Staël was forty-four and Rocca about twenty-three; but a genuine
+and honourable affection seems to have grown up on both sides, and in
+the following year they were married. Madame de Staël, however, either
+clinging to her name or dreading the ridicule of such a strangely
+assorted marriage, insisted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>upon its concealment, and Rocca generally
+passed in society as her lover. A child was born in 1812, but it was
+only after the death of Madame de Staël that the legitimacy of the
+connection was established. It proved much more productive of
+happiness than might have been expected, and greatly brightened her
+closing years. Nearly at the same time an important change passed over
+her religious views, and the vague deism of her youth deepened into a
+positive, definite, and earnest Christianity, but without mysticism
+and without intolerance. Some beautiful lines that are cited by Lady
+Blennerhassett very faithfully express the spirit of her belief: 'Il
+faut avoir soin, si l'on peut, que le d&eacute;clin de cette vie soit la
+jeunesse de l'autre. Se d&eacute;sint&eacute;resser de soi, sans cesser de
+s'int&eacute;resser aux autres, met quelque chose de divin dans l'&acirc;me.'</p>
+
+<p>She lived to see the downfall of perhaps the only man she really
+hated, his return from Elba, his final defeat at Waterloo, and the
+restoration of the Bourbons. But, though she detested Napoleon and his
+system, these things gave her no pleasure. The spectacle of an invaded
+and a dismembered France aroused her strongest feelings of patriotism,
+and she loved liberty too truly and too ardently to rejoice in the
+influences that triumphed in 1815. Her last years were chiefly spent
+in the composition of her 'Considerations on the French Revolution,'
+in which she sums up the convictions of her life. It is one of her
+most valuable and most lasting books. The disproportioned prominence
+which is naturally assigned in it to Necker, and the manifest personal
+element in her antipathy to Napoleon, impair its weight, indeed, as a
+history; but few writers have criticised with more justice the
+successive stages of the Revolution, and few <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>books of its generation
+are so rich in political wisdom. The concluding chapters, in which, in
+a strain of noble eloquence, she pleads the cause of moderate and
+constitutional freedom, show how steadily and how strongly, in an age
+of many disenchantments, she clung to the belief of her youth.</p>
+
+<p>The 'Considerations on the French Revolution' had a vast and an
+immediate success, and in a few days sixty thousand copies were sold.
+Madame de Staël, however, did not live to witness her triumph. In
+February 1817 she was struck down by a paralytic illness, and on July
+14, after a long period of complete prostration, she passed away
+tranquilly in her sleep. It was a peaceful ending to an agitated and
+chequered career. She had enjoyed much and suffered much. She had
+committed grave faults, and had met with her full share of
+disappointment and ingratitude; but few women have left such an
+enduring monument behind them, or have touched human life on so many
+sides and with so many sympathies.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> There is also an English, and somewhat abridged,
+translation.</p></div>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="SIR_ROBERT_PEEL" id="SIR_ROBERT_PEEL"></a>THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>There is probably no other English public man of the present century
+whose career has attracted in so large a measure the interest both of
+politicians and of men of letters as Sir Robert Peel. In addition to a
+crowd of industrious but not very distinguished compilers, it has been
+discussed with great skill by Guizot, by Lord Dalling, by Mr. Goldwin
+Smith, and by Mr. Spencer Walpole; and in that great literature of
+monographs which has grown up with such remarkable rapidity in England
+within the last decade, no less than three have been devoted to the
+life of Peel. The interest that attaches to him is, indeed, of a very
+peculiar character. He was almost wholly destitute of the power of
+imagination that is so conspicuous in the careers or speeches of
+Chatham and Burke, of Canning and Beaconsfield. Except during a few
+years that followed the Reform Bill of 1832, he never exhibited the
+spectacle of a leader struggling successfully against enormous odds.
+He was not one of those statesmen who see further than their
+contemporaries, and who, after years of failure and struggle, are
+proved by their ultimate triumph to have most truly read the
+tendencies of their age. Though he was three times Prime Minister of
+England, and though he was for a time deemed the most brilliant of
+party leaders, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>he left the great and powerful party which trusted him
+almost hopelessly shattered. Twice in his life he carried measures of
+transcendent importance which he had not only persistently opposed,
+but had been specially placed in power for the purpose of resisting.
+The most striking incidents in his career are incidents of failure
+rather than of success, and history has pronounced that, on the most
+important questions of his time, he was disastrously wrong. The long
+delay in the inevitable emancipation of the Catholics, which was
+largely due to him, and the circumstances under which he ultimately
+carried the measure, produced evils that are in full activity at the
+present hour. His persistent opposition to parliamentary reform
+contributed to bring England to the very verge of revolution; though
+when the Reform Bill had been carried he nobly retrieved his error by
+the frankness with which he accepted, and the skill with which he
+used, the new conditions of English politics. His abolition of the
+Corn Laws at the head of a Government which had been pledged to
+maintain them gave a great shock to public confidence, and for a long
+period most seriously dislocated the machinery of party government.
+But, in spite of all this, there are few statesmen who have carried so
+large a number of measures of great and acknowledged importance, who
+have impressed so deeply the sense of their superiority on the minds
+of their contemporaries, or who were followed to the grave by a more
+widespread and genuine regret.</p>
+
+<p>It is this contrast between the leading incidents of Peel's life and
+the impression which he made on the world that constitutes the great
+interest of his career. The explanation is not difficult to discover.
+It is the common story of extraordinary qualities balanced by
+striking <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>defects. He was not a great statesman, but he was a
+supremely great administrator, a supremely great master of
+parliamentary management and of parliamentary legislation. He had
+little prescience; he often grossly misread the signs of the times, or
+only recognised them when it was too late; but when he was once
+convinced, he acted on his conviction with frankness and courage, and
+when a thing had to be done, no one could do it like him. As Disraeli
+said: 'In the course of time the method which was natural to Sir
+Robert Peel matured into a habit of such expertness that no one in the
+despatch of affairs ever adapted the means more fitly to the end.'<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>
+In the words of Sir Cornewall Lewis: 'For concocting, producing,
+explaining, and defending measures, he had no equal, or anything like
+an equal.'<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the interesting volumes which were published by Lord Mahon and Mr.
+Cardwell in 1856 we have Peel's own explanation of his conduct
+relating to the removal of the Catholic disabilities in 1829, and to
+the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846; but the publication of his
+confidential correspondence has been long delayed, and the volume
+before us only carries the work down to 1827. It has been edited by
+Mr. Parker with great care and accuracy, and with undeviating good
+sense and good taste, and it throws much curious light upon a corner
+of history which has been but little explored.</p>
+
+<p>Peel started in life with great advantages. The eldest son of a very
+wealthy manufacturer who had long occupied a respectable place in
+Parliament, and who was closely attached to the dominant party in the
+State, he was from his earliest youth destined by his father to be a
+statesman. Under such circumstances he was certain <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>in the pre-Reform
+period to have not only all the advantages which the best school and
+university education could give, but also the still greater advantages
+of an early introduction into both parliamentary and official life;
+provided always that no aberration of character, or taste, or
+imagination, or opinion drew him aside from the plain path that lay
+before him. He grew up in an atmosphere of the best middle-class
+virtues. Decorum, good sense, industry, strict morality; a sober
+religious orthodoxy; much simplicity of life, preserved in the midst
+of great wealth; ideals which, if not very lofty, were at least
+eminently practical and perfectly honourable, prevailed around him,
+and their influence imbued his whole nature. He accepted cordially the
+destiny that was before him, and threw himself into it with untiring
+industry. His opinions changed during his life much more than his
+character, and the shy, sensitive, industrious, somewhat
+self-conscious, somewhat awkward Harrow boy, prefigured very
+faithfully the future statesman. He is described as wandering when a
+schoolboy by himself among the hedges, knocking down birds with
+stones, a practice in which he was very skilful, and which eventually
+developed into a strong passion for shooting. He was quiet,
+good-natured, studious, scarcely ever in scrapes, and it was not until
+the last year of his school life that he threw himself with any
+keenness into the amusements of his comrades. He had good natural
+abilities; but probably the one point in which he greatly exceeded the
+average of intelligent boys was his memory, which was of extraordinary
+retentiveness, and which he carefully cultivated. During a few months
+which elapsed between leaving Harrow and going to Oxford he constantly
+attended the House of Commons, under the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>Gallery; and he also
+attended some natural history lectures at the Royal Institution. His
+Oxford career was very successful. He is said to have worked before
+his degree examination for no less than eighteen hours, through the
+day and night. He gained a double-first, and in the first class of
+mathematics he stood alone. Such a success at once stamped him as a
+youth of extraordinary promise, and the impression it made was
+especially great because, the examination system having been very
+recently reorganised, he was the first Oxford man who had attained it.</p>
+
+<p>He was brought into Parliament in April 1809, almost immediately after
+he came of age, for the borough of Cashel. No special significance
+attaches to the fact of his having entered Parliament for an Irish
+constituency, for his father had simply bought the seat, and the young
+member appears to have never gone over to his constituents or held any
+communication with them.</p>
+
+<p>'When I sat for Cashel,' he afterwards wrote, 'and was not in office,
+having made those sacrifices which could then legally be made, but now
+cannot, I did not consider myself at all pledged to the support of
+Government.'<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> Perceval, who represented in its extreme form the
+Tory reaction that followed the Revolution, was then Prime Minister,
+and Peel at once took his place among his followers. He first spoke in
+seconding the Address in 1810, and in the partial judgment of his
+father his speech was considered, 'by men the best qualified to form a
+correct opinion of public speaking, the best first speech since that
+of Mr. Pitt.'<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was not, perhaps, an unmixed advantage to Peel <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>that while he was
+still a mere boy his father had somewhat ostentatiously destined him
+to be one day a Tory statesman. Such an education could hardly fail to
+strengthen the self-consciousness which was never wanting in Peel's
+character, and to give a decided bias to his judgment. At the same
+time, the distinctive merits of his career would have probably never
+been fully developed without the early administrative training which
+his opinions made possible for him, and there is nothing in his early
+history to give the least countenance to the belief that his adherence
+to the extreme type of Tory politics imposed the slightest strain upon
+his judgment. His immediate interests and his sentiments appear at
+this time to have perfectly concurred. He came into Parliament with
+the party which was dominant, and with the section of the party which
+was most poor in able men. Had he adopted on the Catholic question the
+liberal opinions of Canning and Castlereagh, he must have held a
+position altogether subordinate to them; and the same causes that in
+the preceding Ministry had raised Perceval to be leader of the House
+of Commons over the heads of Castlereagh and Canning, marked out for
+Peel the future leadership of the party of resistance to concession.
+It has been said, on the authority of Sir Lawrence Peel, that his
+first appointment was that of private secretary to Lord Liverpool, but
+Mr. Parker has found no trace of this in the papers either of Peel or
+of Lord Liverpool. In 1810, however, when he was but just twenty-two,
+he entered administrative life as Under-Secretary of State for War and
+the Colonies, and he held that place till August 1812, when he
+obtained the far more important post of Chief Secretary for Ireland,
+and became for the next six years virtual governor of that country.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>It was a post requiring not only great administrative skill, but also
+great gifts of original statesmanship. During the last five years of
+the eighteenth century, and especially during the rebellion of 1798,
+religious passions in Ireland, which had for more than a generation
+been steadily subsiding, had been kindled into a flame, and the urgent
+necessity of settling the Catholic question had begun to press with
+irresistible force on the minds of the more intelligent statesmen.
+Pitt had intended to complete the Union by measures for admitting
+Catholics into Parliament, for commuting tithes, and for paying the
+Catholic clergy. Through the instrumentality of Lord Castlereagh
+assurances of the disposition of the Cabinet had been conveyed to the
+Catholic bishops and the leading Catholic laymen in 1799, which were
+sufficient to secure their active support for the Union and to prevent
+any serious opposition among the Catholic laity. The bishops met the
+wishes of the English Government by drawing up a series of
+resolutions, in which they declared their readiness to accept with
+gratitude an endowment for the priesthood, to confer upon the English
+Government a power of veto over the appointment of Catholic bishops
+which would prevent the introduction into that body of any disloyal
+men, and to certify to the Government the nomination of all Catholic
+parish priests, as well as the fact that they had taken the oath of
+allegiance. But the King had not been informed of the negotiations
+that had taken place, and it is well known how his uncompromising
+opposition produced the resignation of Pitt in 1801, how the agitation
+caused by the question threw the King into a temporary fit of
+insanity, and how Pitt at once promised that he would not move the
+question again during the reign. In the spring of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>1804 Pitt resumed
+office, on the express understanding that he would not permit Catholic
+Emancipation; when the question was introduced in 1805 by Lord
+Grenville in the Lords, and by Fox in the Commons, it was defeated in
+both Houses by immense majorities, and Pitt declared that though he
+was still of opinion that there was no danger in the concession, yet,
+as long as the circumstances which prevented him from bringing it
+forward continued, he would be no party to agitating the question.</p>
+
+<p>In 1806 Pitt died, and Fox and Grenville were themselves in power, but
+the Catholics were again disappointed. The prejudice of the King, the
+feeling of the country, the recent vote of the House of Commons, the
+presence of Lord Sidmouth in the Ministry, proved insuperable
+obstacles, and Fox could only urge the Catholic leaders to postpone
+the question. Fox died in September 1806, and the Government presided
+over by Lord Grenville met a new Parliament in the following December.
+Grenville had been Pitt's colleague during the negotiations with the
+Catholics that preceded the Union; he had strongly urged upon Pitt the
+necessity of resigning in 1801, and he never forgave him for having so
+lightly abandoned the cause. Grenville did not attempt to carry
+emancipation, but he resolved to take at least one serious step in the
+direction of concession, by throwing open to the Catholics all the
+posts in the army and navy. An Irish Act of 1793 had enabled them to
+hold in Ireland commissions in the army, and to attain any rank except
+commander-in-chief, master-general of the ordnance, and general of the
+staff; but if the regiments in which they served were sent to England,
+they were disqualified by law from remaining in the service. The
+original Bill of Grenville's Government was intended to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>remove this
+anomaly, and assimilate the law in the two countries; but in the
+course of the discussions it was agreed that the Catholics should be
+freed from the exceptions to which they were subjected by the Irish
+Act, that all posts in the army and navy should be thrown open to men
+of all religious persuasions, subject only to the obligation of taking
+an oath which was prescribed, and that Catholic soldiers should be
+guaranteed by law the free exercise of their religion. The King had
+been informed of this, and was understood to have given a distinct,
+though a reluctant, assent; but a strong Protestant party, headed by
+Perceval, fiercely opposed it. The King withdrew his assent from the
+added clauses, and expressed his disapprobation of the whole measure.
+At last, after much discussion, the Ministers agreed for the present
+to withdraw their Bill, reserving to themselves by a Cabinet minute,
+which was submitted to the King, the right to renew it, or to propose
+any other measure on the subject which they desired. But the King was
+determined to push his victory to the end. He demanded from his
+Ministers a promise in writing that they would never again propose to
+him any measure connected with Catholic emancipation, and as the
+Ministers refused to give this unconstitutional pledge, the King
+dismissed them from office, and called the Duke of Portland to the
+head of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>It was the second time that the King had broken up a Ministry on the
+Catholic question, and his conduct was especially significant, as his
+refusal to grant military promotion to Catholics was announced in the
+midst of a great war, and at a time when thousands of Catholics were
+fighting in his armies. It at once appeared that there were two
+entirely distinct schools of Tories. Pitt, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>to the very close of his
+life, had declared that his opinions on the Catholic question were
+unchanged, though he would not force them against the inclination of
+the King; and his views were adopted by Canning, Castlereagh, and
+Wellesley. Perceval, on the other hand, emphatically declared that he
+'could not conceive a time or any change of circumstances which could
+render further concession to the Catholics consistent with the safety
+of the State.'<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> With the exception of Eldon, scarcely any man of
+real ability adopted this view until Peel entered Parliament as the
+follower of Perceval. It is sufficiently evident from this fact how
+little truth there is in the theory that attributes Peel's early
+Toryism to a blind admiration for Pitt.</p>
+
+<p>The party of the King triumphed. Parliament was dissolved on the 'No
+Popery' cry, and on the first great party division that followed the
+election the Ministers in the House of Commons had a majority of 195.
+Canning and Castlereagh, though they had no sympathy with that cry,
+availed themselves of the current that ran so strongly against the
+Whigs. In the Ministry of the Duke of Portland they held the seals for
+the Foreign and War Departments, but the leadership of the Commons and
+the virtual leadership of the Ministry was given to Perceval, who,
+though entirely without brilliant parts, exhibited unexpected talents,
+both as a practical debater and as a manager of men, and who had the
+advantage of representing fully the dominant party. Several
+circumstances, however, other than a conviction of the danger of the
+Catholic claims, contributed to the triumph of the anti-Catholic
+party. The Whigs, already broken by their policy towards France in the
+first stages of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>Revolution and of the war, had become still more
+unpopular through their opposition to the seizure of the Danish fleet
+and to the Peninsular War. They were divided among themselves, for
+there was little sympathy between the more aristocratic Whigs, who
+were represented by Grenville and Lord Howick, and the more Radical
+party of Sir F. Burdett and Whitbread. A strong personal as well as
+political dislike already existed between Howick and Canning, and
+prevented their hearty co-operation on the one great question on which
+they were agreed. Above all, there was a general conviction among
+statesmen that the King's mind was trembling on the verge of insanity,
+and that a renewal of the Catholic complications of 1801 would produce
+a catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>The question was debated in both the Lords and Commons in 1808. In the
+former it was lost by a majority of 87, and in the latter by a
+majority of 153. Grattan on this occasion introduced the Catholic
+petition in a speech of consummate power; but both Castlereagh and
+Canning opposed the reception of the petition, on the ground that the
+time was unsuited for the agitation of the question; and the spirit of
+the ruling part of the Ministry was sufficiently shown by the
+reduction of the Maynooth grant from 13,000<i>l.</i> to 9,250<i>l.</i> When the
+Portland Government was broken up in September 1809 by the quarrel,
+duel, and resignation of Canning and Castlereagh, Perceval became the
+head of the new Ministry, Lord Wellesley occupying the place of
+Canning, and Lord Hawkesbury that of Castlereagh; and an intensely
+anti-Catholic ministry continued to the death of Perceval. In 1809 the
+Catholic question was not introduced into Parliament. In the spring of
+1810 it was introduced into both Houses, but was defeated by
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>majorities of 86 and 104; but in October 1810 an event occurred which
+profoundly changed the aspect of affairs. The King's insanity broke
+out anew in a form which gave little hope of recovery, and the Prince
+of Wales was appointed Regent. For a year the regency was subject to
+restrictions similar to those which had been adopted in 1788, but on
+February 1, 1812, these restrictions were to cease, and the Regent was
+to enter into full fruition of the royal power.</p>
+
+<p>The hopes of the Catholics were now raised to the highest point. With
+the confirmed insanity of George III. the most serious of all the
+obstacles to their claims was removed. During the year of the
+restricted regency, while there was still some chance of the recovery
+of the King, the Prince of Wales declined to remove the existing
+Ministry from office, though even this decision was not taken without
+some hesitation and some negotiations with the Whigs. The Catholics,
+however, fully expected that the royal influence would now be exerted
+in their favour, and that the Whig Ministry would speedily come. The
+Prince of Wales had long been in close connection with the Whigs. As
+early as 1797 he had expressed a desire to go over to Ireland as
+Lord-Lieutenant, carrying with him a policy of conciliation to the
+Catholics. In 1805, when Fox and Grenville had introduced the Catholic
+question into the Imperial Parliament, the Prince, while stating that
+considerations of obvious delicacy prevented him from taking an
+immediate and open part in its favour, had given the Whig leaders the
+fullest authority to assure the Catholics of Ireland that he would
+never forsake their interests, the 'most distinct and authentic
+pledge' of his wish to relieve them from the disabilities of which
+they complained, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>and to exert himself in their favour as soon as he
+was constitutionally able to do so. It is easy therefore to imagine
+the consternation and the indignation with which, in 1812, the
+Catholics found that the Prince Regent had changed his principles and
+his policy; that, after a short and perhaps insincere negotiation with
+the Whigs, he had resolved to maintain in power a Ministry which was
+constructed for the main purpose of maintaining the Catholic
+disabilities; and that his own opinions were rapidly verging towards
+this policy.</p>
+
+<p>The situation in Ireland was becoming very dangerous. For some years
+after the Union a great apathy prevailed, and there is no reasonable
+doubt that, if events in England had been favourable, Catholic
+emancipation would have met with no serious opposition in Ireland, and
+could have been carried with every reasonable limitation and
+safeguard. The most competent English officials calculated that at
+least sixty-four of the hundred Irish representatives would vote for
+it, and that a decided preponderance of Irish Protestant opinion was
+in its favour. On the other hand, the Catholic bishops and aristocracy
+had fully accepted the policy of an endowment for the priests and a
+veto on the appointment of bishops, and the most Conservative elements
+in the Catholic body still exercised an ascendancy over their
+co-religionists. The question of the veto had been mentioned in the
+Commons, by Sir J. Hippisley, in 1805, and in 1808 Grattan and
+Ponsonby formally announced, on the authority of the Catholic bishops,
+their readiness to accept it. A letter from Bishop Milner was read to
+the House, which very clearly stated their position:</p>
+
+<p>'The Catholic prelates of Ireland,' he wrote, 'are willing to give a
+direct negative power to his Majesty's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>Government with respect to the
+nomination of their titular bishoprics, in such manner that when they
+have among themselves resolved who is the fittest person for the
+vacant see, they will transmit his name to his Majesty's Ministers;
+and if the latter should object to that name, they will transmit
+another and another, until a name is presented to which no objection
+is made; and (which is never likely to be the case) should the Pope
+refuse to give those essentially necessary spiritual powers, of which
+he is the depository, to the person so presented by the Catholic
+bishops and so approved by the Government, they will continue to
+propose names till one occurs which is agreeable to both
+parties&mdash;namely, the Crown and Apostolic See.'</p>
+
+<p>The prelates also engaged to nominate no persons who had not
+previously taken the oath of allegiance.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> But a democratic party
+had now arisen among the Catholics, which utterly repudiated the
+restrictions of the veto, which sought emancipation by violent and
+democratic agitation, and which was rapidly drawing the most dangerous
+elements in the country into its channel. The bishops, pushed on by
+the strong force that was behind them, speedily retraced their steps
+and passed resolutions against the restrictions they had accepted, and
+there were evident signs that the Catholic body was passing away from
+the guidance of Grattan and of the gentry. This was not surprising in
+a country where many elements of anarchy subsisted; and the democratic
+party had already found in O'Connell a leader of consummate skill, and
+of untiring industry, energy, and ambition. But the chief cause of the
+great change that was passing over the Irish Catholics was to be
+found <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>in the disappointment of their hopes in 1801, in 1804, in 1806,
+and 1812; in the desertion of their cause by Pitt; in the proved
+impotence of the Whigs; in the failure of 'the securities' even to
+mitigate the hostility of Perceval and his followers; in the profound
+consternation and exasperation that were produced by the attitude of
+the Regent. The formation of the General Committee of Catholic
+Delegates was speedily followed by its suppression under the
+Convention Act. But the influence of O'Connell was rapidly growing;
+there were already ominous signs of a possible agitation for the
+repeal of the Union, and the indignation of the Catholics was
+significantly shown by the famous 'witchery resolutions,' which were
+unanimously carried by the aggregate meeting of the Catholics in the
+June of 1812, reflecting on the influence which Lady Hertford was
+believed to exercise over the Prince. After calling for the 'total and
+unqualified repeal of the penal laws which aggrieve the Catholics,'
+they proceeded to use the following language: 'That from authentic
+documents now before us we hear, with deep disappointment and anguish,
+how cruelly the promised boon of Catholic freedom has been interrupted
+by the fatal witchery of an unworthy secret influence.... To this
+impure source we trace but too distinctly our baffled hopes and
+protracted servitude.' Such language was not calculated to conciliate
+the Prince, and he was only confirmed in his hostility to the
+Catholics. As early as September 1813 the Duke of Richmond wrote to
+Peel: 'I was delighted to find H.R.H. as steady a Protestant as the
+Attorney-General.'</p>
+
+<p>The commencement, however, of what was virtually a new reign had given
+a new activity to the question. It was brought forward in different
+forms in the first months <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>of 1812 by Lord Wellesley and Lord
+Donoughmore in one House, and by Lord Morpeth and Grattan in the
+other; and although it was still defeated, the diminished majorities,
+the evident signs of an increased Catholic party in the country, and
+the language of some of the most distinguished men in Parliament,
+clearly indicated the progress of the measure. Canning especially now
+strenuously urged that the time had come when the Catholic question
+must be fully dealt with. The assassination of Perceval on May 11,
+1812, again changed the situation and led to a long series of feeble
+and abortive negotiations. An attempt was made to continue the
+existing Ministry under the lead of Lord Liverpool, with the addition
+of Canning and Lord Wellesley; but these statesmen declined the offer,
+on the ground that the other Ministers refused to carry Catholic
+emancipation, and Lord Wellesley on the additional ground of their
+languor in prosecuting the Spanish war. The Regent then authorised
+Lord Wellesley to construct a Ministry, with the assistance of
+Canning, and an offer was made to Lords Grey and Grenville to join it,
+promising an immediate consideration of the Catholic claims with a
+view to a conciliatory settlement; while, on the other hand, attempts
+were made to retain the services of the leading members of Perceval's
+Ministry. But the Whig leaders refused to take part in a coalition
+Ministry, in which they would probably be outvoted, and the former
+Cabinet was reconstructed, under the leadership of Lord Liverpool, but
+on the principle of leaving the Catholic question an open one.
+Liverpool himself was opposed to concession, but his opposition was by
+no means of the unqualified kind which had been shown by Perceval; and
+a large proportion of his colleagues, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>including Castlereagh, who led
+the House of Commons, were in favour of Catholic emancipation. If
+Canning had consented to join the Ministry, Lord Wellesley would
+probably have been Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, and under these
+circumstances the Catholic side could scarcely have failed to acquire
+a decisive preponderance. If, on the other hand, Castlereagh had
+followed the example of Canning, and refused to take part in a
+Ministry which declined to settle the Catholic question, or if the
+Whigs had consented to co-operate with Canning, the settlement of this
+great question could scarcely have been deferred. Unfortunately, none
+of these things happened. Castlereagh remained the leader of the
+House. Canning refused to follow his leadership, and two years later
+accepted the embassy to Lisbon. The Whig leaders stood aloof from all
+Ministerial combinations. The Duke of Richmond, who was violently
+anti-Catholic, continued to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; the post of
+Chief Secretary was given to Peel, and Ireland was destined to undergo
+fifteen more years of demoralising and disorganising agitation before
+the Catholic question was settled.</p>
+
+<p>Canning, however, as an independent member, brought forward a
+resolution pledging the House to an early consideration of the laws
+affecting his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, with a view to their
+final conciliatory adjustment, and the conditions of the question had
+so profoundly changed that it was carried by a majority of 129; while
+a similar motion by Lord Wellesley in the House of Lords was met by
+the previous question, which was carried by a majority of only one.</p>
+
+<p>Peel, though he had come into Parliament as a special follower of
+Perceval, had not yet pledged himself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>decisively against the
+Catholics. He had voted silently against Canning's motion in June, and
+although he had spoken against a previous motion of Grattan, he had
+done so mainly on the ground that the time was not opportune, and had
+expressly guarded himself against giving any positive pledge. He was
+now, however, obliged to take a more prominent part, and for the next
+six years he was the chief support of the anti-Catholic party in
+Parliament. His part was a very difficult one, for he had to encounter
+Grattan, Plunket, Canning, and the Whig leaders, and he had scarcely
+any real supporters. Saurin, the Attorney-General, it is true, was
+strongly opposed to all concession. He was a lawyer of high character
+and attainments, of Huguenot descent and strong Huguenot principles,
+and he had borne a distinguished part in opposition to the Union; but
+Saurin refused to go to London. Bushe, who was Solicitor-General,
+leaned to the Catholic side; and, to the great indignation and
+consternation of the Government, Wellesley Pole, who had preceded Peel
+as Chief Secretary and who was the brother of Lord Wellesley, now
+pronounced himself strongly in Parliament in favour of the Catholics.
+This speech was entirely unexpected, for Pole had hitherto been
+regarded as a staunch adherent of the Protestant party, and as late as
+the last day of 1811 he had sent a memorandum on the Catholic question
+to the Secretary of State in England, which was intended to be laid
+before the Cabinet, and which maintained the impossibility of safely
+satisfying the Catholic claims, and the expediency of the Prince
+Regent's taking a decided part against them. A general election had
+taken place in September, and it is evident from the letters of Lord
+Liverpool and Peel that they at this time looked upon Canning and his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>followers with even more hostility than the regular Opposition.</p>
+
+<p>In the new Parliament the Catholic question at once assumed a great
+prominence. A motion for the immediate consideration of the laws
+affecting the Catholics was introduced by Grattan, supported by
+Castlereagh, opposed by Peel, and ultimately carried by a majority of
+40. A resolution of Grattan's for removing laws imposing civil and
+military disabilities on the Catholics, with such regulations and
+exceptions as might provide for the security of the Protestant
+succession and of the Established Church, was next introduced. Peel
+opposed it bitterly, but was beaten by a majority of 67.</p>
+
+<p>'We were terribly beaten,' he wrote to his Under-Secretary, 'but we
+are sad cowards, I am afraid; at least, we are shamefully used. Poor
+Duigenan could not get a hearing, and the general impression seemed
+against the Protestants. We will fight them out, however, to the last.
+I am sure it is better than to give way.' 'Your defence of the
+Protestant cause,' wrote Saurin, 'was not only by far the ablest and
+best, but the only one which did not seem to strengthen the cause of
+the adversary by some concession of principle. I really fear the
+Protestant cause is lost in the Commons. There can be no rally now but
+on the securities.'<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>Grattan at once brought in a Bill in accordance with the terms of the
+Resolution that had been carried; but the Protestant party now rallied
+around a motion of Sir John Hippisley, for a committee to inquire into
+the state and tenets of the Roman Catholics, and the laws affecting
+them. Canning pointed out with great force that a committee of inquiry
+was exactly what the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>Protestant party had for so many years
+strenuously resisted; but, as Peel wrote to the Duke of Richmond,
+there was no inconsistency in their conduct: 'When the question was
+whether we should consider the claims of the Catholics and the laws
+affecting them, or should resist their claims, we voted for resistance
+without inquiry; the question now is, whether we shall consider or
+concede, and we prefer inquiry to concession.'<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>The motion for delay, however, was defeated by 187 to 235, and the
+second reading of Grattan's Bill was carried by 245 to 203. But a
+sudden change now occurred in the prospects of the cause. Canning and
+Castlereagh, with the full assent of Grattan, introduced clauses for
+the securities which had been before intimated, giving the Crown a
+control over the nomination of the Catholic bishops. But the bishops
+unanimously condemned the proposal, and the large majority of the
+Catholic Board supported them. It became evident that the Bill before
+Parliament would fail to satisfy the Catholics, and after a long
+discussion the clause admitting Catholics to Parliament was rejected
+by 251 to 247.</p>
+
+<p>Peel had triumphed. The profound division which had broken out among
+the supporters of Catholic emancipation threw back for many years a
+cause which had been almost gained, though in 1817 an Act was passed
+without opposition throwing open to the Catholics the military and
+naval positions which Grenville had vainly attempted to open in 1807.
+Few things could have been eventually more disastrous both to Ireland
+and to the Empire than the defeat of the influence represented by
+Grattan and by the Catholic gentry, and the growing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>ascendancy of
+O'Connell and the democratic and sacerdotal party in Irish popular
+politics. Grattan had long predicted that, if concession was not
+speedily and wisely made, population in Ireland would drift away from
+the guiding and moderating influence of property; that seditious and
+anarchical men would gain an ascendancy which would make the whole
+problem of Irish Government incalculably difficult; that a priesthood
+unconnected with the English Government would lead to a 'Catholic
+laity discorporated from the people of England.' In the Irish
+Parliament the strong bias of Conservatism in his policy had been
+repeatedly displayed, and it was equally apparent in the Imperial
+Parliament. In 1807 he had supported the Insurrection Act, in
+opposition to many of his friends, on the ground that there was a real
+and dangerous French party in Ireland, which the common law was
+insufficient to suppress. In 1814 he expressed his full approval of
+the proclamation suppressing the Catholic Board. He steadily and
+earnestly maintained that, although it was vitally necessary that
+Catholic emancipation should be speedily carried, it should be
+accompanied by measures for securing, as far as possible, the loyalty
+of the higher Catholic clergy, and uniting them in interest and
+sentiment with the British Government. He looked with bitter hostility
+on the rise and policy of O'Connell. He accused him of 'setting afloat
+the bad passions of the people,' making grievances instruments of
+power without any honest wish to redress them, treating politics as a
+trade to serve a desperate and interested purpose.</p>
+
+<p>But the influence of Grattan was now manifestly declining, and Peel
+watched the decline with a short-sighted and not very generous
+pleasure. In Parliament, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>though numbers were against the Catholics,
+the overwhelming preponderance of ability was still in favour of the
+principle of emancipation, and it was in leading the anti-Catholic
+party that Peel chiefly acquired his almost unrivalled parliamentary
+skill. He had, indeed, all the qualities of a great debater: courage,
+fluency, self-possession, complete command of every subject he
+treated, unfailing lucidity both in statement and reasoning; admirable
+skill in marshalling and disentangling great masses of facts, in
+meeting, evading, or retorting arguments, and detecting the weak
+points of the case of an opponent, in veiling, by plausible language,
+extreme or unpalatable views, in extricating himself by subtle
+distinctions and qualifications from embarrassing situations. He can
+scarcely, it is true, be called a great orator. His style was formal,
+cumbrous, extremely verbose, without sparkle and without fire. He had
+little or no power of moving the passions, nothing of the flexibility
+that can adapt itself to very different audiences, nothing of the
+philosophic insight that can impart a perennial interest to transient
+discussions. But few men have ever understood the House of Commons
+like him, or have possessed in so high a degree the qualities that are
+most fitted to command and influence it. The great mass of
+anti-Catholic sentiment in the country rallied around him as its most
+powerful champion, and in 1817 he attained one of the chief objects of
+his ambition in being elected member for Oxford University. It is well
+known that his older and more brilliant rival had long aspired to this
+honour. It was mainly through the Catholic question that Canning
+missed and Peel won the prize.</p>
+
+<p>The nickname 'Orange Peel,' which was given to him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>in Ireland, was
+not wholly deserved. His letters abundantly show that he had no
+sympathy with the ribbons, the anniversaries, the party tunes, the
+insulting processions and insulting language of the Orangemen; and,
+although he believed that in Ireland anti-Catholicism and loyalty were
+very closely connected, he viewed with much dislike the growth of any
+political confederacies unconnected with the Government. Declamation
+and boastfulness and needless provocation were, indeed, wholly alien
+to his nature; and even when defending extreme causes he rarely or
+never used the language of a fanatic. He resisted Catholic concession
+mainly on the ground that the admission of the Catholics to political
+power would prove incompatible with the existence of the Established
+Church in Ireland, with the security of property in a country where
+property was mainly in Protestant hands, and ultimately with the
+connection between the two countries. His arguments were not based on
+religion, but on political expediency; but it was an expediency which
+he believed to be permanent.</p>
+
+<p>'I see,' he wrote to the Duke of Richmond, 'one of the papers reports
+me as having said that I was not an advocate for perpetual exclusion.
+It might be inferred that I objected only to the time of discussing
+the question. That is not the case.... There are certain anomalies in
+the system which I would wish to remove, but the main principles of it
+I would retain untouched.... At no time, and under no circumstances,
+so long as the Catholic admits the supremacy in spirituals of a
+foreign earthly potentate, and will not tell us what supremacy in
+spirituals means&mdash;so long as he will not give us voluntarily the
+security which every despotic Sovereign <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>in Europe has by the
+concession of the Pope himself&mdash;will I consent to admit them.'<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>The letters before us show clearly that his political sympathy was
+with Saurin, with Duigenan, with Lord Eldon, and even with Lord
+Norbury. O'Connell early perceived in Peel his most dangerous
+opponent, and a strong personal enmity, which was as much due to
+profound differences of character as to differences of policy, grew up
+between them. A scurrilous attack of O'Connell on Peel in 1815 was
+followed by a challenge, and a duel was prevented only by the arrest
+of O'Connell. The antipathy between the two men was never mitigated.
+O'Connell said of Peel that 'his smile was like the silver plate on a
+coffin.' Peel, in his confidential letters, expressed the utmost
+dislike and contempt for the character of O'Connell, and when he was
+at length compelled by the Clare election to concede Catholic
+emancipation, his feeling towards him was significantly and
+characteristically shown. He enumerated in a brilliant passage the men
+to whom the triumph of Catholic emancipation was really due. He spoke
+of Fox and Grattan, of Plunket and of Canning, but he made no mention
+of O'Connell.</p>
+
+<p>The administrative side of Peel's Chief Secretaryship is much more
+creditable to him than the political side. The vivid picture which his
+letters present of the manner in which Ireland was governed more than
+fifteen years after the Union will probably strike the reader with
+some surprise, when he remembers that the Union had extinguished about
+seventy small boroughs, and had at the same time greatly diminished
+the importance of the Irish representatives, and therefore the
+necessities for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>corruption. Peel noticed that while 'the pension list
+of Great Britain was limited to 90,000<i>l.</i> per annum, the pension list
+of Ireland may amount to 80,000<i>l.</i> a year; and he found almost all
+Irish patronage still employed for political purposes, and almost
+every office honeycombed with abuses and peculations. A few extracts
+will give the reader some notion of the nature and extent of the evil,
+and of the efforts of Peel to reduce it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'How is it possible,' he wrote, 'to propose that a shilling should be
+granted to a general officer on the staff in Ireland when sixpence is
+granted in England? This is called a modification in official phrase,
+but it ought to be called doubling the allowance. Set your face
+steadily against all increase of salary, all extra allowances, all
+plausible claims for additional emolument. Economy must be the order
+of the day&mdash;rigid economy.'<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> 'When English members hear that the
+sheriff appoints the grand jury, that the grand jury tax the county,
+that the sheriff has a considerable influence at elections, and that
+the sheriff is appointed openly on the recommendation of the member
+supporting the Government, they are startled not a little.... I know
+that this is a most convenient patronage to the Government, but I know
+also that I cannot hint in the House of Commons at such a source of
+patronage, and I confess I have great doubts on the legitimacy of
+it.... After Lord Redesdale's declaration ... that the mode of
+appointing sheriffs "poisons the sources of justice," and witnessing
+the general feeling among the English against making the nomination of
+a most important officer in the execution of justice dependent on the
+will of the county member, I thought it highly expedient to give a
+positive assurance <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>that the Government would revert to the ancient
+and legal practice of appointing sheriffs in Ireland.... With a pure
+Bench&mdash;and time will, I hope, purify it&mdash;the change would be an
+essential change for the better.'<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> 'Foster says that the abuses
+discovered in the office [of Clerk of the Pleas] are enormous, that
+the amount of fees exacted from suitors is not less than 30,000<i>l.</i>
+per annum, of which the principal clerk did not receive more than
+one-third. A Mr. Pollock, the first deputy, is in receipt of 8,000<i>l.</i>
+or 9,000<i>l.</i> a year as his own share of the profits; other deputies
+and persons unnecessarily employed have profits amounting to 1,200<i>l.</i>
+or 1,400<i>l.</i> a year each. Foster thinks that every possible difficulty
+will be thrown in the way of an early decision in the Irish Courts....
+In the meantime, the Chief Baron is receiving the enormous profits
+arising from these enormous abuses.'<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<p>The practice of buying and selling public offices, and the practice of
+dividing the salaries of a single office between a principal and
+deputies, still continued; but Peel did his utmost to eradicate them.
+If it were permitted in one case, he said, 'every officer in every
+department who purchased on corrupt terms and is now living may claim
+a right to sell the office so purchased.'</p>
+
+<p>'With respect to a payment out of the salary to R., I can have no
+scruple in giving you my opinion that it would not be right. I have
+never been, and cannot conscientiously be, a party to an arrangement
+of that kind, because I think this is quite clear, that if the salary
+of the office is disproportionate to the labour of it, and can bear to
+be taxed to the amount of 200<i>l.</i>, the public should benefit, and the
+emoluments of the office be reduced.'<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>One of Peel's first tasks was to conduct a general election, and he
+had ample opportunities of judging how these things were managed in
+Ireland. A law known as Curwen's Act had been recently passed,
+condemning to a heavy fine in the event of failure, and to the loss of
+his seat in the event of success, any person giving, or promising to
+give, or consenting to give either money or office for a seat in
+Parliament. The law was not a little embarrassing to Peel, as his own
+seat of Cashel had been purchased, and he thought it safer to transfer
+himself to the English seat of Chippenham, where his return was
+managed by his father without any intervention on his own part. At the
+same time, the elections in Ireland went on much as if Curwen's Act
+had never passed.</p>
+
+<p>'I am placed in a delicate situation enough here,' he wrote to his
+friend Croker: 'bound to secure the Government interests, if possible,
+from dilapidation, but still more bound to faint with horror at the
+mention of money transactions, to threaten the unfortunate culprits
+with impeachment if they hint at an impure return, and yet to prevent
+those strongholds, Cashel, Mallow, and Tralee, from surrendering to
+the enemies who besiege them.'</p>
+
+<p>Croker himself furnished an admirable illustration of the manner in
+which these principles were carried out. 'I find the borough' [Down],
+he writes, 'extremely well disposed to me. Of the respectable and
+steady people I have a decided majority, not less than twenty; but
+there are sixty-two persons who are extremely doubtful.... I have the
+greatest repugnance to bribery, ... but my agent informs me that many
+voters will require money.... The return absolutely depends upon
+pounds sterling. The best computation which my agents <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>can make is
+that a sum of 2,000<i>l.</i> will be necessary. The natural expenses will
+be 500<i>l.</i> These, I think, I am bound to make good. But with regard to
+the money for votes, that I expect from Government.'</p>
+
+<p>Peel replied that he could not answer for the Government in England,
+and that the Irish Government possessed no funds for this purpose; he
+would himself have been ready to send Croker '1,000<i>l.</i> as a private
+concern between ourselves with no reference whatever to Government';
+but he had it not. 'If you think proper,' he added, 'to take the
+chance whether it [the Government] will assist you, you can promise.'
+For about six years Peel was constantly receiving from Croker requests
+for places, in order to discharge 'debts of gratitude' incurred at
+this election; and in 1816 we find the Government very nearly beaten
+in the House of Commons in an attempt to raise Croker's own salary.</p>
+
+<p>'Could you tell me,' writes Lord Palmerston to Peel, 'whether you
+think there is any probability of a contest for the county of Sligo at
+the next election? I could at the present moment make from 280 to 290
+voters by giving leases to tenants who are now holding at will. If
+there is any chance of their being of use next year, I will do so
+forthwith, and register them in time. If not, I should perhaps
+postpone giving twenty-one years' leases till matters look a little
+more propitious to the payment of rents.'</p>
+
+<p>'Lord Lorton wrote yesterday to his agent to make all the freeholders
+he can on his small Queen's County property. He says he is sorry he
+can't make more than twenty, but that those shall go against Pole.'</p>
+
+<p>A few illustrations of the minor details of patronage may be added.
+One gentleman called upon Peel about <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>an election in Clare, but 'said
+that he would make no promise of his interest unless he received a
+pledge from me that his two brothers should be provided for&mdash;one in
+the Church, and the other advanced in the profession of the law.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord C. 'wanted, long since, to make terms with me for his support in
+Cork, ... and wished to be one of a committee for superintending the
+patronage of the county.'</p>
+
+<p>'When G. wants a baronetcy, he is very rich; and when he wants a
+place, he is very poor. I think we may fairly turn the tables on him,
+and when he asks to be a baronet, make his poverty the objection, and
+his wealth when he asks for an office.'</p>
+
+<p>'Pole is constantly pressing K., of the Navigation Board, for
+promotion.... I am told he entirely neglects his duty. Pole readily
+admits his hopeless stupidity and unfitness for office.'</p>
+
+<p>'I do not think your son,' Peel wrote to his Under-Secretary, 'can
+make a more inefficient member of the Board of Stamps than Mr. T. has
+done. I am perfectly ready, therefore, to acquiesce in the exchange.'
+'I make a great sacrifice,' he wrote to Lord Whitworth, 'when I say
+that I doubt whether O.'s habits would qualify him for such practical
+duties as the Collector of Belfast at least ought to perform. Belfast
+is so flourishing a town, and contributes so much to the revenue, that
+I fear the Collectorship of it is too prominent a situation to place
+in it a young man ... we must admit to be a ruined man by gambling.
+Considering how careless he has been of his own money, perhaps some
+office not connected with the collection of the public money ... would
+be more suited to him.... What do you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>think of the following
+arrangement? Make J. collector for this very bad and very good reason,
+that he is the most inefficient Commissioner, and therefore the public
+service will suffer least from his appointment. Make Colonel H. a
+Commissioner. He will be about as inefficient as J. Make R.M. junior,
+the most inefficient of the three, Surveyor of Lands, <i>vice</i> H., which
+(though he will lose 200<i>l.</i> a year) will greatly oblige his father,
+the member; and, lastly, fulfil your good intentions towards O. by
+making him a Commissioner of Accounts, <i>vice</i> M.'</p>
+
+<p>Many other characteristic pictures pass before us. There were officers
+of the revenue who were recommended to 'the marked favour' of the
+Government because they had shown what Peel somewhat rashly called
+'the common honesty' of refusing bribes. There was an official who
+scandalously connived at an abuse of justice by which innocent women
+were condemned to transportation, though taking measures that the
+Government should indirectly hear of the transaction. There were
+shameful abuses in the sale of the office of gaoler, shameful frauds
+in the collection of taxes, in the Customs, in the barrack charges.</p>
+
+<p>'My most decided opinion,' Peel wrote about one of these culprits, 'is
+in favour of his dismissal. I am quite tired of, and disgusted with,
+the shameful corruptions which every Irish inquiry brings to
+light.'<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>Much trouble was given by newspapers which were subsidised by the
+Government, and at the same time conducted in a manner which no honest
+Government could approve of.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> Another evil is disclosed in the
+following very creditable letter written by Peel to one of his
+successors:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>'I found in Ireland that every official man, not content with the
+favour of Government to himself, thought he had a right to quarter his
+family on the patronage of Government. I took the course that you have
+done in order to enable me to resist with effect such extravagant
+pretensions. I determined never to gratify any private wish of my own
+by the smallest Irish appointment. There is nothing half so disgusting
+as the personal monopoly of honours and offices by those to whom the
+distribution of them is entrusted.'<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>In the Irish Pension List there had been enormous abuses, but Peel
+took credit for having effectually stopped them. 'No member of
+Parliament,' he wrote, 'has benefited by it. No vote has been
+influenced by it.... I do not think there are any three years in the
+whole period of the Irish history during which so honest a use has
+been made of it.'<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>As might have been expected, blunders arising from extreme
+inefficiency were very numerous. In one case, by negligent drafting,
+the Insurrection Bill was made to extend to three instead of two
+years, while a simple mistake in one of the Revenue Bills was believed
+to have cost the Revenue not less than 40,000<i>l.</i><a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+<p>In all this dreary field the great administrative ability of Peel and
+the essential integrity of his character produced much real
+improvement, though it is very possible to exaggerate his merits. No
+one who has read the Hardwicke and Colchester papers will question
+that some of his predecessors, and especially the Chancellor, Lord
+Redesdale, had laboured with at least equal earnestness to purify
+Irish administration; and the energy with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>which Lord Redesdale,
+though out of office, still recurred to the subject, was extremely
+displeasing to Peel.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> His own patronage, as we have already seen,
+was by no means ideal, and he was very anxious to stifle parliamentary
+inquiries.</p>
+
+<p>'I believe,' he wrote, 'an honest, despotic government would be by far
+the fittest government for Ireland'; but as this could not be attained
+he wished no essential alteration. 'I think the present system on
+which the government of Ireland is conducted is the best, but I am
+terribly afraid that Englishmen, who know nothing of Ireland, would
+not concur with me if they inquired into detail. It is very difficult
+to manage even the most limited inquiry. How could we prevent the
+introduction of tithes, magistracy, the Catholic question itself?'<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>Whatever might be the case in the future, he believed that in the
+present it was impossible for the Irish Government to receive adequate
+support unless it made up its mind to purchase it. 'It would be good
+policy,' he says in one of his letters, 'to direct the channel of
+patronage as plentifully as we can towards those who are adhering to
+us on these pressing questions of army establishments and property
+tax.' He refused in very lofty tones applications for peerages as
+rewards for political support; but the merit of this refusal belongs
+mainly to Lord Liverpool, who, at the beginning of the Chief
+Secretaryship, took on this subject a very firm and honourable line,
+both in England and Ireland, and maintained it at the sacrifice of
+many votes. For Irish honours unaccompanied by endowments there appear
+to have been few applicants. Peel disliked the bestowal of
+ecclesiastical dignities as rewards for political services; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>but if he
+did not practise it quite as much as his predecessors, this appears to
+have been much more due to nature than to policy.</p>
+
+<p>'There is nothing so extraordinary,' he wrote, 'in natural history as
+the longevity of all bishops, priests, and deacons in Ireland. During
+the last five years there has been literally no Church preferment to
+dispose of, to the infinite disappointment of many expectants.'</p>
+
+<p>In the higher legal appointments, however, while insisting that
+'attachment to the Government on principle' was very material, Peel
+cordially agreed with Saurin that it was vitally necessary to select
+men 'for character, and not for politics or connection'; and he added,
+that those were not likely to be the least fit for high office who
+were too proud to solicit it. 'It is a species of pride which
+occasions very little practical inconvenience in Ireland.'</p>
+
+<p>His letters show clearly the terrible evils of Irish life. He speaks
+of 'the enormous and overgrown population,' with no employment except
+agriculture; of a poverty so extreme that in many districts widespread
+starvation was averted only by prompt Government intervention; of
+'that infernal curse, the forty shilling freeholds'; of the evil
+system of employing the military in distraining for rent and in the
+collection of tithes; of juries, through fear or sympathy, acquitting
+prisoners in the face of the clearest evidence; of the gross perjury
+in the law courts; of the almost universal disaffection of the lower
+orders, fostered by a seditious press; of the growing spirit of
+animosity in the north of Ireland between the lower orders of
+Protestants and Catholics, which was breaking out in constant riots,
+and had already cost many lives. This last evil, it might be truly
+said, was very largely due to the policy of his own party, who had
+protracted through <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>so many years the Catholic question, which ought
+to have been settled at the Union. There was extreme and chronic
+ignorance, poverty, and anarchy; the payment of tithes was constantly
+resisted; and a failure of the potato crop, and a sudden and terrible
+fall in the price of agricultural products after the peace, added
+enormously to the difficulties of the situation. It is remarkable,
+indeed, that there appears to have been in 1816 and 1817 less
+disturbance of the public peace in Ireland than in England; Peel found
+it even possible to reduce the military establishments, and in Dublin
+extreme distress was borne with remarkable patience; but in many parts
+of the country crimes of combination were frequent, and almost
+incredibly savage. Peel mentions one case of a family of eight persons
+who were deliberately burnt in their house by a party of armed men,
+because the owner of the house had prosecuted to conviction three men,
+on a capital charge, at the Louth assizes. In another case a farmer,
+who had shot two men who attacked his house, was himself shot dead on
+a Sunday morning, after Mass, at the chapel door, in the presence of
+hundreds of men, not one of whom attempted to arrest the culprit.</p>
+
+<p>These things filled Peel with a not unnatural horror, and his letters
+showed clearly his intense dislike both of the Irish character and of
+the Irish religion.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> By far the most valuable contribution he made
+to the improvement of Ireland during his Chief Secretaryship was the
+formation, in 1814, of an efficient police force, which has ever since
+been popularly associated with his name, and which was the nucleus
+from which the present admirable constabulary force was developed in
+1822 and in 1835. 'We ought to be crucified,' he wrote, 'if we make
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>measure a job, and select our constables from the servants of our
+parliamentary friends.' He attempted also, though without much
+success, to institute a system of popular education on a perfectly
+unsectarian basis, and with Catholics among the commissioners.<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> He
+appears to have met with little encouragement, and at least one
+Catholic bishop lost no time in cursing 'these nefarious deistical
+schools'; but some schools were established, and Peel has the merit of
+being one of the earliest advocates of a general system of unsectarian
+national education for Ireland, which many years after was
+accomplished. His measures for the relief of distress appear to have
+been skilful and judicious, supporting and stimulating, but not
+superseding private benevolence.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> For the rest, he relied chiefly
+on Insurrection Acts strengthening the Executive and giving a greater
+efficiency to the administration of justice, and on strong protective
+legislation encouraging the corn and the manufactures of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>'I have always,' he wrote, 'been, and always shall be, as strong an
+advocate for giving that preference to the productions of Ireland,
+natural or artificial, which will best promote the industry of the
+people, as I am for instructing the lower orders.'<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>To the tithe system he would do nothing, and this is one of the fatal
+blots on his reputation as a statesman. There was no single source of
+crime, agitation, and disaffection in Ireland which was so prolific as
+this, and there was no subject on which the wisest statesmen had been
+more agreed than on the supreme importance of meeting this evil by a
+judicious system of commutation. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>Pitt had clearly expressed his
+opinion of the necessity of such a commutation to the Duke of Rutland
+as early as 1786, and it was one of the measures which he intended to
+have followed the Union. Grattan had brought schemes of commutation in
+three successive years before the Irish Parliament. Lord Loughborough,
+who was the chief cause of the failure of Catholic emancipation after
+the Union, had himself drawn up a Tithe Commutation Bill. Lord
+Redesdale, who represented the extreme Toryism of the ministry of
+Addington, strongly urged the absolute necessity of speedy legislation
+on the subject. The Duke of Bedford, in 1807, dwelt on the importance
+of commuting tithes into a land-tax, and ultimately into land. Parnell
+and Grattan had brought the subject before the Imperial Parliament in
+1810, and it was again and again insisted on by the Whig writers, and
+nowhere more strongly than in Sydney Smith's admirable letters to
+Peter Plymley and in some of the pages of the 'Edinburgh Review.' But
+nothing was done till the evil had become intolerable, and had brought
+the country to a state of anarchy and demoralisation that can scarcely
+be exaggerated. The connection of Peel with the question of Irish
+tithes is a very remarkable one. The Tithe Commutation Act, which was
+carried by a Whig Government in 1838, is one of the few instances of
+perfectly successful legislation in Irish history, and it is well
+known that the chief credit of this measure does not belong to the
+Ministers who carried it. It was the very measure which Sir Robert
+Peel had introduced in 1835, which the Whig party when in opposition
+defeated by connecting it with the Appropriation clause, and which the
+Whig party when in power were compelled to carry without that clause.
+But if the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>chief credit of the final settlement of this momentous
+question justly belongs to Peel, it must not be forgotten that in the
+eleven years during which, as Chief Secretary or as Home Secretary, he
+was directly responsible for the government of Ireland, he had allowed
+this monster curse to grow and strengthen without making any serious
+effort to mitigate it.</p>
+
+<p>Peel was Chief Secretary during the concluding part of the viceroyalty
+of the Duke of Richmond, during the whole of that of Lord Whitworth,
+and during part of that of Lord Talbot. He had grown very tired of his
+position, but agreed to postpone his departure till after a general
+election, and he at last left Ireland, as he says, with 'undiminished
+and unqualified satisfaction,' in August 1818. He remained out of
+office until January 1822; but the interval was not spent in idleness,
+and in 1819 he took the leading part in the great Act for resuming
+cash payments, which, as it has been truly said, attaches to his name
+'the same meed of praise which he had quoted as inscribed on the tomb
+of Queen Elizabeth: "Moneta in justum valorem redacta."' It is one of
+his greatest legislative achievements; it is also the first of that
+series of recantations which forms one of the most distinctive
+features of his career, for it was based upon the policy which Horner
+had advocated in 1811, and against which Peel had then voted. He still
+took, on the Catholic question, the leading part in opposition to
+emancipation, declaring his determination to offer 'a most sincere and
+uncompromising,' though he now feared unavailing, resistance to
+Catholic concession. The last time the question was brought forward,
+by Grattan, was in 1819, and he was defeated by a majority of only
+two. In 1821, after the death of Grattan, and in a new <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>Parliament,
+Plunket carried a Bill for Catholic emancipation successfully through
+all its stages in the House of Commons, though it was afterwards
+rejected in the Lords. In the ensuing session a similar fate befel a
+Bill of Canning's to relieve Catholic peers of their disabilities.
+Some considerable change, however, was introduced into the spirit of
+the Irish Government by the appointment of Lord Wellesley, who was in
+favour of the Catholics, to the viceroyalty. One of its most important
+results was the removal of Saurin from the office of Attorney-General
+and the appointment of Plunket in his place. Lord Wellesley described
+this measure to Lady Blessington as the removal of 'an old Orangeman'
+who, though 'Attorney-General by title, had really been
+Lord-Lieutenant for fifteen years'; but it is evident from the letters
+of Peel that his warm sympathies, both personal and political, were
+with Saurin.</p>
+
+<p>The accession of George IV. to the throne in the beginning of 1820
+brought to a crisis the quarrel between the new King and his wife, and
+led to the resignation of Canning in the last days of the year, and
+Lord Liverpool then tried to induce Peel to enter the Cabinet in the
+vacant post of President of the Board of Control. Peel, however,
+refused the office, declaring that he differed from some of the
+proceedings of the Ministry about the Queen. In the summer of 1821 he
+again declined a similar offer, chiefly, as it appears, on the ground
+of uncertain health and of a dislike to official life which his recent
+marriage had produced. But when Lord Sidmouth resigned the Home
+Office, Peel proved less inflexible, and on January 17, 1822, he
+accepted the seals, which he held till 1827. In August Castlereagh,
+or, as he now was, Lord Londonderry, committed suicide. Lord
+Liverpool <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>saw the necessity of recalling Canning to the Cabinet as
+Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Canning would accept the post only as
+leader of the House of Commons. The King hated Canning, and would
+gladly have excluded him altogether from the Ministry, and Eldon and
+the Duke of Newcastle greatly desired that the leadership of the House
+of Commons should be given to Peel. Canning, however, who had been
+sixteen years longer in Parliament than Peel, had both the right and
+the power to insist upon the leadership, and Peel acquiesced in his
+claim with honourable frankness. Except on the Catholic question they
+appear to have cordially agreed, and something of the success of
+Canning's brilliant foreign policy is due to the loyalty with which he
+was supported by Peel in the Cabinet and at Court.</p>
+
+<p>Space will not permit us to relate at length the history of Peel's
+conduct as home Minister. The Catholic question was rapidly advancing
+to a crisis, and the system of a divided Ministry in which it was an
+open question, and in which the leading Ministers took opposite sides,
+was becoming plainly impossible. Ireland was again in a state of
+anarchy bordering on civil war, and the foundation, in 1823, of the
+Catholic Association by O'Connell and Sheil gave a new impulse to the
+agitation. The Duke of Wellington, who knew the country well and was
+not liable to panic, predicted that the new association if it
+continued would lead to civil war, and declared that the organisation
+of the disaffected in Ireland was much more perfect than in 1798.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>
+At the same time the long-protracted and increasing violence of the
+conflict had aroused fierce Orange passions both in the North and in
+Dublin, while in England the King was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>embarrassing even his
+'anti-Catholic' Ministers by the vehemence of his hostility to
+concession. He described Peel as 'the King's Protestant Minister' and
+Lord Wellesley as an 'enemy in the camp.' He assured Peel that,
+whether the Cabinet wished it or not, he would never consent to give
+letters of precedence to a Roman Catholic barrister, and he wrote Peel
+a formal letter in which he said, 'the sentiments of the King upon
+Catholic emancipation are those of his revered and excellent father;
+from those sentiments the King never can and never will deviate.'<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+
+<p>Peel, while maintaining his unflinching hostility to important
+concessions, tried to moderate all parties. He implored the King to
+make no public declaration. He wrote to Ireland strongly discouraging
+the violence of the Orangemen and urging that 'in this age of liberal
+doctrine, when prescription is no longer even a presumption in favour
+of what is established, it will be a work of desperate difficulty to
+contend against "emancipation," as they call it, unless we can fight
+with the advantage on our side of great discretion, forbearance, and
+moderation on the part of the Irish Protestants.' He recurred to his
+old idea of establishing a system of unsectarian national education,
+and he readily abandoned the corrupt and proselytising charter
+schools. He supported a measure of Lord Nugent, which Lord Eldon
+succeeded in defeating in the Lords, for extending to the English
+Catholics such privileges as were already possessed by Catholics in
+Ireland, and he fully approved of a letter written on behalf of the
+Cabinet to the Lord-Lieutenant urging 'that a disposition should be
+manifested to admit the Roman Catholics of Ireland <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>to a fair
+proportion of the emoluments and honours to which they are eligible by
+law,' but without issuing patents of precedence.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p>On matters unconnected with the Catholic question his administration
+was skilful and, on the whole, enlightened; and in 1823 he introduced
+the first of a series of important measures diminishing the enormous
+number of capital offences that disgraced the English criminal code,
+and, at the same time, doing much to simplify and consolidate that
+code. In this, as in most respects, there was little original in his
+legislation. He followed, at some distance, in the steps of Romilly
+and Mackintosh, and he left very much to be done, which was chiefly
+accomplished during the Whig ascendancy that followed the Reform Bill
+of 1832. It appears, from some remarkable letters in this volume,
+that, before Peel took up the question of criminal reform, George IV.
+was exceedingly sensible of the enormity of executing very young men
+for secondary offences, and that he was continually pressing on his
+Ministers a more merciful administration of the law. He sometimes
+found Peel by no means ready to yield. In one case Peel invoked the
+aid of the Cabinet to overrule the wish of the King, who desired to
+save two culprits from the gallows; and, in another case, he
+threatened to resign his office if the King persisted in commuting the
+sentence of a youth who had been found guilty of uttering forged
+notes.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> But Peel had at least the merit of recognising an
+intolerable abuse, and his legislation on the subject was skilfully
+framed and still more skilfully introduced and carried. In his
+patronage in this, as in later periods of his life, he cared much more
+than most English Ministers for the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>interests of science, literature,
+and art. He was by no means indifferent to the opportunities his
+position gave him of advancing his own family and friends; but he
+never, in his English patronage, forgot the character of those whom he
+recommended for promotion, and he brought forward or assisted many men
+of ability and learning with whom he had no connection and no
+political sympathy. The letters in this volume between Peel and his
+very intimate Oxford friend Dr. Lloyd are especially interesting and
+characteristic. They are in general very honourable to Peel; but Mr.
+Parker is much too indulgent when he describes the intensely worldly
+letters in which Dr. Lloyd urged his own merits and his claims to the
+bishopric of Oxford as merely 'frank, and free from affectation of the
+traditional <i>nolo episcopari</i>.' Both Peel and Lord Liverpool appear to
+have had a much stronger sense than most of their predecessors of the
+responsibilities attaching to Church patronage and of the duty of
+administering it in the public interest, and in this respect they were
+broadly distinguished from Lord Eldon.</p>
+
+<p>'It is really a cruel thing,' Lord Liverpool wrote to Peel, 'that the
+patronage of the Crown as to Church matters should be divided between
+the Minister and the Chancellor, and that all the public claims should
+fall upon the former. The Chancellor has nine livings to the
+Minister's one. With respect to these he does occasionally attend to
+local claims, but he has besides four cathedrals, and to no one of
+these cathedrals has any man of distinguished learning or merit been
+promoted.'</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of 1825 the Irish Government, having without
+consulting Peel undertaken a foolish prosecution of O'Connell for a
+not very dangerous speech, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>received a heavy rebuff, for the Grand
+Jury threw out the Bill, and the prosecution of an Orange leader was
+equally unsuccessful. A Bill was about the same time brought in and
+carried, suppressing the new association; but it could not suppress
+the spirit which it had aroused. O'Connell, however, was thoroughly
+alarmed at the state of the country, and as far as possible from
+desiring a rebellion, and he was at this time in a very conciliatory
+mood. He was perfectly ready to accept an endowment for the
+priesthood, which would attach them to the Government, and also a
+considerable raising of the Irish franchise. This was the last
+occasion on which his party and the Catholic gentry very cordially
+concurred, and it was the last occasion on which the Catholic question
+could have been settled on a basis that would have given real strength
+to the Empire. A Relief Bill passed through all its stages in the
+Commons by considerable majorities, and it was followed by a Bill for
+raising the qualifications of Irish electors, and by a resolution for
+endowing the priesthood. O'Connell fully believed that Catholic
+emancipation would definitely pass in this session,<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> and he
+appeared to have excellent reasons for his belief. In Ireland it
+generally prevailed, and it exercised an immediate pacifying
+influence. Lord Fingall and other Catholic noblemen, in presenting an
+address at this time to the King, were able to say 'the whole of
+Ireland reposes in profound tranquillity, and the law, without the aid
+of any extraordinary power, everywhere receives voluntary obedience.'
+It was afterwards stated by Lord George Bentinck that Peel had changed
+his opinions about Catholic emancipation in 1825, and had communicated
+this change to Lord Liverpool. The letters <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>before us, however,
+conclusively prove that if Peel was shaken, it was not about the
+merits of emancipation, but about the practicability of resisting it.
+Having been four times defeated in the Commons on the Catholic
+question, he tendered his resignation, and Lord Liverpool at once
+declared that without his assistance he could not continue the
+struggle. Peel was the only Minister in the House of Commons opposed
+to the Catholic cause, differing on the question from all his
+colleagues in the House. If he had resigned, and if Lord Liverpool had
+followed his example, there is good reason to believe that a
+Government might have been formed which would have carried the measure
+safely and speedily with the securities that had been accepted. Most
+unfortunately for the Empire, the 'Protestant' party persuaded Peel to
+withdraw his resignation in order to avert this surrender. In the
+House of Lords the Duke of York, who was the heir-presumptive to the
+throne, stood up and declared his unalterable opposition to the
+Catholic claims, 'whatever might be his situation in life, so help him
+God,' and the Lords rejected the Bill by a majority of 48.</p>
+
+<p>The conscientious views of George III. obtained some measure of
+respect even from those who believed them to be most unfounded; but no
+halo of sanctity dignified the scruples of George IV. or of the Duke
+of York. The Irish Catholics, exasperated at the present
+disappointment of their hopes, and at the prospect of another hostile
+King, flung themselves into a furious agitation, and in a few months
+all the progress which had been made towards pacifying the country was
+undone, while in England Peel had to meet a terrible commercial
+crisis. Seventy county banks stopped in less than a week. In dealing
+with questions of commerce and currency Peel <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>was always in his
+element, and his measures appear to have been wise and skilful. A
+general election took place, and he was again returned by the
+University of Oxford as the uncompromising opponent of Catholic
+emancipation. In England the anti-Catholic party gained some seats,
+and the increasing violence in Ireland had produced some reaction. In
+Ireland it was soon apparent that what Grattan had feared had come to
+pass, and that the tie which had hitherto attached the people to their
+landlords was completely broken. The priests everywhere appeared at
+the head of their people, and it was at once seen that a new and
+terrible power was dominating Irish politics. In Waterford, where the
+Beresfords had long been omnipotent, they were totally defeated, and
+Leslie Foster sent Peel a vivid description of his own defeat in the
+Louth election. At the outset of the contest, upwards of five-sixths
+of the votes were promised to him; but the whole priesthood turned
+themselves into electioneering agents against him. In every chapel
+there were political sermons; the priests menaced all who voted for
+him with eternal damnation; they were present at every polling-booth
+to overawe their parishioners; and their efforts were seconded by
+savage mobs who waylaid and beat all opponents, and forced multitudes
+of Protestants, by threats of assassination or of the burning of their
+houses, to vote against their promises and their convictions. 'In the
+county town the studied violence and intimidation were such that it
+was only by locking up my voters in enclosed yards that their lives
+were preserved.' By these means the election was won. What, asked
+Foster, will be the end of this? 'The landlords are exasperated to the
+utmost, the priests swaggering in their triumph, the tenantry sullen
+and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>insolent. Men who, a month ago, were all civility and submission
+now hardly suppress their curses when a gentleman passes by. The text
+of every village orator is, "Boys, you have put down three lords;
+stick to your priests, and you will carry all before you."'</p>
+
+<p>The letters of Goulburn, the Chief Secretary, show that the picture
+was not overcharged.</p>
+
+<p>'Never,' he wrote, 'were Roman Catholic and Protestant so decidedly
+opposed. Never did the former act with so general a concert, or place
+themselves so completely under the command of the priesthood.' 'The
+priests exercise on all matters a dominion perfectly uncontrolled and
+uncontrollable. In many parts of the country their sermons are purely
+political, and the altars in the several chapels are the rostra from
+which they declaim on the subject of Roman Catholic grievances, exhort
+to the collection of rent, or denounce their Protestant neighbours in
+a mode perfectly intelligible and effective, but not within the grasp
+of the law. In several towns no Roman Catholic will now deal with a
+Protestant shop-keeper, in consequence of the priest's interdiction,
+and this species of interference, stirring up enmity on one hand and
+feelings of resentment on the other, is mainly conducive to outrage
+and disorder.... The first vacancy on the Roman Catholic bench is to
+be supplied by Dr. England from America, a man of all others most
+decidedly hostile to British interests and the most active in
+fomenting the discord of this country.... With such leaders it is
+reasonable to anticipate the worst. It is impossible to detail in a
+letter the various modes in which the Roman Catholic priesthood now
+interfere in every transaction of every description, how they rule the
+mob, the gentry, and the magistracy, and how they impede the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>administration of justice.' Their power is greater than any other in
+the State, 'and they love to display it, and omit no opportunity of
+taunting their adversaries.' 'The state of society here is so
+disorganised, and the Government has so inferior an authority to other
+powers acting on the people, that the opinion formed to-day may be
+quite changed to-morrow.'<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>The election of 1826 virtually carried Catholic emancipation, for it
+reduced Ireland to a state in which it was impossible long to resist
+it. Clear-sighted men had no difficulty in perceiving that the policy
+of Peel had failed to avert it, though it had succeeded in making
+impossible the securities which Grattan and the wisest men of his
+generation had pronounced indispensable for its safe working, in
+kindling religious hatreds as intense as in the darkest period of the
+eighteenth century, in breaking down that healthy relation and
+subordination of classes on which beyond all other things the future
+well-being of Ireland depended. Peel was not wholly blind to what was
+happening. 'A darker cloud than ever,' he wrote, 'seems to me to
+impend over Ireland, that is if one of the remaining bonds of society,
+the friendly connection between landlord and tenant, is
+dissolved.'<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> He still persuaded himself, however, that the
+political power of the priests was transient, and that a reaction
+would set in that might destroy it. The defeat of the Catholic
+question in the new Parliament by a majority of four encouraged him in
+his resistance. In January 1827 the death of the Duke of York removed
+one serious obstacle to the Catholic cause, and six weeks later Lord
+Liverpool, who had so long held together the divided Ministry, was
+struck down by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>apoplexy. Peel would gladly have continued in his
+present position if a peer of real weight who held his opinions on the
+Catholic question was appointed to the vacant place. But there was no
+such peer, except Wellington, to be found, and under Wellington
+Canning refused to serve. Canning had, indeed, now fully resolved to
+be at the head of the Administration, and Peel refused to serve under
+him.</p>
+
+<p>With his opinions on the Catholic question it is impossible to blame
+him, and the letters which passed between the two statesmen are very
+honourable to both, and show clearly that in spite of great divergence
+of opinion, character, and interests, each could recognise the good
+faith of the other. In a letter written to one of his brothers Peel
+describes his position with complete frankness:</p>
+
+<p>'I am content with my position in the Government, and willing to
+retain it&mdash;willing to see Mr. Canning leader of the House of Commons,
+as he has been. But giving him credit for honesty and sincerity, if he
+is at the head of the Government, and has all the patronage of the
+Government, he must exert himself as an honest man to carry the
+Catholic question; and to the carrying of that question, to the
+preparation for its being carried, I never can be a party. Still less
+can I be a party to it for the sake of office.'</p>
+
+<p>These words were written little more than a year before Peel
+undertook, as Minister of the Crown, to introduce a measure of
+Catholic emancipation. But if they do little credit to his prescience,
+no one can mistake the accent of sincerity in what follows:</p>
+
+<p>'I do not choose to see new lights on the Catholic question precisely
+at that conjuncture when the Duke of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>York has been laid in his grave
+and Lord Liverpool struck dumb by the palsy. Would any man, woman, or
+child believe that after nineteen years' stubborn unbelief I was
+converted, at the very moment Mr. Canning was Prime Minister, out of
+pure conscience and the force of truth?'<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>With the resignation of Peel and the other anti-Catholic members of
+Lord Liverpool's Government, and the formation of the short Canning
+Ministry, this instalment of Peel's letters comes to an end.<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a> We
+rejoice that the publication of this very interesting correspondence
+has been entrusted to an editor who is at once so competent and so
+judicious.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>Life of Lord George Bentinck</i>, p. 304.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> Lewis's <i>Letters</i>, p. 226.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Private Correspondence of Sir R. Peel, 1788-1827</i>. Ed.
+by C.S. Parker, M.P., 1891, p. 24.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 27.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Hansard</i>, First Ser. xxi. 663.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> Butler's <i>Hist. Memoirs</i>, ii. 177.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, p. 80.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, p. 83.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, p. 76.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, pp. 217, 218.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, pp. 222-224.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 212.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 284.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, p. 282.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> pp. 114-116, 211, 218.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, p. 60.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 275.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> p. 96.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, p. 211.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> pp. 215, 219, 220.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, pp. 207, 231, 235, 236.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, pp. 87-92.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> pp. 244, 265.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> pp. 167, 233.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, p. 348.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, pp. 349, 358, 359, 370-371.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, p. 358.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> pp. 315-317.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Fitzpatrick's <i>Correspondence of O'Connell</i>, i. p. 108.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, pp. 416, 418, 419, 422.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> <i>Ibid.</i> pp. 413, 420.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <i>Peel Correspondence</i>, p. 485.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> Two more volumes have been published since this Essay
+was written.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ed.</span></p></div>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="EDWARD_HENRY" id="EDWARD_HENRY"></a>EDWARD HENRY, FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The time has not yet arrived for the publication of a full life of the
+late Lord Derby, but in submitting to the public a collection of his
+more important speeches outside Parliament, a short sketch of the
+chief features of his life and character may not be out of place.</p>
+
+<p>Edward Henry, fifteenth Earl of Derby, was born July 21, 1826, and was
+educated at Rugby, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a
+First Class in classics. In March 1848 he unsuccessfully contested
+Lancaster, and soon after started for a long and instructive journey
+in America and the West Indies. During his absence from England he was
+elected Member for Lynn Regis upon the death of Lord George Bentinck
+in September 1848, and he held this seat without interruption till his
+accession to the earldom in October 1869. His first speech in the
+House of Commons was delivered on May 31, 1850, on the sugar duties.
+The effect on the West Indies of the abolition of the preferential
+duty on sugar was a subject which he had specially studied during his
+journey, and he had published a pamphlet upon it. Sir Robert Peel
+greatly praised his maiden speech, and Greville describes the great
+impression which it made&mdash;an impression which a further knowledge of
+the speaker speedily confirmed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>The appearance in Parliament of the eldest son of one of the most
+brilliant party leaders of the age could scarcely fail to be a
+considerable political event, and it was soon found that the new
+member was not only a man of rare ability, but was also in nearly all
+respects very unlike his illustrious father. Never was there a more
+striking instance of that strange freak of heredity by which an able
+son is sometimes much less the continuation than the complement of an
+able father, exhibiting in strongly contrasted lights both opposite
+qualities and opposite defects. The fourteenth Earl was a great
+orator. He was one of the greatest debaters who have ever lived. He
+was a party leader of extraordinary power, delighting in political
+conflict; throwing into it much of the fire and passion which he
+displayed in his sporting contests; little fitted to conciliate
+opponents, but eminently fitted to win the enthusiastic loyalty of his
+followers, to rally a dispirited minority, to lead a party attack. His
+keen and rapid judgment; his perfect command of pure and lucid
+English; his unfailing readiness in argument, invective, sarcasm, and
+repartee; his indomitable courage, and the somewhat imperious dignity
+of his manner, all marked him out for the position which he held. If
+there was some truth in the common taunt that he was more a party
+leader than a statesman, it must at least be remembered that he has
+identified his name with several important measures, and that during
+most of his career he was in a hopeless minority. His enemies accused
+him of rashness, arrogance, and some superficiality, both of thought
+and knowledge. They alleged that he carried too much of the sporting
+spirit into politics; that his naturally excellent judgment was often
+deflected by the passions of the fray; that he was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>accustomed to
+judge measures more by their party advantages than by their intrinsic
+merits, and to care more for an immediate triumph than for ultimate
+results.</p>
+
+<p>His son was made in a very different mould. Though like most able and
+clear-headed men he acquired by much practice a respectable facility
+in purely extemporaneous argument, he was never a great debater. His
+speeches were very carefully prepared, and they possessed conspicuous
+merits of form as well as of matter, but they were not the speeches of
+a brilliant orator. No one could reason more clearly, more powerfully,
+or more persuasively. He was a supreme master of terse, luminous,
+weighty, and accurate English. He had much skill in bringing into
+vivid relief the salient points of an obscure and complicated subject,
+condensing an argument into a phrase, and illustrating it by graphic
+felicities of language that clung to the memory. But he hated
+rhetoric. His enunciation was faulty and unimpressive. He appealed
+solely to the reason, and never to passion or to prejudice, and he had
+nothing of the fire and temperament of a party orator. Very few
+politicians mastered so thoroughly the subjects with which they dealt.
+No politician of his time retained so remarkably, amid party
+conflicts, the power of judging questions from all their sides; of
+balancing judicially opposing considerations; of looking beyond the
+passions and interests of the hour; of realising the points of view of
+those to whom he was opposed. Declamation, clap-trap, evasion,
+ambiguities of thought and expression, empty plausibilities, unfair,
+partial, and exaggerated statements, were all essentially repugnant to
+that clear and sceptical intellect, to that sound, cautious, practical
+judgment. His business talents were very great, and they were
+assiduously <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>cultivated. His appetite for work was insatiable. No one
+knew better how to administer a great department or preside over a
+Parliamentary Committee, or arbitrate in a difficult controversy, or
+give wise and timely advice to an inexperienced organisation. It was
+in these fields that his influence was, perhaps, most deeply felt. His
+success in them did not depend merely on his unflagging industry and
+his excellent judgment, it was also largely due to his eminently
+conciliatory character. The uniform courtesy which he displayed to men
+of all ranks and opinions is happily no rare thing among his class,
+but everyone who was brought in contact with Lord Derby soon felt that
+he was in the presence of one who tried to understand his position, to
+estimate his arguments at their full worth, to find some common ground
+of agreement. If it were possible in a bitter controversy to arrive at
+reasonable compromise, Lord Derby was most likely to effect it. He had
+a curious talent of making speeches with which everyone must agree,
+and which at the same time were never commonplace. Their secret lay in
+the habit of mind that led him always to seek out the common grounds
+of principle or fact that underlie every controversy, and which in the
+heat of the conflict the disputants had often failed to recognise.</p>
+
+<p>It was not difficult to forecast the place which a statesman of this
+kind was likely to fill in English politics. He was plainly wanting in
+many of the qualities of a party leader, and in most of the qualities
+of a parliamentary gladiator, and he was not likely to succeed in all
+forms of statesmanship. He would certainly not prove</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">A daring pilot in extremity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pleased with the danger when the waves went high.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noin"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>His clear perception of the objections to any course, combined with a
+very deep sense of responsibility, not unfrequently enfeebled his will
+in moments when bold and decisive action was required, and there were
+times when the love of compromise which was so useful an element in
+his character seemed to his best friends too closely allied to
+weakness. But he probably saved every party with which he acted from
+many mistakes. He brought to every Government which he joined a very
+eminent administrative capacity. He defended every policy that he
+espoused with a persuasive reasoning that few men could equal. He was
+a supremely skilful detector of false weights and of false measures.
+Every fad, every new-born enthusiasm, every crude ill-digested theory,
+found in him the calmest and most penetrating of critics, and he
+inspired the great body of moderate men of all parties with a deep
+confidence in his patriotism and in his judgment.</p>
+
+<p>His political position was marked out by the fact that his father had
+recently broken away from the Whig connection which had hitherto been
+that of his family, and was now the leader of the Conservative party.
+The son naturally took his place under his father's banner, but I much
+question whether he would have done so if no family influence had
+interfered. It was not that he at any time changed considerably his
+views. As Macaulay has truly said&mdash;while the extremes of the two
+English parties are separated by a wide chasm, there is a frontier
+line where they almost blend; and Lord Derby when a Conservative
+always represented the Liberal, and when a Liberal the Conservative
+wing of his party. But his mind had much of the Whig character; his
+judgment was very independent; and on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>Church questions especially he
+was never fully in harmony with his party. He was appointed
+Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his father's first
+short Ministry in March 1852, at a time when he was travelling in
+India, and he left office with his father in December of the same
+year. In 1853 he made a remarkable speech on Indian affairs, in some
+degree foreshadowing the Indian policy which he was afterwards
+destined to take such a large part in carrying into effect. During the
+next few years he spoke frequently on Indian and Colonial questions,
+on questions connected with education, factories, and other
+working-class interests, and he supported&mdash;often in opposition to the
+majority of his party&mdash;a large number of reforms which have since been
+accomplished. He advocated the introduction of competitive
+examinations, first of all into the Diplomatic, and then into most
+branches of the Civil Service. He spoke against the system of purchase
+in the army, and served on a Royal Commission on the subject. He
+supported a motion for securing to married women their property and
+earnings. He took a decided part in opposition to Church rates. He
+voted for the emancipation of the Jews. He voted and spoke in favour
+of the Maynooth grant. He was an early advocate of the opening of
+museums on Sundays, and of a conscience clause to be enforced in all
+schools receiving State assistance. He supported the establishment of
+the Divorce Court, and clearly showed that preference for social as
+distinguished from political questions which he retained through his
+whole life. He delighted in placing himself in touch with working men.
+Mechanics' institutes, free libraries, almost every movement for the
+education and improvement of the working class, found in him a steady
+friend. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>He once wrote to Lord Shaftesbury: 'We are both public men
+deeply interested in the condition of the working class, and for my
+own part I would rather look back on services such as you have
+performed for that class than receive the highest honours in the
+employment of the State.' On working-class questions he was often
+accused of Radicalism, but it was Radicalism of the old school, which
+relied mainly for reform on spontaneous effort, on moral improvement,
+and extended education, and was very jealous of State interference,
+compulsion, and control. He had a great admiration for Mill's
+writings, and especially for his treatise on Liberty, which he
+described as 'one of the wisest books of our time.' Mill fully
+reciprocated the feeling. He once spoke of Lord Stanley as 'one of the
+very few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions
+ought to be founded on principles.'</p>
+
+<p>'Our party,' wrote Lord Malmesbury in 1853, 'are angry with Disraeli,
+which is constantly the case, and they are also displeased with Lord
+Stanley, suspecting him to be coquetting with the Manchester party.'
+Greville, nearly at the same time, expressed his belief that Lord
+Stanley was taking 'a wise and liberal line,' and that he was 'pretty
+sure to act a conspicuous part.' In November 1855 there was a critical
+moment in his career, when Lord Palmerston, on the death of Sir
+William Molesworth, offered Lord Stanley the post of Secretary of
+State for the Colonies. He at once went down to Knowsley to consult
+his father, who put a strong veto on the proposal, and the offer was
+refused, but in terms which showed that it had been far from
+unacceptable. It is probable that the refusal was a wise one, for
+although on many home questions Lord Stanley would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>have found himself
+more in harmony with moderate Liberals than with his own party, he
+would certainly have dissented from Lord Palmerston's foreign policy.
+During the Crimean war he seems to have sympathised with the views of
+Bright and Cobden. He took an active part in an able but now nearly
+forgotten Tory paper called 'The Press,' which was opposed to the war,
+and his extreme horror of war and of every policy which could possibly
+lead to war was one of his strongest characteristics. Responsibility
+in office never weighed lightly upon him, but responsibility for
+measures which led or might lead to bloodshed was more than he could
+bear.</p>
+
+<p>At the time when this offer of Lord Palmerston was made, Lord Stanley
+was little more than twenty-nine. Greville considered that he had
+acted wisely in refusing, and he has given us an interesting account
+of the light in which the young statesman then appeared to experienced
+political judges. 'His position and abilities,' he said, 'are certain
+before long to make him conspicuous, and to enable him to play a very
+considerable part. He is exceedingly ambitious, of an independent turn
+of mind, very industrious, and has acquired a vast amount of
+information. Not long ago Disraeli gave me an account of him and of
+his curious opinions&mdash;exceedingly curious in a man in his condition of
+life and with his prospects. Last night Lord Strangford (George
+Smythe) talked to me about him, expressed the highest opinion of his
+capacity and acquirements, and confirmed what Disraeli had told me of
+his notions and views even more, for he says that he is a real and
+sincere democrat, and that he would like if he could to prove his
+sincerity by divesting himself of his aristocratic character, and even
+of the wealth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>he is heir to. How far this may be true I know not....
+Nothing appears to me certain but that he will play a considerable
+part for good or for evil, but I cannot pretend to guess what it will
+be. At present he seems to be more allied with Bright than with any
+other public man, and as his disposition about the war and its
+continuance is very much that of Bright it would have been difficult
+for him to take office with Palmerston.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Stanley had not long to wait for high office. His father formed
+his second Administration in February 1858, and Lord Stanley was made
+Colonial Secretary. He appears to have accepted the office with some
+reluctance, and only because Sir E. Bulwer, for whom it was at first
+intended, found that he could not secure his re-election. The
+Government was a very weak one, and it opened with the worst
+prospects. It was a Government in a minority. Its very existence
+depended on the dissensions between Lord Palmerston and Lord John
+Russell, and its first steps met with little favour either in the
+House or in the country. The Indian Mutiny was now nearly suppressed,
+and Lord Palmerston shortly before quitting office had pledged the
+House of Commons to the policy of withdrawing the Government of India
+from the East India Company and placing it directly under the Crown.
+To carry this policy into effect was the first task of the new
+Government. They introduced an Indian Bill which they were compelled
+to withdraw, and then substituted for it a new Bill founded on
+resolutions which were carried through the House of Commons. In May
+the Government almost fell on account of the indiscreet publication of
+a despatch of Lord Ellenborough, condemning a Proclamation of the
+Governor-General, Lord Canning. A vote of censure was moved and would
+certainly have been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>carried if Lord Ellenborough had not saved his
+colleagues by resigning. He was President of the Board of Control, the
+Office which then directed Indian affairs, and Lord Stanley took his
+place, piloted the Indian Bill successfully through the House of
+Commons, and when the measure became law, was the first Secretary of
+State for India, and undertook the very important and responsible task
+of beginning the new system of Indian Government.</p>
+
+<p>'The Times' noticed the singular good fortune of Lord Derby in being
+able at this very critical moment to place his eldest son in one of
+the most important Cabinet offices in his Ministry without incurring
+from any side the smallest imputation of nepotism, and the skill and
+success of the new administration of the India Office was speedily and
+generally recognised. Greville tells us that Lord Stanley 'gained
+golden opinions and great popularity at the India House'; and he gives
+a striking instance of the firmness with which he maintained the full
+authority of the new Council over Indian affairs. He adds: 'I was
+prepared to hear of his ability, his indefatigable industry, and his
+business qualities; but I was surprised to hear so much of his
+courtesy, affability, patience, and candour; that he is neither
+dictatorial nor conceited, always ready to listen to other people's
+opinions and advice, and never fancying that he knows better than
+anyone else. I afterwards told Jonathan Peel what I had heard and he
+confirmed the truth of this report and said he was the same in the
+Cabinet.' 'Lord Stanley,' Greville said, 'is so completely <i>the man</i>
+of the present day, and in all human probability is destined to play
+so important and conspicuous a part in political life, that the time
+may come when any details, however minute, of his early career will be
+deemed worthy of recollection.' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>It is a characteristic fact that Lord
+Stanley offered a seat on the Indian Council to John Stuart Mill,
+which, however, that great writer declined.</p>
+
+<p>The disturbance in European politics which culminated in the French
+declaration of war against Austria contributed to weaken still further
+the feeble Ministry of Lord Derby. The Reform Bill caused profound
+divisions in its ranks. Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley resigned, and the
+Government Bill was defeated in the spring of 1859. Lord Malmesbury
+mentions that in the Cabinet divisions on that question Lord Stanley
+supported the more democratic view, and that on one occasion he
+threatened to resign if the measure were not made more liberal. He
+defended the Bill in an elaborate speech, advocating such an
+introduction of the working class to the franchise as would give them
+a considerable but not a preponderating power. A general election
+followed, and the Government gained several seats, but not sufficient
+to give it a majority. The different fractions of the Opposition drew
+together; on June 11 a vote of want of confidence was carried by a
+majority of 13, and Lord Derby immediately resigned.</p>
+
+<p>In opposition Lord Stanley devoted himself chiefly to the class of
+questions that had occupied him before his accession to office. He
+served on the long Cambridge University Commission, and supported the
+admission of Nonconformists to Fellowships. He was also warmly in
+favour of the measure which made it possible for clergymen to free
+themselves from their Orders and to adopt other professions. He
+presided over the Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army
+and over the Commission on Patents. Like Disraeli, he displayed during
+the American Civil War a reticence and reserve <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>which contrasted very
+favourably with the rash language of other leaders.</p>
+
+<p>In 1862 a curious episode occurred which showed at least the
+widespread reputation that he had acquired. Prince Alfred having
+refused the throne of Greece, the idea was for a short time
+entertained of offering it to Lord Stanley. 'If he accepts,' Disraeli
+wrote to his friend Mrs. Willyams, 'I shall lose a powerful friend and
+colleague. It is a dazzling adventure for the house of Stanley, but
+they are not an imaginative race, and I fancy they will prefer
+Knowsley to the Parthenon and Lancashire to the Attic Plains.' 'The
+Greeks really want to make my friend Lord Stanley their king. This
+beats any novel; but he will not. Had I his youth I would not
+hesitate, even with the earldom of Derby in the distance.'</p>
+
+<p>It does not appear that this proposal ever took a very serious form,
+and if it had been made there is little doubt that Disraeli formed a
+just forecast of what would have been the result. The death of Lord
+Palmerston on October 18, 1865, gave a new turn to the political
+kaleidoscope: Lord Russell became Prime Minister; the policy of reform
+was pushed into the forefront, and the Reform Bill of 1866 speedily
+produced a secession in the Liberal ranks and led to the downfall of
+the Ministry. The feature of the Bill which specially lent itself to
+attack was that it dealt solely with reduction of the franchise,
+leaving the question of the distribution of seats to subsequent
+legislation, and an amendment was moved by Lord Grosvenor to the
+effect that no Bill for the reduction of the franchise should be
+discussed till the whole scheme was before the House. This amendment
+was seconded by Lord Stanley in a speech which Lord Malmesbury
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>pronounced to be 'the finest and most statesmanlike speech he ever
+made.' In June the Government were beaten by a small majority on an
+amendment of Lord Dunkellin substituting rating for rental; a few days
+later Lord Russell resigned and Lord Derby for the third time became
+Prime Minister.</p>
+
+<p>As on the two former occasions he was in a minority, though the
+temporary secession of a portion of the Liberal party gave him a
+precarious power. Once more, too, he took office amid the convulsions
+of a European war, for the war of Prussia and Italy with Austria had
+just begun. In the new Ministry Lord Stanley was Secretary for Foreign
+Affairs. In his election address he gave the keynote of his policy by
+insisting in the strongest terms that England should observe a strict
+neutrality in European controversies. Her vast Indian and Colonial
+Empire, he said, made her a world apart and threw upon her duties and
+responsibilities that taxed all her energies. She had duties also to
+her poorer classes at home, whose condition was not what we could
+desire; and by simply existing as a free, prosperous, and
+self-governed nation, we should do more for the real freedom of Europe
+than by any policy of meddling or war.</p>
+
+<p>As far as his own department was concerned Lord Stanley's
+administration during this short Ministry was both eminently
+consistent and eminently successful. It is true that this pacific
+Minister made the Abyssinian war for the release of some imprisoned
+British subjects, but he only did this after every peaceful effort to
+procure their release had proved abortive, and it was almost
+universally recognised that there was no honourable alternative open
+to him. During his ministry the Luxemburg question brought France and
+Prussia to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>very verge of war. It fell to the task of Lord Stanley
+to mediate between them, and he did so with a success which certainly
+adjourned, though it could not ultimately avert, the great catastrophe
+that burst upon Europe in 1870. No success could have been more
+gratifying to him, and he was fond of repeating the saying of Canning
+that 'If a war must come sooner or later, for my part I prefer that it
+should come later than sooner.' Lord Russell bore an ungrudging
+testimony to the 'tact and discretion' Lord Stanley displayed in this
+negotiation. In the same spirit he refused to take part in a
+conference of European Powers which the French Emperor desired to
+convene to settle the Roman question, declaring that this question was
+one with which England should in no way meddle, and that a conference
+would be useless and dangerous unless a basis were laid down before.
+He refused to interfere in any way with the Cretan rebellion, and with
+the impending disputes between Turkey and Greece. His abstention on
+this question was blamed by some, but it met with the full approbation
+of his great opponent, Lord Russell, who declared that 'he had acted
+with much prudence and discretion.' He laid the foundation also of the
+settlement of the long outstanding difficulty with America by
+proposing to refer the Alabama question to arbitration, and he
+negotiated a treaty on the subject, which, however, the Senate refused
+to ratify.</p>
+
+<p>In all this he was very consistent. The same consistency cannot be
+claimed for his support of a Reform Bill far more Radical than that
+which his party had so recently rejected. In my own judgment it is
+impossible to defend with success the conduct of the Derby Ministry on
+this question, and although Lord Stanley took only a subsidiary part
+in it, he cannot escape his share of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>responsibility. The
+difficulty of the position of the eldest son of the Prime Minister who
+was taking this 'leap in the dark' was very great, and it must be
+remembered that he had long been identified with the more democratic
+wing of his party. After the great agitation that followed the
+downfall of the Russell Ministry, he probably regarded a democratic
+measure as inevitable, and it was the character of his mind to be very
+ready to accept what he considered the inevitable, and to endeavour by
+timely compromise to mitigate its effects. Lord Derby's health was now
+completely broken, and on February 24, 1868, he resigned office, and
+Disraeli became Prime Minister.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gladstone soon re-united the sundered sections of the Opposition
+by raising the question of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church.
+The resolutions asserting the expediency of this policy were
+introduced into the House of Commons in April. Lord Stanley was put
+forward as the principal opponent. His amendment expressed no opinion
+about the merits of the proposed policy, but simply affirmed that it
+was a question which ought to be reserved for a new Parliament which
+was soon to be elected under an altered franchise. In his speech he
+disclaimed any wish to maintain that the Irish Church Establishment
+was what it ought to be, but urged that in the condition of Ireland a
+merely destructive measure would do nothing but harm, that it would
+serve no good purpose to attack the Establishment without laying down
+the lines of a definite, constructive ecclesiastical policy, and that
+it was absurd to launch such a question in the last session of an
+expiring Parliament. The more ardent spirits of the Tory party
+strongly censured the ambiguity of this defence, and the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>Government
+were beaten by majorities of 56 and 60. The House of Commons was
+dissolved in the autumn and a large Liberal majority returned.
+Disraeli at once resigned without waiting for the assembling of
+Parliament.</p>
+
+<p>In October 1869 the death of Lord Derby terminated the career of his
+son in the House of Commons, and the following year added very greatly
+to the happiness of his life by his marriage with the Dowager
+Marchioness of Salisbury. His attitude in opposition is clearly shown
+in his published speeches. He had no wish to see the Conservative
+party again in office till they possessed an assured and homogeneous
+majority, and he maintained that it should be their main object to
+strengthen the influence of the more moderate section in the
+Government. He believed that by habitually pursuing this policy they
+would best prevent revolutionary changes, mitigate by wise compromises
+measures which they did not wholly approve, secure the continuance of
+the harmony of classes, on which more than on any other condition the
+prosperity of England depends, and gradually strengthen their own hold
+on the confidence of the country. It was also his earnest desire that
+English politics should be turned as much as possible from a policy of
+organic change to a policy of administrative reform. He considered it
+a great evil that public men had acquired the habit of continually
+tampering with the existing legislative machinery instead of wisely
+using it for the benefit of the whole nation. The party system, as he
+always thought, had falsified the perspective of English politics,
+bringing into the foreground comparatively unimportant questions which
+were well suited to rally parties and win majorities; thrusting into
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>background others which were immeasurably more important, but
+which were less available for party purposes. What Carlyle called 'The
+Condition of England Question' was always in his thoughts. No one
+would accuse him of under-rating the evils of war, but he questioned
+whether the most sanguinary battle which had ever been fought carried
+off nearly as many human beings as die in England every year from
+purely preventible causes. He threw the whole force of his clear and
+penetrating intellect into such questions as sanitary reform, the
+regulation of mines, the promotion of education and especially
+technical education, the organisation of charities, the treatment of
+juvenile offenders, the diffusion of wise methods of encouraging
+saving among the poor. The overcrowding of the great cities, and the
+vast masses of insanitary dwellings, seemed to him one of the most
+pressing dangers of the time, and he was a prominent member of nearly
+every important company and association in England for improving the
+houses of artisans. He had no puritanism in his nature and was very
+anxious, by the establishment of free libraries and people's parks,
+and Sunday opening of museums, to extend the range of innocent
+pleasure. 'Men die,' he once said, 'for want of cheerfulness, as
+plants die for want of light.' He did not believe in the repression of
+drunkenness by coercive legislation like the Local Veto Bill, but he
+believed that its true root lay in overcrowding, ignorance, insanitary
+conditions of life, the want of innocent means of enjoyment, excessive
+hours of labour. 'When you have to deal with men in masses,' he said,
+'the connection between vice and disease is very close. With a low
+average of popular health you will have a low average of national
+morality and probably also of national <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>intellect. Drunkenness and
+vice of other kinds will flourish on such a soil, and you cannot get
+healthy brains to grow on unhealthy bodies. Cleanliness and
+self-respect grow together, and it is no paradox to affirm that you
+tend to purify men's thoughts and feelings when you purify the air
+they breathe.' He supported liberally the movement for establishing
+coffee-houses, and he looked with great hope to the co-operative
+movement as averting or mitigating industrial conflicts. 'The subject
+of co-operation,' he said, 'is in my judgment more important as
+regards the future of England than nine-tenths of those which are
+discussed in Parliament, and around which political controversies
+gather.' As the possessor of one of the largest properties in England
+he was excellently informed on all agricultural questions, and he
+exercised a great influence upon them. Among other services he
+dispelled many misrepresentations by obtaining an accurate return of
+the numbers of owners of land in the United Kingdom, and of the
+quantity of land which they owned.</p>
+
+<p>With the single exception of Lord Shaftesbury, I believe no
+conspicuous English public man devoted so much time and labour as Lord
+Derby to the class of questions I have described. He brought to their
+discussion an almost unrivalled fulness of knowledge. His purse was
+liberally opened in such causes, and the speeches in which he examined
+what Government can do and what it cannot do for the material
+well-being of the poor, are in my judgment among the most valuable
+contributions to political thought that have been furnished by any
+English statesman during the present century.</p>
+
+<p>The election of 1874, bringing the Conservative party again into
+power, called him to other fields, and he became for the second time
+Foreign Secretary under Disraeli, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>was soon involved in that
+Eastern Question which led to his severance from the Conservative
+party. It would answer no good purpose in a short sketch like the
+present to rake up the still smouldering ashes of that controversy.
+The time will come when it will be reviewed in the calm light of
+history, and with the assistance of materials that are not now before
+the public. I shall here content myself with a mere sketch. In the
+earlier stages of their foreign policy the Government appear to have
+been perfectly agreed. Lord Derby fully concurred in the purchase of
+the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal, which was one of the most
+successful strokes of policy of the Government, though he defended it
+on somewhat more prosaic grounds than some of its supporters, and was
+careful to explain that it was essentially a measure of self-defence,
+and not connected with any project for the dismemberment of Turkey or
+the establishment of an English protectorate in Egypt. When the
+insurrection broke out in 1875 in Herzegovina and Bosnia, neither Lord
+Derby nor any of his colleagues believed it to be more than a mere
+passing disturbance. But the feebleness manifested by the Turkish army
+in suppressing the insurrection, and the partial bankruptcy of the
+Government at Constantinople, contributed with many elements of race
+and religious dissension, with foreign intrigue and local
+misgovernment, to aggravate the sore, and the movement soon acquired
+the dimensions of a great European danger. In sending an English
+Consul in conjunction with the Consuls of the other Powers to the
+scene of insurrection, in order, if possible, to arrive at a
+mediation; in the acceptance of the Andrassy Note, by which the three
+Imperial Powers laid down the reforms which they considered urgently
+necessary; in the rejection of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>Berlin Memorandum, on the ground
+that the Porte could not or would not carry out its demands, and that
+it would almost certainly lead to an armed intervention; and finally,
+in sending the British fleet to Besika Bay for the purpose of
+protecting English and Christian interests at Constantinople, at a
+time when that city was in a state of almost complete anarchy, the
+Government were fully agreed, and they carried with them an immense
+majority in Parliament and in the country. For some time, also, the
+country seemed to approve of the policy which Lord Derby uniformly
+avowed and steadily observed, of maintaining a strict neutrality in
+the contest that was raging; doing all that could be done by advice,
+remonstrance, mediation, and moral influence to induce the Porte to
+carry out internal reforms; warning the Turkish Government in clear
+terms that under the circumstances of the case they must not look for
+any military assistance from England, but at the same time
+discouraging as much as possible the active interference of other
+Powers in the affairs of Turkey, and abstaining rigidly from any step
+that would involve the use of force or the chance of war unless some
+serious English interest was affected. He believed that the integrity
+of the Turkish Empire was a vital English interest, and that any
+attempt to substitute a Slavonic for a Turkish Empire would bring upon
+Europe calamities the extent of which it was impossible to exaggerate
+or to foresee. Russia and Austria would at once come into collision;
+England would almost certainly be drawn into the war, and all the
+fierce elements of race hatred and religious fanaticism would be let
+loose.</p>
+
+<p>For a time most English politicians seem to have agreed with him, and
+his one great object was to bring about an armistice, a mediation, and
+a peace. But the popular <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>agitation which arose in England on the
+subject of the Bulgarian atrocities in the summer and autumn of 1876
+added enormously to his difficulties, and the danger was the greater
+because some skilful party management was blended with much genuine
+philanthropy. The speeches addressed by Lord Derby to the successive
+deputations that came to him, give the best explanation and defence of
+his position during this critical period, and the interruptions to
+which he had to reply give a vivid picture of the state of feeling
+that had arisen. The Crimean war was now deplored as a calamity, if
+not a crime. The Turks were described on high political authority as
+'the one great anti-human specimen of humanity.' The Ministers were
+accused of complicity in the Bulgarian massacres; they were urged to
+cast neutrality to the wind; to adopt a policy of armed coercion in
+Turkey; even to assist Russia in driving the Turks out of
+Constantinople. It had become, as Lord Derby sarcastically said, a
+very unpopular thing for an English Minister to talk of English
+interests in connection with the Eastern Question&mdash;almost dangerous
+for any man at a public meeting to express in plain terms his doubt of
+the disinterested philanthropy of Russia.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Derby had at this time to encounter much unpopularity. He was
+accused of an undue leaning towards the Turkish Government, and an
+inadequate sympathy with the Christian populations, and it was alleged
+that if he had acted in firm concert with the other Powers in coercing
+the Porte&mdash;if he had not proclaimed so loudly and constantly his
+determination to abstain from all active interference and
+compulsion&mdash;his remonstrances would have had more effect, and he might
+have averted or restricted the calamities that had occurred. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>But a
+great change soon took place. The first object of the Government was
+to prevent the Turkish disturbance from leading to a European war, and
+in this object they failed. On April 24, 1877, Russia, in spite of
+English remonstrances, declared war against Turkey. On the same day a
+Russian army crossed the Pruth, and the Eastern Question entered into
+a new and dangerous phase.</p>
+
+<p>To a statesman like Lord Derby, who maintained that war, unless it is
+a necessity, is a crime; that the maintenance of peace is beyond all
+comparison the greatest of British interests, the months that followed
+were extremely trying. His first object was to limit the war, and to
+safeguard English interests, and for this purpose he drew up on May 6,
+1877, a Note defining the English interests that were vital in the
+East. He warned the Russian Government that an attempt by Russia to
+blockade the Suez Canal, an attack on Egypt, a Russian occupation of
+Constantinople, or an alteration of the existing arrangements for the
+navigation of the Bosphorus or the Dardanelles might compel England to
+abandon her neutrality. Russia accepted these conditions, and for some
+time there appeared every prospect of limiting the war. But in the
+beginning of 1878 a period of extreme danger undoubtedly arrived.
+Plevna had fallen. The Turkish resistance had collapsed. A Russian
+army, flushed with victory, had advanced to near Constantinople. The
+treaty of San Stephano was signed; which in the opinion of most
+European statesmen placed Turkey at the feet of Russia, and Russia at
+first refused to submit its terms to a conference of European Powers.
+Public feeling in England now ran strongly in a direction almost
+opposite to that in which it had been running eighteen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>months before,
+and the nation was extremely alarmed at the danger of Constantinople
+becoming speedily and irremediably a Russian port. On the other hand,
+the national and military pride of the conquering Power was aroused,
+and it was felt that a single false step, a single imprudent menace,
+might lead to war.</p>
+
+<p>It was one of those moments in which men's judgments are largely
+affected by their temperaments, and it soon became evident that the
+Cabinet was seriously divided. Disraeli had now become Lord
+Beaconsfield, and sat with his Foreign Secretary in the House of
+Lords. With his character it was inevitable that he should meet the
+danger by a bold, decisive, and even aggressive, policy. It was no
+less natural that Lord Derby should have persistently leaned towards
+the side of caution and shrunk from any measure that could cut short
+negotiation and diminish the chances of peace. The order given that
+the British Fleet should enter the Dardanelles, first produced the
+inevitable schism, and Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon resigned. The
+order was countermanded, and Lord Derby, for a short time, resumed his
+post. He acquiesced, but with great reluctance, in the vote of credit
+for six millions which was at once brought before the House of
+Commons, but he was soon convinced that measures he did not approve of
+were impending, and when orders were given for calling out the
+reserves he definitely resigned.</p>
+
+<p>He announced his resignation on March 28, 1878, in terms of much
+dignity and moderation. He believed, he said, that his colleagues
+desired peace as truly as himself, and he did not maintain that their
+later measures led inevitably to war, but he considered that they were
+neither necessary nor 'prudent in the interests of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>European peace.'
+He agreed that the terms of the treaty should be submitted to a
+European Congress, in which England should take part. On minor matters
+he thought it his duty to waive his own opinion, but he could not do
+so on a question involving the momentous issue of peace or war. The
+threat involved in the last act of the Government, he said, in a later
+speech, would make it more difficult for Russia to modify her policy,
+and he believed that without a threat such a modification of the
+treaty of San Stephano could be obtained as would make it acceptable.
+He had been accused of indecision and even of cowardice. For his own
+part he thought it needed more courage to stand up in his place to
+express views which he knew to be unpopular among the great body of
+his friends, than to sit at a desk in Downing Street and issue orders
+which would bring no danger or unpopularity to himself, but might
+bring about a European war.</p>
+
+<p>The short speech in which Lord Beaconsfield accepted the resignation,
+and dwelt on the long friendship, personal as well as political, that
+bound him to Lord Derby, seems to me a perfect model of good feeling
+and good taste. Unfortunately the example of the Prime Minister was
+not followed, and words used in a later debate went far to make the
+breach irrevocable.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Derby for a short time maintained a neutral position, but the
+foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield was in the highest degree
+distasteful to him. A wave of Chauvinism was passing over England,
+which was utterly opposed to his views, and he believed that a section
+of the Conservative party encouraged it in order to divert the
+thoughts of men from internal reforms. He objected to the acquisition
+of Cyprus, to some of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>responsibilities assumed by England under
+the treaty of Berlin, and very strongly to the Afghan war; and in the
+beginning of 1880 he formally attached himself to the Liberal party,
+on the ground of his objections to the foreign policy of the
+Government. His speeches in his new capacity differed very little from
+those which he had formerly delivered, but he said that he had learnt
+to see more clearly the uselessness of attempting to resist popular
+ideas, and to think 'more highly of the moderation, the fairness, and
+the general justice with which masses of men, including all conditions
+of life, are disposed to use their power.' He thought that England
+should mix herself as little as possible with 'the sanguinary muddle'
+of European diplomacy; that she should avoid increasing her
+responsibilities; that she should take stringent measures to reduce
+her debt; that she should pay much more attention than she was
+accustomed to do to the condition of her own poorer population; and
+that it should be the object of her statesmen to meet every great
+popular demand by wise and equitable compromise. One of the greatest
+dangers, he said, that could befall the country, would be 'a state of
+things in which the comparatively harmless antagonism of parties would
+be replaced by the far more serious and dangerous war of classes. From
+that danger more than from any other it is the business of a
+well-considered Liberalism to protect us.'</p>
+
+<p>In 1882 he accepted the Colonial Office from Mr. Gladstone, and held
+it until the fall of the Government in the summer of 1885. His
+ministry was not a very eventful one, and it was marked by that steady
+adherence to a middle line which had always characterised him. He
+congratulated the country that the indifference to our <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>colonies which
+had prevailed during his youth had passed away, but he was by no means
+favourable to extensions of the Empire. 'We have quite black men
+enough,' he was accustomed to say; and he believed that any increase
+of our responsibilities was likely to endanger the Empire, and to
+divert the energies of politicians from pressing home questions. He
+did not condemn the policy which led to the occupation of Egypt by
+England, but he declared that even if it was inevitable it was a
+misfortune, and that we ought to 'see that we do not on any pretext,
+however plausible, get that Egyptian millstone tied permanently round
+our necks.' He was very sceptical about Imperial Federation, and
+entirely incredulous about the possibility of an Imperial Zollverein.
+He deplored the protectionism of the colonies, but was himself a
+strict free-trader of the school of Cobden, and utterly opposed to any
+attempt to negotiate treaties with the colonies on a basis of
+preferential tariffs. On the other hand, he showed himself quite ready
+to favour Confederation in Australia, and he accepted gratefully
+Australian help in the Soudan, but he was much alarmed by tendencies
+in some colonies which might lead to complications with foreign
+Powers, and he incurred considerable unpopularity in Australia by
+refusing to consent to the annexation by Queensland of New Guinea.</p>
+
+<p>There is, however, one incident in the colonial administration of Lord
+Derby on which it is necessary to dwell at somewhat greater length,
+for subsequent events have given it an unfortunate prominence and it
+has thrown some discredit on his statesmanship. I allude, of course,
+to the convention with the Transvaal in 1884. In the preceding
+convention, which had been signed in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>August 1881, complete
+self-government had been granted by England to the Transvaal 'subject
+to the suzerainty of her Majesty' and her successors, and also to a
+large number of carefully specified reservations and limitations. They
+comprised the complete control of the external relations of the
+Transvaal, including the conclusion of treaties and the conduct of
+diplomatic intercourse with foreign Powers, which could only be
+carried on through her Majesty's officers; the right of moving British
+troops in case of necessity through the Transvaal; a power of veto
+over all legislation affecting the interests of the native population.
+A number of articles prohibited slavery in the new State; protected
+with much detail the interests of the native population; secured
+complete religious liberty; established the right of all persons other
+than natives who conformed themselves to the laws of the State, to
+enter, travel, and reside in any part of the Transvaal, to acquire
+property and to carry on their business without being subject to any
+other taxation than that which was imposed on the citizens of the
+Transvaal; and placed British imports and exports on the same plane as
+those of the most-favoured nations. The limits of the new State were
+carefully defined and a British Resident was established in the
+Transvaal to superintend the carrying out of these provisions. There
+was no express provision in the convention for the political
+privileges of the English residents in the Transvaal, but the
+Government appear to have relied on a not very explicit verbal
+assurance given to the British Commissioners by President Kruger in
+May 1881. Asked about the rights of British subjects to complete free
+trade throughout the Transvaal, President Kruger answered that before
+the annexation 'they were on the same footing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>as the burghers'; that
+'there was not the slightest difference in accordance with the Sand
+River convention'; that this state of things would be continued and
+that 'there would be equal protection for everybody.' Sir Evelyn Wood
+then added, 'and equal privileges?' 'We make no difference,' answered
+President Kruger, 'so far as burgher rights are concerned. There may
+perhaps be some slight difference in the case of a young person who
+has just come into the country.' It was subsequently explained that
+the words 'young person' did not refer to age, but to the time of
+residence in the Republic&mdash;according to the old Transvaal
+Constitution, a year's residence in the Republic was necessary for
+naturalisation. With this assurance the Government of 1881 appears to
+have been content. They believed in words expressly sanctioned by Mr.
+Gladstone, that the concession of limited independence to the
+Transvaal by the convention of 1881 would 'provide for the full
+liberty and equal treatment of the entire white population, guard the
+interests of the natives, and promote harmony and good-will among the
+various races in South Africa.'<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> As a matter of fact, the only
+change in the political position of the English residents in the
+Transvaal was that the period of naturalisation was extended from one
+to five years&mdash;a change which appears to have produced little or no
+commotion in the Republic.</p>
+
+<p>The convention of 1881 was, however, extremely unpopular among a large
+section of the Boer population. Complete independence was their avowed
+object, and in order to attain it their first task was to abolish the
+suzerainty of Great Britain. Almost immediately after <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>the convention
+was signed, the limitations of the Transvaal established by the
+convention were flagrantly disregarded by Transvaal filibusters, who
+proceeded with the tacit and even with the avowed countenance of their
+Government to place new sections of native territory under the
+exclusive protectorate of the Transvaal Government;<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> and a
+deputation, headed by President Kruger, came to England in 1883 for
+the purpose of negotiating with the Colonial Office for the abolition
+of the chief articles of the convention of 1881. They avowed with
+complete frankness that absolute independence would alone satisfy
+them, and that their desire was to revert to the Sand River convention
+of 1852, by which this independence had been recognised. This demand
+was absolutely rejected by the Imperial Government, but Lord Derby
+attempted to meet the objections of the Transvaal leaders by
+substituting for the articles of the convention of 1881 new articles
+in several respects more favourable to the pretensions of the Boers.</p>
+
+<p>He, in the first place, made a sentimental concession to which it is
+probable he attached little importance, but which was regarded by the
+Boer population as a considerable step towards the achievement of
+their independence. The term 'Transvaal State,' which was accepted in
+the convention of 1881 as the designation of the new State, was
+dropped and the old title of 'South African Republic' was revived and
+recognised. The question of suzerainty was dealt with in a somewhat
+ambiguous fashion. The new convention purported only to substitute new
+articles in the place of those of the preceding convention; and it was
+afterwards argued that the old preamble, which asserted at once the
+internal independence of the Transvaal <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>and the suzerainty of Great
+Britain, remained in force. In fact, however, this preamble was
+neither reprinted nor replaced in the new convention, and the term
+'suzerainty,' which occurred in the original draft of the document,
+was deliberately expunged&mdash;it is said by Lord Derby himself. He
+considered the term wholly wanting in the precision which is desirable
+in a treaty arrangement, that it was capable of many different degrees
+of extension, and that the fact of the paramountcy of Great Britain
+over the new State might be sufficiently established without the use
+of an ambiguous word which excited the most bitter hostility in the
+Transvaal. His own words in defending his conduct in the House of
+Lords are perfectly clear. 'The word suzerainty,' he said, 'is a very
+vague word, and I do not think it is capable of any precise legal
+definition. Whatever we may understand by it, I think it is not very
+easy to define. But I apprehend whether you call it a protectorate, or
+a suzerainty, or the recognition of England as a paramount Power, the
+fact is that a certain controlling power is retained when the State
+which exercises this suzerainty has a right to veto any negotiation
+into which the dependent State may enter with foreign Powers. Whatever
+suzerainty meant in the convention of Pretoria (1881), the condition
+of things which it implies still remains; although the word is not
+actually employed, we have kept the substance. We have abstained from
+using the word because it was not capable of legal definition, and
+because it seemed to be a word which was likely to lead to
+misconception and misunderstanding.'</p>
+
+<p>The articles of the previous convention relating to slavery, to native
+rights, to free trade, to religious liberty, to the rights of
+residence of foreigners in the Transvaal, reappear in the new
+convention, and the limits of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>State were somewhat more fully
+defined, but the controlling power of Great Britain over the foreign
+policy of the Transvaal, though clearly reasserted, was somewhat
+limited in its scope. It was provided that the South African Republic
+should conclude no treaty or engagement with any State or nation other
+than the Orange Free State, or with any native tribe to the eastward
+or westward of the Republic, until the same had been approved by the
+Queen; that every such treaty should be at once submitted to her
+Majesty's Government for her consent, but that this consent should be
+presumed to have been granted if no notification to the contrary was
+received within six months. The desire of the Transvaal authorities to
+be recognised as representing an independent sovereign power was thus
+distinctly rejected, and the English Government positively refused a
+proposal to admit foreign arbitration in cases of dispute between
+England and the Transvaal.</p>
+
+<p>This convention has been severely censured by later writers on the
+ground of the insufficiency and ambiguity of its assertion of the
+paramount authority of Great Britain over the Transvaal, and of its
+failure to do anything to supply the great deficiency in the preceding
+convention by an article securing political equality for the British
+population within it. A few years later, when an immense English
+immigration had taken place, not only with the consent but at the
+express invitation of the Transvaal Government; when the English
+element formed a large majority of the inhabitants of the State; when
+they paid an enormous preponderance of its taxation, and were the
+chief agents in developing its wealth and raising it from the position
+of a very poor pastoral community into that of a great and wealthy
+State, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>Transvaal Government proceeded to impose upon the new
+emigrants disqualifications and disabilities which were utterly
+unknown when England conceded self-government to 'the inhabitants of
+the Transvaal.' They completely deprived the vast majority of
+political power or local self-government, and surrounded them at every
+turn with the most irritating disabilities. The Transvaal became the
+one part of South Africa where one white race was held in a position
+of inferiority to another. At a time when perfect equality was enjoyed
+by the Dutch population in our own colonies, the political
+disqualification of the English race was made the very corner-stone of
+the policy of the Transvaal Government. An annual revenue greatly in
+excess of what was required for its internal government was raised
+almost entirely from the taxation of an unrepresented class, to whom
+the prosperity of the State was mainly due, and it was employed in
+accumulating a great armament which could only be intended for use
+against England and for maintaining the subjection of an English
+population.</p>
+
+<p>This was the position to which the paramount Power in South Africa,
+the Power which of its own free will had conceded a limited
+independence to the Transvaal, found itself reduced. And yet it was
+possible for the Boer Government to maintain that there was nothing in
+all this legislation which was inconsistent with the terms of the
+convention of 1884.</p>
+
+<p>I do not think that the justice of this criticism can be wholly
+denied. The Transvaal authorities had already given clear intimation
+of their desire to emancipate themselves from all British control, and
+especially of their determination to disregard the limitations which
+had been imposed on the expansion of their State. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>There is, however,
+one very material fact to be remembered in judging the policy of Lord
+Derby. At the time of the convention of 1884 the English population in
+the Transvaal was a small, scattered, and powerless minority, and as
+their numbers were far too scanty to make them a danger to the State,
+there was not much reason to believe that the Transvaal authorities
+would repudiate their own assurances and subject them to oppressive
+disabilities. It was not until two years after the convention that the
+vast gold-mines of the Transvaal were discovered and all the
+conditions of the South African problem fundamentally changed. The
+gigantic immigration that ensued reversed the proportion between the
+two races. The revenue and the expenditure of the State multiplied
+more than fifteen fold in little more than ten years.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> The
+Transvaal became the most powerful and wealthy State in South Africa,
+and the great preponderance of the Outlander element in numbers,
+wealth, energy, and industry rendered a conflict of races almost
+inevitable. No statesman could have foreseen this change, and a
+convention that might have allayed discontent if the gold-mines had
+never been discovered, proved wholly inefficient to meet it.</p>
+
+<p>Though in a politician of the stamp of Lord Derby the change from a very
+liberal conservatism to a very conservative liberalism involved little
+real modification of opinion, it necessarily involved some change of
+attitude, and on some questions he spoke with a freedom which would have
+been impossible as a member of the Conservative party. On Church
+questions, for example, while strongly maintaining that the country was
+not ripe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>for the disestablishment of the Church in England, he declared
+that in his opinion the exclusive alliance of one religious denomination
+among many with the State could not be permanently maintained side by
+side with a democratic representation&mdash;that disestablishment and at
+least partial disendowment must ultimately come; that if the
+representatives of Scotland desired the disestablishment of their
+Church, it was not for Englishmen to oppose them; and that Wales had a
+strong claim to be separately dealt with. 'The Welsh people constitute
+in many respects a distinct nationality, and I do not see why we should
+refuse to Welsh loyalty what we have granted to Irish sedition.' On the
+subject of endowments indeed as early as 1875 his view was that of most
+moderate Liberals. 'To my mind, so far as right is concerned, the
+Legislature may do what it chooses in regard to any endowment, without
+injustice, provided only that the rights of living individuals are
+respected. How far it is politic to use that power is another matter....
+Respect the founder's object, but use your own discretion as to the
+means. If you don't do the first, you will have no new endowments. If
+you neglect the last, those which you have will be of no use.'<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> He
+maintained that the question of local government had in England become
+one of pressing importance, and that the administration of county
+affairs must be put into the hands of elective bodies. He would give
+those local parliaments very large power&mdash;but he most urgently insisted
+on the importance of one restriction. The new bodies must not be given
+an unlimited power of mortgaging the future. The gradual reduction of
+the National Debt had been for some years one of the chief aims of
+enlightened politicians, but all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>that had been done in this direction
+would be undone if, side by side with the National Debt, there grew up a
+municipal debt of perhaps equal amount. In this tendency to municipal
+extravagance he saw one of the gravest menaces to property. 'The growth
+of Socialism throughout Europe has followed very closely on the gigantic
+increase of national indebtedness during the present century, and men
+who begin to feel the pressure intolerable are apt to raise questions,
+more easily stated than solved, as to the right of any State to impose
+burdens in perpetuity for the benefit of one generation.' He urged that
+every local body which contracted a debt should be under a statutory
+obligation to provide for its repayment in fifty or sixty years at
+latest.</p>
+
+<p>The growth of municipal indebtedness; the excessive tendency to
+increase the functions of the State; the disaffection of Ireland and
+the contingency of an isolated and disloyal body of some eighty Irish
+representatives offering their services to any party which would
+consent to carry out their designs, appeared to Lord Derby the chief
+dangers of English domestic politics. The last danger was very
+speedily realised, and the sudden conversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home
+Rule produced one more change in the attitude of Lord Derby. On this
+question he had never flinched or wavered, and he at once took his
+place in the front rank of the Liberal Unionists, whom for some time
+he led in the House of Lords. I do not know that the Unionist case has
+ever been more powerfully put forward than in his speeches on the
+subject, and the eminently judicial character of his mind, and his
+entire freedom from all mere party bias, gave a special weight to his
+advocacy. With this exception he took little part in party politics
+during the last years of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>his life, but he devoted himself largely to
+social questions, and among other things served with great assiduity
+and ability on the Labour Commission. His last speech was delivered at
+Manchester on the unveiling of the statue of Mr. Bright in October
+1891. His last public work was that of presiding over the Labour
+Commission in May 1892. In the preceding year an attack of influenza,
+followed by a relapse, had shattered a health which had hitherto been
+robust. Other complications ensued, and he passed away at Knowsley on
+April 21, 1893, in his sixty-seventh year.</p>
+
+<p>The foregoing sketch will, I hope, have given a sufficient idea of his
+public character. Few men have made a greater sacrifice of ambition to
+a conscientious conviction than he did, when, rather than support a
+measure which might lead to war, he abandoned the Conservative
+Ministry in 1878. He was then the fully recognised successor of Lord
+Beaconsfield, and if he had adopted a different course he would in a
+short time have been, beyond all doubt, Prime Minister of England. On
+the whole, however, the severance from old friends cost him, I
+believe, far more than the sacrifice of his political prospects.
+Whatever he may have been in his youth, he was certainly not in mature
+life an ambitious man. With the great position he held in England the
+world had little to offer him, and the self-knowledge which was not
+the least of his many remarkable gifts showed him that party conflict
+was not the sphere in which Nature intended him to move. With many of
+the qualities of the highest statesmanship he wanted some necessary
+ingredients of a great statesman. He wanted the power of appealing to
+the imagination and moving the passions. He wanted more decision of
+character, more power of initiative, more capacity of bearing lightly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>the weight of a great responsibility. His belief that the House of
+Lords must always ultimately yield to the House of Commons aggravated
+a weakness of resolution which was deeply rooted in his nature. There
+were moments when his inveterate moderation tended to exasperate, and
+he was accused, not altogether without reason, of sometimes making
+admirable speeches, pointing out in the clearest terms all the evils
+and dangers of a measure, and then concluding by exhorting the House
+of Lords to vote for it, introducing mitigating amendments in
+Committee. The measures he treated in this way usually, as he had
+predicted, became law, but this was not the attitude of a great
+leader. During a considerable part of his career, like a very large
+proportion of moderate men in England, he was in the embarrassing
+position of agreeing substantially with the home policy of one party
+and with the foreign policy of the other. After the death of Lord
+Palmerston an element of passion was infused into public life which
+was very uncongenial to his temperament, and English politics passed
+into phases in which caution, character, judgment, and knowledge were
+less prized than brilliant strokes that appealed to the popular
+imagination, clever coalitions, a skilful barter of principles for
+votes. In spheres governed by such methods Lord Derby was very useful,
+but he was not likely to play a foremost part.</p>
+
+<p>To few men who have taken a conspicuous part in active politics was
+the excitement of such an existence so little necessary. Happy in his
+domestic life and in a companionship and sympathy which were
+all-sufficient to him, he was not less happy in the wide range of his
+interests and duties. The administration of his vast estate would have
+been more than sufficient <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>to tax the energies of most men, and it
+was, I believe, universally acknowledged that it was admirably
+administered. In the everyday affairs of practical life he had no
+indecision, and he judged swiftly with the clearest of judgments.
+Nothing about him was more remarkable than the apparent ease and the
+absence of all hurry and confusion with which he could deal with many
+different forms of work. His study in its perfect neatness was more
+like a lady's boudoir than the workshop of a very busy man. <i>Ohne
+Hast, ohne Rast</i>, might have been his motto. He had much belief in the
+future of English land, and was not, I think, at all exempt from the
+great English landlord's foible of adding field to field. In the long
+period of agricultural depression it was easy for a rich man to do so.
+'In my experience,' he used to say, 'in nine cases out of ten it is
+Naboth who comes to Ahab and begs him to buy his vineyard.' Certainly
+no one had reason to complain, for there were few better or more
+popular landlords than Lord Derby. In many long walks with him through
+his property I was always struck with the evident pleasure with which
+he was welcomed by his people, the fulness of knowledge and the
+kindness of interest with which he inquired into the circumstances of
+every tenant. It is characteristic of him that only two days before
+his death he was giving instructions for building a hospital for the
+sick poor of Knowsley. I have known few men in whom the desire to make
+everyone about them happy was so strongly and so clearly marked. He
+was fond of looking minutely into the circumstances of men of
+different classes, and comparing their wants with their means, often
+with somewhat whimsical results. There was a tradesman who made
+regularly 5<i>l.</i> a week; who was accustomed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>every week to devote 2<i>l.</i>
+to his household expenses, to lay by 2<i>l.</i>, and to employ the
+remainder in getting drunk. He was, Lord Derby thought, the only man
+he had ever known who satisfied all his wants with 40 per cent. of his
+income, who always laid by 40 per cent., and who expended 20 per cent.
+on his pleasures.</p>
+
+<p>Outside his property Lord Derby had strong county interests. With
+perhaps the exception of Birmingham there is no part of England where
+a distinctive local patriotism is so intensely developed as in
+Lancashire, and Lord Derby in tastes and character was pre-eminently a
+Lancashire man, very proud of the greatness, and deeply concerned in
+the interests, of his county. In all the vicissitudes of his career,
+Liverpool, I believe, never wavered in its attachment to him. He
+contributed to the many charitable and philanthropic works with which
+he was concerned not only much money, but also&mdash;what in so rich a man
+was far more meritorious&mdash;an extraordinary amount of time and patient
+supervision. Among the many offices he accepted, was president of the
+Literary Fund for dispensing charity to needy authors, and on the
+committee of that charity I had, during many years, ample opportunity
+of observing how far he was from treating a presidential position as a
+sinecure. The regularity of his attendance, the constant attention he
+paid to every detail of the charity; the infinite pains which he would
+bestow upon obscure cases of distress, marked him out as a model
+president, and many of those whom our rules did not allow us to help
+were assisted by his bounty. He contributed with a large but
+discriminating generosity to many causes that were conspicuous in the
+eyes of the world, but his special bias was towards unostentatious
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>and unobserved benevolence, and crowds of obscure men in obscure
+positions were assisted by him.</p>
+
+<p>Those who did not know him, and those who had come in merely casual
+contact with him, sometimes formed a false impression of his
+character. He had a great deal of natural shyness. He had very little
+of the gift of small talk. On occasions of mere show and in
+uncongenial atmospheres he was apt to be awkward and embarrassed, and
+when walking by himself he was extremely absent and quite capable of
+brushing against his oldest friend with a complete unconsciousness of
+his presence. These traits sometimes gave rise to natural
+misinterpretations, which a fuller knowledge always dispelled. No one
+who knew Lord Derby could fail to feel that his nature was one of the
+most genuine and transparent simplicity, singularly free from all
+tinge of arrogance, superciliousness, and acrimony. His personal
+tastes were exceedingly simple, and there was not a particle of
+ostentation in his character. He delighted in a quiet country life and
+had a strong sense of natural beauty. In his youth he had been an
+ardent mountaineer, and in later life he had few greater pleasures
+than to watch the growth of his plantations. He calculated that he had
+planted in his lifetime about two million of trees.</p>
+
+<p>He was among the best-read men I have ever known. His private library
+was one of the finest in England, and he took a keen interest in it. A
+love of sumptuous, large-paper editions was indeed one of the very few
+luxuries in which from mere personal taste he greatly indulged. Like
+all men of literary tastes he had his limitations. German was a closed
+book to him. Theology and metaphysics were conspicuous by their
+absence. He was certainly not drawn to the mystical, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>the
+unintelligible, or the morbid, either in imaginative or speculative
+literature, and although he was a great lover and great buyer of
+water-colour pictures, I do not think he had much real sense or
+knowledge of art. But he had read very extensively and with great
+profit and discrimination in many widely different fields, and his
+memory was unusually retentive. He was an excellent literary critic,
+and if clear thought and accurate knowledge were what he most valued,
+it would be a complete mistake to suppose that he was insensible to
+the poetic and imaginative side of literature. He could repeat long
+passages from 'Childe Harold,' and I can well remember the delight
+which he took in the picturesque narrative of Mr. Froude, and in the
+fiery verses of Sir Alfred Lyall.</p>
+
+<p>He was one of the kindest and most gracious of hosts, and his genuine
+unforced good nature and good humour drew to him many whose tastes and
+sympathies were widely different from his own. Nature certainly never
+intended him for a sportsman, but he preserved game extensively and
+until the last years of his life usually went out with his guests. 'I
+rather like shooting,' he once said to me, 'it prevents the necessity
+of general conversation.' Among kindred spirits, however, his own
+conversation was eminently attractive. His wide knowledge both of
+books and men, his vast range of political anecdote, his experience of
+so many statesmen and offices and departments of life, made it
+singularly instructive. He was a very shrewd, and at the same time a
+very kind, judge of character; and he had a power, which is certainly
+not common, of fully appreciating merits that are allied with great
+and manifest defects. He had much quaint, dry humour, and a great
+happiness of expression; and one always felt that his opinions were
+genuinely thought out&mdash;that they were voices and not echoes. His
+private <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>conversation had the quality that I have noticed in his
+public speeches, of grasping at once the essential elements of a
+question and disencumbering it from accessories and details. It is one
+of the qualities that add most to the charm of conversation, and, with
+the exception of Lord Russell, I do not think I have met with anyone
+who possessed it to a greater degree than Lord Derby. He delighted in
+long walks with one or two friends, and he might be seen to great
+advantage in some small dining-clubs which play a larger part than is
+generally recognised in the best English social life of our time. He
+had been a member of Grillion's for thirty-seven years, but the
+society to which he was most attached was, I think, 'The Club' which
+was founded by Johnson and Reynolds. During the nineteen years of
+which I can speak from personal experience, he was an almost constant
+attendant, and certainly no other member enjoyed a greater popularity
+in it, or contributed more largely to its charm.</p>
+
+<p>He hated cant of all kinds, and had a great distrust of ostentatious
+professions of lofty motives. He disliked, I think greatly, the habit
+of dragging sacred names into party speeches, and attributing every
+party man&oelig;uvre to a solemn sense of duty. Language of this kind
+will never be found in his speeches, but I have known few men who were
+governed through life more steadily though more unobtrusively by a
+sense of duty. He always tried to look facts in the face, and to
+promote in the many spheres which he could influence the real
+happiness of men. There have been statesmen among his contemporaries
+of greater power and of more brilliant achievement. There has been, I
+believe, no statesman of sounder judgment and more disinterested
+patriotism; there have been very few whose departure has left a void
+in so many spheres.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> See, on this subject, Cook's <i>Rights and Wrongs of the
+Transvaal War</i>, pp. 260-265.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> See Westlake's <i>L'Angleterre et les R&eacute;publiques Boers</i>,
+pp. 30-31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> See the table of revenue and expenditure in
+Fitzpatrick's <i>Transvaal from Within</i>, p. 71.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> Inaugural address at Edinburgh University.</p></div>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="HENRY_REEVE" id="HENRY_REEVE"></a>HENRY REEVE, C.B., F.S.A., D.C.L.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>Although it has never been the custom of the 'Edinburgh Review' to
+withdraw the veil of anonymity from its writers and its
+administration, it would be mere affectation to suffer it to appear
+before the public without some allusion to the great editor whom we
+have just lost,<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a> and who for forty years has watched with
+indefatigable care over its pages.</p>
+
+<p>The career of Mr. Henry Reeve is perhaps the most striking
+illustration in our time of how little in English life influence is
+measured by notoriety. To the outer world his name was but little
+known. He is remembered as the translator of Tocqueville, as the
+editor of the 'Greville Memoirs,' as the author of a not quite
+forgotten book on Royal and Republican France, showing much knowledge
+of French literature and politics; as the holder during fifty years of
+the respectable, but not very prominent, post of Registrar of the
+Privy Council. To those who have a more intimate knowledge of the
+political and literary life of England, it is well known that during
+nearly the whole of his long life he was a powerful and living force
+in English literature; that few men of his time have filled a larger
+place in some of the most select circles of English social life; and
+that he exercised during many years a political influence such as
+rarely falls to the lot of any Englishman outside Parliament, or even
+outside the Cabinet.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>He was born at Norwich in 1813, and brought up in a highly cultivated,
+and even brilliant, literary circle. His father, Dr. Reeve, was one of
+the earliest contributors to the 'Edinburgh Review.' The Austins, the
+Opies, the Taylors, and the Aldersons were closely related to him, and
+he is said to have been indebted to his gifted aunt, Sarah Austin, for
+his appointment in the Privy Council. The family income was not large,
+and a great part of Mr. Reeve's education took place on the Continent,
+chiefly at Geneva and Munich. He went with excellent introductions,
+and the years he spent abroad were abundantly fruitful. He learned
+German so well that he was at one time a contributor to a German
+periodical. He was one of the rare Englishmen who spoke French almost
+like a Frenchman, and at a very early age he formed friendships with
+several eminent French writers. His translation of the 'Democracy in
+America,' by Tocqueville, which appeared in 1835, strengthened his
+hold on French society. Two years later he obtained the appointment in
+the Privy Council, which he held until 1887. It was in this office
+that he became the colleague and fast friend of Charles Greville, who
+on his death-bed entrusted him with the publication of his 'Memoirs.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Reeve had now obtained an assured income and a steady occupation,
+but it was far from satisfying his desire for work. He became a
+contributor, and very soon a leading contributor, to the 'Times,'
+while his close and confidential intercourse with Mr. Delane gave him
+a considerable voice in its management. The penny newspaper was still
+unborn, and the 'Times' at this period was the undisputed monarch of
+the Press, and exercised an influence over public opinion, both in
+England and on the Continent, such as no existing paper can be said
+to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>possess. It is, we believe, no exaggeration to say that for the
+space of fifteen years nearly every article that appeared in its
+columns on foreign politics was written by Mr. Reeve, and the period
+during which he wrote for it included the year 1848, when foreign
+politics had the most transcendent importance.</p>
+
+<p>The great political influence which he at this time exercised
+naturally drew him into close connection with many of the chief
+statesmen of his time. With Lord Clarendon especially his friendship
+was close and confidential, and he received from that statesman almost
+weekly letters during his viceroyalty in Ireland and during others of
+the more critical periods of his career. In France, Mr. Reeve's
+connections were scarcely less numerous than in England. Guizot,
+Thiers, Cousin, Tocqueville, Villemain, Circourt&mdash;in fact, nearly all
+the leading figures in French literature and politics during the reign
+of Louis Philippe were among his friends or correspondents. He was at
+all times singularly international in his sympathies and friendships,
+and he appears to have been more than once made the channel of
+confidential communications between English and French statesmen.</p>
+
+<p>It was a task for which he was eminently suited. The qualities which
+most impressed all who came into close communication with him were the
+strength, swiftness, and soundness of his judgment, and his unfailing
+tact and discretion in dealing with delicate questions. He was
+eminently a man of the world, and had quite as much knowledge of men
+as of books. Probably few men of his time have been so frequently and
+so variously consulted. He always spoke with confidence and authority,
+and his clear, keen-cut, decisive sentences, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>a certain stateliness of
+manner which did not so much claim as assume ascendancy, and a
+somewhat elaborate formality of courtesy which was very efficacious in
+repelling intruders, sometimes concealed from strangers the softer
+side of his character. But those who knew him well soon learnt to
+recognise the genuine kindliness of his nature, his remarkable skill
+in avoiding friction, and the rare steadiness of his friendships.</p>
+
+<p>One great source of his influence was the just belief in his complete
+independence and disinterestedness. For a very able man his ambition
+was singularly moderate. As he once said, he had made it his object
+throughout life only to aim at things which were well within his
+power. He had very little respect for the judgment of the multitude,
+and he cared nothing for notoriety and not much for dignities. A
+moderate competence, congenial work, a sphere of wide and genuine
+influence, a close and intimate friendship with a large proportion of
+the guiding spirits of his time, were the things he really valued, and
+all these he fully attained. He had great conversational powers, which
+never degenerated into monologue, a singularly equable, happy, and
+sanguine temperament, and a keen delight in cultivated society. These
+characteristics showed conspicuously in two small and very select
+dining-clubs which have included most of the distinguished English
+statesmen and men of letters of the century. He became a member of the
+Literary Society in 1857 and of Dr. Johnson's Club in 1861, and it is
+a remarkable evidence of the appreciation of his social tact that both
+bodies speedily selected him as their treasurer. He held that position
+in 'The Club' from 1868 till within a year of his death, when failing
+health and absence from London obliged him to relinquish it. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>The
+French Institute elected him 'Correspondant' in 1863 and Associated
+Member in 1888, in which latter dignity he succeeded Sir Henry Maine.
+In 1869 the University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree
+of D.C.L.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1855, on the death of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, that he
+assumed the editorship of the 'Edinburgh Review' which he retained
+till the day of his death. Both on the political and the literary side
+he was in full harmony with its traditions. His rare and minute
+knowledge of recent English and foreign political history; his vast
+fund of political anecdote; his personal acquaintance with so many of
+the chief actors on the political scene, both in England and France,
+gave a great weight and authority to his judgments, and his mind was
+essentially of the Whig cast. He was a genuine Liberal of the school
+of Russell, Palmerston, Clarendon, and Cornewall Lewis. It was a sober
+and tolerant Liberalism, rooted in the traditions of the past, and
+deeply attached to the historical elements in the Constitution. The
+dislike and distrust with which he had always viewed the progress of
+democracy deepened with age, and it was his firm conviction that it
+could never become the permanent basis of good government. Like most
+men of his type of thought and character, he was strongly repelled by
+the later career of Mr. Gladstone, and the Home Rule policy at last
+severed him definitely from the bulk of the Liberal party. From this
+time the present Duke of Devonshire was the leader of his party.</p>
+
+<p>His literary judgments had much analogy to his political ones. His
+leanings were all towards the old standards of thought and style. He
+had been formed in the school of Macaulay and Milman, and of the great
+French writers <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>under Louis Philippe. Sober thought, clear reasoning,
+solid scholarship, a transparent, vivid, and restrained style were the
+literary qualities he most appreciated. He was a great purist,
+inexorably hostile to a new word. In philosophy he was a devoted
+disciple of Kant, and his decided orthodoxy in religious belief
+affected many of his judgments. He could not appreciate Carlyle; he
+looked with much distrust on Darwinism and the philosophy of Herbert
+Spencer and he had very little patience with some of the moral and
+intellectual extravagances of modern literature. But, according to his
+own standards and in the wide range of his own subjects, his literary
+judgment was eminently sound, and he was quick and generous in
+recognising rising eminence. In at least one case the first
+considerable recognition of a prominent historian was an article in
+the 'Edinburgh Review' from his pen.</p>
+
+<p>He had a strong sense of the responsibility of an editor, and
+especially of the editor of a Review of unsigned articles. No article
+appeared which he did not carefully consider. His powerful
+individuality was deeply stamped upon the Review, and he carefully
+maintained its unity and consistency of sentiments. It was one of the
+chief occupations and pleasures of his closing days, and the very last
+letter he dictated referred to it.</p>
+
+<p>Time, as might be expected, had greatly thinned the circle of his
+friends. Of the France which he knew so well scarcely anything
+remained, but his old friend and senior Barth&eacute;lemy Saint-Hilaire
+visited him at Christ Church, and he kept up to the end a warm
+friendship with the Duc d'Aumale. He spent his eightieth birthday at
+Chantilly, and until the very last year of his life he was never
+absent when the Duke dined at 'The Club.' In <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>Lord Derby he lost the
+statesman with whom in his later years he was most closely connected
+by private friendship and political sympathy, while the death of Lady
+Stanley of Alderley deprived him of an attached and lifelong friend.</p>
+
+<p>Growing infirmities prevented him in his latter days from mixing much
+in general society in London, but his life was brightened by all that
+loving companionship could give; his mental powers were unfaded, and
+he could still enjoy the society of younger friends. He looked forward
+to the end with a perfect and a most characteristic calm, without fear
+and without regret. It was the placid close of a long, dignified, and
+useful life.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> Mr. Reeve died October 21, 1895.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ed.</span></p></div>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="HENRY_HART_MILMAN" id="HENRY_HART_MILMAN"></a>HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D., DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>The great prominence which the High Church movement has assumed in the
+ecclesiastical history of England during the second and third quarters
+of the nineteenth century, and the extraordinary success with which it
+has permeated the Established Church by its influence, have led some
+writers to exaggerate not a little the place which it occupied in the
+general intellectual development of the time. In the universities, it
+is true, it long exercised an extraordinary influence, and Mr.
+Gladstone, who was by far the most remarkable layman whom it
+profoundly influenced, was accustomed to say that for at least a
+generation almost the whole of the best intellect of Oxford was
+controlled by it. It possessed in Newman a writer of most striking and
+undoubted genius. In an age remarkable for brilliancy of style he was
+one of the greatest masters of English prose. His power of drawing
+subtle distinctions and pursuing long trains of subtle reasoning made
+him one of the most skilful of controversialists, and he had a great
+insight into spiritual cravings and an admirable gift of interpreting
+and appealing to many forms of religious emotion. But though he was a
+man of rare, delicate, and most seductive genius, we have sometimes
+doubted whether any of his books are destined to take a permanent and
+considerable place in English literature. He was not a great scholar,
+or an original and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>independent thinker. Dealing with questions
+inseparably connected with historical evidence, he had neither the
+judicial spirit nor the firm grasp of a real historian, and he had
+very little skill in measuring probabilities and degrees of evidence.
+He had a manifest incapacity, which was quite as much moral as
+intellectual, for looking facts in the face and pursuing trains of
+thought to unwelcome conclusions. He often took refuge from them in
+clouds of casuistry. The scepticism which was a marked feature of his
+intellect allied itself closely with credulity, for it was directed
+against reason itself; and though he has expressed in admirable
+language many true and beautiful thoughts, the glamour of his style
+too often concealed much weakness and uncertainty of judgment and much
+sophistry in argument.</p>
+
+<p>Many of those who co-operated with him were men of great learning and
+distinguished ability. No one will question the patristic knowledge of
+Pusey, the metaphysical acumen of Ward, the genuine vein of religious
+poetry in Keble and Faber, the wide accomplishments and scholarly
+criticism of Church. But on the whole the broad stream of English
+thought has gone in other directions. In politics the Oxford movement
+had brilliant representatives in Gladstone and Selborne, but the ideal
+of the relations of Church and State and the ideal of education to
+which the Oxford school aspired, have been absolutely discarded. The
+universities have been secularised. The Irish Established Church,
+which it was one of the first objects of the party to defend, has been
+abolished by Gladstone himself, and although the English Established
+Church retains its hold on the affections of the nation, it is
+defended by its most skilful supporters on very different grounds and
+by very different arguments <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>from those which were put forward by the
+Oxford divines. Among the foremost names in lay literature during the
+fifty years we are considering, it is curious to observe how few were
+even touched by the movement. Froude is an exception, but he speedily
+repudiated it. The medi&aelig;val sympathies that were sometimes shown by
+Ruskin sprang from a wholly different source. Macaulay, Carlyle,
+Hallam, Grote, Mill, Buckle, Tennyson, Browning, and the great
+novelists, from Dickens to George Eliot, all wrote very much as they
+might have written if the movement had never existed. An unusual
+proportion of the best intellect of England passed into the fields of
+physical science, and the methods of reasoning and habits of thought
+which they inculcated were wholly out of harmony with the school of
+Newman, while both geology and Darwinism have made serious incursions
+into long-cherished beliefs. Even in the Church itself, though the
+High Church movement was stronger than any other, great deductions
+have to be made. The school of independent Biblical criticism, which
+in various degrees has come to be generally accepted, certainly owed
+nothing to it, and several of the most illustrious Churchmen of this
+period were wholly alien to it. Thirlwall and Merivale were
+conspicuous examples, but they devoted themselves chiefly to great
+works of secular history. Arnold&mdash;who was one of the strongest
+personal influences of his age, and whose influence was both
+perpetuated and widened by Dean Stanley&mdash;and Whately, who was one of
+the most independent and original thinkers of the nineteenth century,
+were strongly antagonistic. In the field of ecclesiastical history it
+might have been expected that a school which was at once so scholarly
+and so wedded to tradition would have been pre-eminent, but no
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>ecclesiastical histories which England has produced can, on the whole,
+be placed on as high a level as those which were written by the great
+Broad Church divine whose name stands at the head of this article.</p>
+
+<p>Milman was, indeed, a man well deserving of commemoration on account
+of the works which he produced, yet it is perhaps not too much to say
+that to those among whom he lived the man seemed even greater than his
+works. For many years he was a central and most popular figure in the
+best English literary society, and he reckoned most of the leading
+intellects of his day among his friends. He was in an extraordinary
+degree many-sided, both in his knowledge and his sympathies. He was an
+admirable critic, and the eminent sanity of his judgment, as well as
+the eminent kindness of his nature, combined with a great charm both
+of manner and of conversation. Few men of his time had more friends,
+and were more admired, consulted, and loved.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Arthur Milman has sketched his father's life in one short
+volume,<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> written in excellent English and with uniformly good
+taste. We have read it with much interest, yet in laying it down it is
+impossible not to be sensible how much of the personal charm which was
+so conspicuous in its subject has passed beyond recovery. More than
+thirty years have gone by since the old Dean was laid in his grave,
+and but few of those who knew him intimately survive. He appears to
+have kept no journal. He wrote nothing autobiographical, and he had a
+strong sense of the chasm that should separate private from public
+life. It was wholly contrary to his unegotistical nature to make the
+great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>public the confidant of his domestic affairs or of his inner
+feelings, and he was deeply sensible of the injustice which is so
+often done by biographers in printing unguarded, unqualified opinions
+and judgments, expressed in the freedom of private correspondence. He
+acted sternly on this view. Many of the foremost men in England were
+among his correspondents, but he deliberately burnt their letters. 'I
+could never bear,' we have heard him say, 'that what was written to me
+by dear friends in the most unreserved and absolute confidence should,
+through my fault, be one day dragged before the public.' This
+reticence and this strong feeling of the sanctity of friendship and
+private correspondence, which is now becoming very rare, was one of
+his most characteristic traits, but it has necessarily deprived his
+biography of many elements of interest.</p>
+
+<p>He was the youngest son of Sir Francis Milman, the well-known
+physician of George III. He was born in 1791, and educated at Eton and
+Oxford, where he soon distinguished himself as one of the most
+brilliant of students. He won the Newdigate in 1812, the Chancellor's
+prize for Latin verse in 1813, the prize for English and Latin essays
+in 1816. He obtained a first class in classics, and in 1815 he was
+elected a Fellow of his college. He was ordained in the following
+year, and a year later Lord Eldon, who was then Chancellor of the
+university, nominated him to the vicarage of St. Mary at Reading,
+where he spent eighteen happy and fruitful years. Like most young and
+brilliant men, he first turned to verse, and for several years he
+poured out in rapid succession a number of dramas and poems which have
+been collected in three substantial volumes. The tragedy of 'Fazio'
+was written when he was still at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>Oxford, and it was speedily followed
+by a long and ambitious epic poem called 'Samor, Lord of the Bright
+City'; by three elaborate sacred dramas, the 'Fall of Jerusalem,' the
+'Martyr of Antioch,' and 'Belshazzar'; and by an historical tragedy on
+'Anne Boleyn,' as well as by a few minor poems.</p>
+
+<p>Some of these works had considerable popularity. 'Fazio' for many
+years held its place on the stage. Byron, in one of his letters to
+Rogers, speaks of its 'great and deserved success' when it was brought
+out at Covent Garden. Its heroine was a favourite part of Miss O'Neil
+and of Fanny Kemble. It was translated into Italian by Del Ongaro for
+Ristori, who acted it with admirable power, and there was also a
+French translation or adaptation in which Mademoiselle Mars took part.
+The 'Fall of Jerusalem' was never intended for the stage, but it had a
+great literary success. Murray, who had given only a hundred and fifty
+guineas for 'Fazio,' gave five hundred for the 'Fall of Jerusalem,'
+and he gave the same sum both for the 'Martyr of Antioch' and for
+'Belshazzar,' which succeeded it. Neither of these, however, proved as
+popular as the 'Fall of Jerusalem,' but the 'Martyr of Antioch'
+contains that noble funeral ode beginning 'Brother, thou art gone
+before us, and thy saintly soul is flown,' which is familiar to
+numbers who are probably not aware of its authorship. It is worthy of
+notice that as recently as 1880 Sir Arthur Sullivan set the 'Martyr of
+Antioch' to music and brought it out at the Leeds Festival, where it
+achieved an immediate and brilliant success, and was frequently
+performed.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> On the other hand, 'Samor' and 'Anne Boleyn' were
+almost absolute failures, and, on the whole, the longer poems of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>Milman have not retained their popularity, and probably now rarely
+find a reader.</p>
+
+<p>Those who turn to them will certainly be struck by the command of
+language and metre they display. It was shown both in rhyme and in
+blank verse. Many fine odes are scattered through them, and in the
+octo-syllabic verse Milman always appears to us peculiarly happy. But
+his poetry, like most of the poetry that was written under the Byronic
+influence, was rather the poetry of rhetoric than of imagination, and
+it wanted both the intensity and the concentration of the great
+master. Stately, sonorous, fluent, unfailingly lucid, it was too
+lengthy and too artificial, and Lockhart was not wholly wrong in
+pronouncing that it showed 'fine talents, but no genius,' and in
+urging that prose rather than poetry was the vehicle in which its
+author was destined to succeed. In addition, however, to the funeral
+ode to which we have referred, Milman has written many hymns, and some
+of these are of singular beauty. They appeared originally in the
+collection of that other great hymn-writer, Bishop Heber, who was one
+of his dearest friends, and one of the men to whose memory he looked
+back with the fondest affection. The Good Friday hymn, 'Bound upon th'
+accurs&egrave;d tree,' the Palm Sunday hymn, 'Ride on, ride on in majesty,'
+and perhaps still more that exquisitely pathetic hymn (so often
+misprinted in modern hymn-books) beginning</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When our heads are bowed with woe,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When our bitter tears o'erflow,<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noin">have long since taken their permanent place in devotional literature.</p>
+
+<p>In another and very different field of poetry also he greatly
+excelled. He was an admirable example of that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>highly finished and
+fastidious classical scholarship which is, or was, the pride of our
+great public schools, and he took great pleasure in translations from
+the classics. He translated into verse the 'Agamemnon' of &AElig;schylus,
+and the 'Bacchanals' of Euripides, and also a great number of small
+and much less known poems. He held the professorship of poetry at
+Oxford from 1821 to 1831, and as his lectures, according to the custom
+which then prevailed, were delivered in Latin, he had the happy
+thought of diversifying them by English metrical translations of the
+different poems he treated. They range over a wide field of obscure
+Greek poets, as well as of epitaphs, votive inscriptions, and
+inscriptions relating to the fine arts, and in addition to these there
+are translations from Sanscrit poetry&mdash;a branch of knowledge which was
+then very little cultivated, and to which Milman was greatly
+attracted. These poems the author published in 1865, but the lectures
+in which they were produced he committed to the flames. They had, in
+his opinion, lost their value through the subsequent publication of
+the works on the history of Greek literature by Bode, Ulrici, Otfried
+M&uuml;ller, and Mure.</p>
+
+<p>In prose his pen was exceedingly active. In 1820 he began his long
+connection with the 'Quarterly Review,' which continued, with
+occasional intervals, through more than forty years. His articles
+extended over a great variety of subjects, but most of them were
+essentially reviews and essentially critical. The fact that he was
+both a poet and an accomplished critic of verse caused some persons to
+ascribe to him the authorship of two articles which had an unhappy
+reputation&mdash;the criticism which was falsely supposed to have hastened
+the death of Keats, and the attack upon the 'Alastor' of Shelley, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>a
+poet for whom Milman had a special admiration. It is now well known
+that neither of these articles was by him, but it is characteristic of
+his loyalty to his colleagues that he never disclaimed the authorship.
+This loyalty was indeed not less conspicuous in his nature than the
+singular kindness of disposition with which he ever shrank from giving
+pain. After his death a few of his many essays in the 'Quarterly' were
+collected in one volume. Among them there is an admirable account of
+Erasmus, with whom in mental characteristics he had considerable
+affinity.</p>
+
+<p>In 1829 appeared his first historical work, the 'History of the Jews,'
+a work which excited a violent storm of theological indignation. The
+crime of Milman was that he applied to Jewish history the usual canons
+of historical criticism&mdash;sifting evidence, discriminating between
+documents, pointing out the parallelisms between Jewish conditions and
+those of other Oriental nations, and attempting to separate in the
+sacred writings the parts which were essential and revealed from those
+which were merely human and fallible. In a remarkable preface to a
+revised and enlarged edition of this work, which was published thirty
+years later, he laid down very clearly the principles that had guided
+him. The Jewish writers, in his opinion, were 'men of their age and
+country who, as they spoke the language, so they thought the thoughts
+of their nation and their time.... They had no special knowledge on
+any subject but moral and religious truth to distinguish them from
+other men, and were as fallible as others on all questions of science,
+and even of history, extraneous to their religious teaching.... Their
+one paramount object being instruction and enlightenment in religion,
+they left their hearers uninstructed and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>unenlightened as before in
+other things.... In all other respects society, civilisation,
+developed itself according to its usual laws. The Hebrew in the
+wilderness, excepting as far as the law modified his manners and
+habits, was an Arab of the desert. Abraham, except in his worship and
+intercourse with the one true God, was a nomad Sheik.... The moral and
+religious truth, and this alone, I apprehend, is "the word of God"
+contained in the sacred writings.'</p>
+
+<p>It must also, he contended, be always remembered that the Semitic
+records are of an 'essentially Oriental, figurative, poetical cast,'
+and that it is therefore wholly erroneous to suppose that every word
+can be construed with the precision of an Act of Parliament or of a
+simple modern historical narrative.</p>
+
+<p>His attitude towards the miraculous was carefully defined. He observed
+the absolute impossibility of evading the conclusion that the Jewish
+writers, whether eye-witnesses or not, implicitly believed in 'the
+supernaturalism, the divine or miraculous agency almost throughout the
+older history of the Jews,' and that it is 'an integral, inseparable
+part of the narrative.' Sometimes it is possible 'with more or less
+probability to detect the naked fact which may lie beneath the
+imaginative or marvellous language in which it is recorded; but even
+in these cases the solution can be hardly more than conjectural.' In
+other cases 'the supernatural so entirely predominates and is so of
+the intimate essence of the transaction that the facts and the
+interpretation must be accepted together or rejected together.' In
+such cases it is the duty of the historian simply 'to relate the facts
+as recorded, to adduce his authorities, and to abstain from all
+explanation for which he has no ground.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>The distinction between the providential and the strictly miraculous
+appears to him impossible to draw. 'Belief in Divine Providence, in
+the agency of God as the Prime Mover in the Natural world as in the
+mind of Man, is an inseparable part of religion. There can be no
+religion without it.' But in numerous cases, to distinguish between
+the simply providential and the strictly miraculous implies a
+knowledge of the working of natural causes greater than we possess;
+and in certain stages of civilisation, and very eminently in the
+Jewish mind, there is a marked tendency to suppress secondary causes,
+and to attribute not only the more extraordinary but also the common
+events of life to direct divine agency. The possibility and the
+reality of the miraculous he emphatically asserts.</p>
+
+<p>'The palmary miracle of all, the Resurrection, stands entirely by
+itself. Every attempt to resolve it into a natural event, a delusion
+or hallucination in the minds of the disciples, the eye-witnesses and
+death-defying witnesses to its truth, or to treat it as an allegory or
+figure of speech, is to me a signal failure. It must be accepted as
+the keystone&mdash;for such it is&mdash;and seal to the great Christian doctrine
+of a future life, as a historical fact, or rejected as a baseless
+fable.'</p>
+
+<p>But great numbers of what were deemed miracles may be explained by
+natural causes, by figurative modes of expression which were common in
+Oriental nations, by the tendency of the human mind to embellish or
+exaggerate surprising facts, or invent supernatural causes for what it
+is unable to explain, by the retrospective imagination which seeks to
+dignify the distant past with a supernatural halo. The early annals of
+all nations are strewn with pretended miracles which no one will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>now
+maintain, and Milman shows in a powerful passage how the idea of the
+miraculous has been steadily contracting and receding; how dangerous
+it is to base the defence of Christianity on the evidence of miracles
+rather than on appeals to the conscience, the moral sense, the innate
+religiousness, the deep spiritual cravings of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>Such views, though now sufficiently commonplace, seemed very novel in
+England when Milman wrote. Dean Stanley described his work as 'the
+first decisive inroad of German theology into England; the first
+palpable indication that the Bible could be studied like another book;
+that the characters and events of sacred history could be treated at
+once critically and reverently.' But though Milman was very well
+acquainted with German theology, he resented the notion that he was
+its interpreter or representative. He contended that in restricting
+the province of inspiration to the direct inculcation of religious
+truth he was following a sound Anglican tradition. He quoted the
+authority of Paley and Warburton, of Tillotson and Secker. In such
+principles of interpretation he said he had found 'a safeguard during
+a long and not unreflective life against the difficulties arising out
+of the philosophical and historical researches of his time.' They had
+enabled him 'to follow out all the marvellous discoveries of science,
+and all those hardly less marvellous, if less certain, conclusions of
+historical, ethnological, linguistic criticism, in the serene
+confidence that they are utterly irrelevant to the truth of
+Christianity.' 'If on such subjects,' he concluded, 'some solid ground
+be not found on which highly educated, reflective, reading, reasoning
+men may find firm footing, I can foresee nothing but a wide, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>a
+widening&mdash;I fear, an irreparable&mdash;breach between the thought and the
+religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing, truly Catholic
+Christianity which knows what is essential to religion, what is
+temporary and extraneous to it, may defy the world.'</p>
+
+<p>These words are taken from the later preface to which we have
+referred. In the same preface, and also in his 'History of
+Christianity,' may be found some interesting remarks on the German
+school of Biblical criticism, the greater portion of which has arisen
+since the original publication of the 'History of the Jews.' In many
+of its conclusions he had anticipated it, and he was quite as sensible
+as the German writers of the hopelessness of seeking scientific
+revelations in the Biblical narrative; of the worthlessness of most of
+the common schemes for reconciling science and theology; of the
+untrustworthy character of Jewish chronology and Jewish figures; of
+the grave doubts that hang over the authorship and the date of some of
+the books; of the necessity of making full allowance, when reading
+them, for human fallibility and inaccuracy. At the same time, his
+admiration for the German critics was by no means unqualified. While
+fully admitting their extraordinary learning, industry, and ingenuity,
+he complained that their too common infirmity was 'a passion for
+making history without historical materials,' basing the most dogmatic
+and positive statements upon faint indications, or upon ingenious
+conjectures that could not legitimately go beyond a very low degree of
+probability. The assurance with which these writers undertook by
+internal evidence to decompose ancient documents, assigning each
+paragraph to an independent source; the decisive weight they were
+accustomed to give to slight improbabilities <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>or coincidences, and to
+small variations of style and phraseology; the confidence with which
+they put forward solutions or conjectures which, however ingenious or
+plausible, were based on no external evidence as if they were proved
+facts, appeared to him profoundly unhistorical.</p>
+
+<p>It must have been somewhat irritating to one who clung so closely to
+University life, and who had been justly regarded as one of the most
+brilliant of Oxford scholars, to find that his own University was
+prominent in the condemnation of the 'History of the Jews.' Only two
+years before he had preached with general approbation the Bampton
+Lectures in defence of Christianity. His new work was again and again
+condemned from the University pulpits, and among others by the
+Margaret Professor of Divinity and by the Hulsean lecturer for 1832.
+The clamour was naturally taken up in many other quarters, and
+especially by the religious newspapers. It was noticed that 'Milman's
+History' appeared in the window of Carlisle, the infidel bookseller.</p>
+
+<p>'I only wish,' wrote Milman, when the fact was brought to his notice,
+'all Carlisle's customers would read it. A noble lord once wrote to
+the bishop of a certain diocese to complain that a baronet who lived
+in the same parish brought his mistress to church, which sorely
+shocked his regular family. The bishop gravely assured him that he was
+very glad to hear that Sir &mdash;&mdash; brought his naughty lady to church,
+and hoped that she would profit by what she heard there and amend her
+ways. So say I of Carlisle's customers.'<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
+
+<p>The opinions expressed in this, as in his later works, no doubt in
+some degree obstructed the promotion of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>Milman in the Church, but he
+had no reason to regret it. Of all men, he once said, he thought he
+owed most to Bishop Blomfield, for there was once a question of
+offering him a bishopric, and it was a remonstrance of the Bishop of
+London that prevented it. 'I am <i>afraid</i>,' he said, 'that if it had
+been offered me I should have accepted it, and I should then never
+have written my "Latin Christianity."' But, though he escaped the fate
+which has cut short the best work of more than one distinguished
+historian, his conspicuous position among the scholars and writers in
+the Church was widely recognised, and he was soon transferred from a
+provincial town to a central position in the Metropolis. In 1835 Sir
+Robert Peel made him Rector of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and
+Prebendary in the Abbey. Though continuing without intermission his
+historical work, he appears to have discharged with exemplary vigour
+the duties of a large and poor parish until 1849, when Lord John
+Russell appointed him Dean of St. Paul's. The position was exactly
+suited to him. It was one of much dignity, but also of much leisure,
+and it gave him ample opportunities of pursuing the studies which were
+the true work of his life.</p>
+
+<p>The great subject of the history of Christianity was, indeed,
+continually before him. Among other things, he studied minutely both
+the text and the authorities of Gibbon, for whom he had a deep and
+growing admiration. An excellent edition of Gibbon was one of the
+first results. Milman's notes have been included in Smith's later
+edition, and, though a large proportion of them were naturally
+somewhat controversial, being devoted to refuting some of the
+conclusions of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, it is impossible
+to read them without <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>recognising the candour as well as the learning
+and the acumen of the critic. Few things that Milman has written are
+finer than the preface in which, in ten or twelve masterly pages, he
+sums up his estimate of his great predecessor.</p>
+
+<p>The three volumes of the 'History of Christianity,' dealing with its
+early history up to the period of the abolition of Paganism in the
+Roman Empire, appeared in 1840, and they were followed by the six
+large volumes of the 'History of Latin Christianity,' carrying the
+history of the Western Church to the end of the Pontificate of
+Nicholas V. in 1455. This great work was published in two
+instalments&mdash;the first three volumes in 1854, and the remaining three
+in the following year&mdash;and it gave its author indisputably the first
+place among the ecclesiastical historians of England and a high place
+among the historians of the nineteenth century. He possessed, indeed,
+in an eminent degree some of the qualities that are most rare, and at
+the same time most valuable, in ecclesiastical history. A large
+proportion of the most learned ecclesiastical historians have been men
+who have devoted their whole lives to this single department of
+knowledge, who derived from it all their measures of probability and
+canons of criticism, and who, treating it as an isolated and mainly
+supernatural thing, have taken very little account of the intellectual
+and political secular influences that have largely shaped its course.
+Most of them also have been men who undertook their task with
+convictions and habits of thought that were absolutely incompatible
+with real independence and impartiality of judgment in estimating
+either the events or the characters they described. Milman was wholly
+free from these defects. His wide knowledge, his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>cool, critical,
+admirably trained judgment, were never better shown than in the many
+pages in which he has pointed out the analogies or resemblances
+between Jewish and other Oriental beliefs; the manner in which
+national characteristics or secular intellectual tendencies affected
+theological types; the countless modifications in belief or practice
+which grew up, as the Church accommodated itself to the conditions of
+successive ages and entered into alliance or conflict with different
+political systems; the many indirect, subtle, far-reaching ways in
+which the world and the Church interacted upon each other in all the
+great departments of speculation, art, industry, social and political
+life. A certain aloofness and coldness of judgment in dealing with
+sacred subjects was the reproach which was most frequently brought
+against him. As he himself said, he wrote rather as an historian than
+a religious instructor, and he dealt with his subject chiefly in its
+temporal, social, and political aspects. Justice and impartiality of
+judgment to friend and foe he deemed one of the first moral duties of
+an historian, and Dean Church was not wrong in ascribing to him a
+quite 'unusual combination of the strongest feeling about right and
+wrong with the largest equity.' 'What a delightful book, so tolerant
+of the intolerant!' was his characteristic eulogy of the work of
+another writer, and it truly reflects the turn of his own mind.
+Provost Hawtrey, who was no mean judge of men, said, after an intimacy
+of nearly fifty years, that he had never known a man who possessed in
+a greater degree than Milman the virtue of Christian charity in its
+highest and rarest form. It was a gift which stood him in good stead
+in dealing with the very blended characters, the tangled politics, the
+often misguided enthusiasms of ecclesiastical history. While he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>was
+constitutionally extremely averse to the moral casuistry which
+confuses the boundaries of right and wrong, he had too sound a grasp
+of the evolution of history to fall into the common error of judging
+the acts of one age by the moral standards of another. His history was
+eminently a history of large lines and broad tendencies. The growth,
+influence, and decline of the Papacy&mdash;the distinctive characteristics
+of Latin and Teutonic Christianity; the effect of Christianity on
+jurisprudence; the monastic system in its various phases; the rise and
+conquests of Mohammedanism; the severance of Greek from Latin
+Christianity; Charlemagne, Hildebrand, the Crusades, the Templars, the
+Great Councils; the decay of Latin and the rise of modern languages;
+the influence of the Church on literature, painting, sculpture, and
+architecture&mdash;are but a few of the great subjects he has treated,
+always with knowledge and intelligence, often with conspicuous
+brilliancy.</p>
+
+<p>In so vast a field there were, no doubt, many subjects which have been
+treated with a greater fulness and completeness by other writers.
+There are some in which subsequent research has gone far to supersede
+what Milman has written, and inaccuracies of detail not unfrequently
+crept into his work; but in the truthfulness of its broad lines, in
+the sagacity of its estimates both of men and events, it holds a high
+place among the histories of the world. Very few historians have
+combined in a larger measure the three great requisites of knowledge,
+soundness of judgment, and inexorable love of truth. The growth and
+modifications of doctrines and the minuti&aelig; of religious controversies
+were, however, subjects in which he took little interest, and though
+they could not be excluded from an ecclesiastical history, they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>are
+dealt with only in a slight and cursory manner. Those who desire to
+study in detail this side of ecclesiastical history will find other
+histories much more useful. It has been said that his work is
+imperfect as a book of reference, for while the great events and
+personages are discussed with a fulness that leaves little to be
+desired, many of the more insignificant transactions or more obscure
+periods are passed over or barely noticed. Critics of different
+religious schools have also complained that his mind was essentially
+secular; that he had a low sense of the certainty and the importance
+of dogma; that there were some classes of ecclesiastical writers who
+have been deeply revered in the Church with whom he had no real
+sympathy; that the spirit of criticism was stronger in his book than
+the spirit of reverence; that he did not do full justice to the
+spiritual and inner side of the religion he described. He looked upon
+it, they said, too externally. He valued it as a moral revolution, the
+introduction of new principles of virtue and new rules for individual
+and social happiness. Much of this criticism would probably have been
+accepted with but little qualification by Milman himself. He would
+have said that what these writers complained of was in the main
+inseparable from an historical as distinguished from a devotional
+treatment of his subject. He would have added that no form of human
+history reveals so clearly as ecclesiastical history the fallibility,
+the credulity, the intolerance of the human mind, or requires more
+imperatively the constant exercise of independent judgment and of
+fearless and unsparing criticism, and that, if the history of the
+Church is ever to be written with profit, it must be written in such a
+spirit. Of his own deeper convictions he seldom spoke; but in the
+concluding page <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>of his 'Latin Christianity' there is a passage of
+profound interest. Leaving it, as he says, to the future historian of
+religion to say what part of the ancient dogmatic system may be
+allowed to fall silently into disuse, and what transformations the
+interpretation of the Sacred Writings may still undergo, he adds these
+significant words:</p>
+
+<p>'As it is my own confident belief that the words of Christ, and his
+words alone (the primal indefeasible truths of Christianity), shall
+not pass away, so I cannot presume to say that men may not attain to a
+clearer, at the same time more full, comprehensive, and balanced sense
+of those words, than has as yet been generally received in the
+Christian world. As all else is transient and mutable, these only
+eternal and universal, assuredly whatever light may be thrown on the
+mental constitution of man, even on the constitution of nature and the
+laws which govern the world, will be concentered so as to give a more
+penetrating vision of those undying truths.... Christianity may yet
+have to exercise a far wider, even if more silent and untraceable
+influence, through its primary, all-pervading principles, on the
+civilisation of mankind.'</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay, speaking of the 'History of Latin Christianity' in his
+Journal, says, 'I was more impressed than ever by the contrast between
+the substance and the style: the substance is excellent; the style
+very much otherwise.' Looking at it from a purely literary point of
+view it had undoubtedly great merits. Milman had an admirable sense of
+proportion&mdash;a rare quality in history. He was invariably lucid, and it
+is easy to cull from his history many characters excellently drawn,
+many pages of vivid narrative, or terse and weighty criticism. Still,
+on the whole his historic style is on a lower level than that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>of
+Macaulay, Buckle, and Froude, though it will compare, I think, not
+unfavourably with that of Hallam and Grote. The points of controversy
+are usually relegated to his notes, which contain a great mass of
+curious learning and excellent criticism. The reader who turns to them
+from works of the German school will be struck by his strong English
+common-sense and grasp of facts, and his dislike of subtle far-fetched
+ingenuities of explanation. He has the crowning merit of being always
+readable, and his strong sane moral sense never left him. He was
+probably at his best in the later volumes, when he could treat his
+subject like secular history and was free from the embarrassing
+theological difficulties of the earlier portion, and he is especially
+admirable in those chapters which give scope to his wide literary and
+artistic sympathies. He was an excellent Italian scholar and keenly
+sensible of the beauties of Italian literature, and his love of the
+ancient classics never left him. There was something at once
+characteristic and amusing in the delight which he again and again
+expressed, after the termination of his History, at being able to
+return to them after spending so many years in reading bad Latin and
+Greek. In taste and character he was indeed pre-eminently a man of
+letters, and as such he ranks in the first line among his
+contemporaries.</p>
+
+<p>The outburst of indignation that in some quarters had greeted the
+first appearance of the 'History of the Jews' was not repeated when
+that work was republished in an enlarged form. Nor does it appear to
+have arisen on the appearance of the two later histories. Newman
+reviewed the 'History of Early Christianity' at great length, speaking
+with much personal respect of the writer, though he was naturally
+extremely hostile to its spirit. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>The difference between the High
+Church sentiment and the mind of Milman was indeed organic. Milman's
+own type of thought was formed before the Tractarian movement had
+begun; the sacerdotal spirit was thoroughly alien to him, and his
+profound study of ecclesiastical history had certainly not tended to
+attract him to it. He fully recognised both the abilities and the
+piety of Newman, and he described his secession as perhaps the
+greatest loss the Church of England had experienced since the
+Reformation; but he disliked his opinions, he profoundly distrusted
+the whole character of his mind and reasonings, and he early foresaw
+that he could never find a permanent resting-place in the English
+Church. In the posthumous volume of Essays there will be found a full
+and most searching examination of Newman's 'Essay on Development,' in
+which these points of difference are clearly shown. For Keble, Milman
+entertained warmer feelings. They were contemporaries, and at one time
+most intimate friends. In the field of sacred poetry they had been
+fellow-labourers. Keble had succeeded Milman as professor of poetry,
+and Milman had been one of the few persons who had read the 'Christian
+Year' in manuscript. When, after Keble's death, a committee was
+appointed to erect a memorial to his memory, Milman was much hurt at
+finding that it was determined to give it a distinctly Tractarian
+character, and that his own name was deliberately excluded. In
+Milman's last years the Oxford movement had begun to assume its
+ritualistic form, and questions of vestments and ceremonies and
+candles came to the forefront. With all this Milman had no sympathy.
+'After the drama,' he said of it, 'the melodrama!'</p>
+
+<p>It was a remarkable coincidence that for some years <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>the two deaneries
+of London were both held by brilliant men of letters and by men with
+the strongest theological sympathy. A feeling of warm personal
+affection united Milman and Stanley, and there was something
+peculiarly touching in the almost filial attitude which Stanley
+assumed towards his older colleague. In one point, however, they
+differed greatly. Stanley was a keen fighter. He threw himself into
+the forefront of ecclesiastical controversies, and was never seen to
+greater advantage than when leading a small minority, defying
+inveterate prejudice, defending an unpopular cause. Milman could
+seldom be tempted to follow his example. He pleaded old age and
+declining strength, but, in truth, though he never flinched from the
+avowal of his own opinions, he had a deep and increasing distaste for
+religious controversies and Church politics. He was rarely seen in
+Convocation, and he always regarded its revival as a misfortune. He
+proposed, however, in it a petition for the discontinuance of the use
+of the State services commemorating the martyrdom of Charles I., the
+restoration of Charles II., the discovery of the gunpowder plot, and
+the Revolution of 1688; and Parliament soon after adopted his view. He
+also sat on the Royal Commission in 1864 for considering the subject
+of clerical subscription. He took on this occasion a characteristic
+line, advocating a complete abolition of the subscription of the
+Articles, and desiring that the sole test of membership of the Church
+should be the acceptance of the Liturgy and the Creeds. In 1865 he
+received an invitation, which greatly gratified him, to preach before
+the University of Oxford the annual sermon on Hebrew prophecy. The
+sermon was delivered in the pulpit of St. Mary's, where many years
+before he had been so vehemently condemned for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>views on the same
+subject, no one of which, as he truly said, he had either recanted or
+modified. His sermon was afterwards printed, and would form a worthy
+chapter of his 'History of the Jews.' In the Colenso controversy he
+had no great sympathy with either side. Many of Bishop Colenso's
+arguments appeared to him crude or exaggerated, and he dissented from
+many of his conclusions, but he considered that he had been treated
+with gross injustice and intolerance, and he accordingly subscribed to
+his defence fund. For the rest, he confined his ecclesiastical life as
+much as possible to his own cathedral, where he presided over the
+State funeral of the Duke of Wellington, and where he introduced the
+custom of throwing open the nave to evening services. His last and
+unfinished work was his 'Annals of St. Paul's,' investigating its
+history and portraying with his old learning and with much of his old
+felicity the lives of his predecessors.</p>
+
+<p>It was however in secular literary society that he was most fitted to
+shine, and there he passed many of his happiest hours. The usual
+honours of a distinguished man of letters clustered thickly around
+him. He was a trustee of the British Museum; an honorary member of the
+Royal Academy; a correspondent of the French Institute. He was also a
+member of 'The Club'&mdash;the small dining-club which was founded in 1764
+by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Johnson, and which since then has
+included in its fortnightly dinners the great majority of those
+Englishmen who in many walks of life have been most distinguished by
+their genius or their accomplishments. He was elected to it in 1836,
+three years before Macaulay, and he became one of its most constant
+attendants. In 1841 'The Club' made him its <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>treasurer, and he held
+that position for twenty-three years, and presided over the centenary
+dinner in 1864. He was also an original member of the Philobiblion
+Society, which has brought together many curious and hitherto unknown
+documents, and he wrote for it a short paper on Michael Scott the
+Wizard, who, as he showed, had been once offered the Archbishopric of
+Cashel. He was never a keen politician, but he was intimate with a
+long succession of leading statesmen, and he contributed to Sir
+Cornewall Lewis's 'Administrations of Great Britain' a full and
+valuable letter on the relations of Pitt and Addington, which was
+largely based on his own recollections of the latter statesman.</p>
+
+<p>London society in the middle of the nineteenth century was much
+smaller and less mixed than at present, and there was then a
+distinctively literary or at least intellectual society which can now
+hardly be said to exist. The most eminent men of letters came more
+frequently together. Criticism was in fewer and perhaps stronger
+hands, and was to a larger extent representative of the opinions
+expressed in such social gatherings. In this kind of society Milman
+was long a foremost figure. He had all the gifts that fit men for
+it&mdash;not only brilliancy, knowledge, and versatility, but also
+unfailing tact, a rare charm of courtesy, a singularly wide tolerance.
+He was quick and generous in recognising rising talent, and he had
+that sympathetic touch which seldom failed to elicit what was best in
+those with whom he came in contact. Few men possessed more eminently
+the genius of friendship&mdash;the power of attaching others&mdash;the power of
+attaching himself to others. In the long list of his intimate friends
+Macaulay, Sir Charles Lyell, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis were
+conspicuous. Like most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>men of this type, he found the multiplying
+gaps around him the chief trial of old age. Not long before he died
+there was an exhibition of contemporary portraits, but though Milman
+went to it he could not go through it. 'When I found myself,' he said,
+'surrounded by the likenesses&mdash;often the miserable likenesses&mdash;of so
+many I had known and loved, it was more than I could bear.'</p>
+
+<p>An admirable portrait by Watts which is now in the National Portrait
+Gallery will recall to those who knew him his appearance in old
+age&mdash;his strong masculine features beaming with intelligence, his
+grand shaggy brows, his bright and penetrating eyes. An illness
+affecting the spine had bowed him nearly double, and there are still
+those who will remember how his bent figure seemed projected, almost
+like a bird in its flight, across the dinner-table, while his eager
+brilliant talk delighted and fascinated his hearers. In his last years
+increasing deafness obliged him to narrow the circle of his social
+life, but he retained to the end all the vividness of his mind and
+sympathies, and when at length death came in his seventy-eighth year,
+it found him in the midst of unfinished work. His life was not of a
+kind to win wide popularity and to give him a conspicuous place among
+the great masses of his nation, but few English clergymen of his
+generation made so deep an impression on those who came in contact
+with them or have left works of such enduring value behind them.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <i>Henry Hart Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's.</i> A
+Biographical Sketch by his son, Arthur Milman, M.A., LL.D.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> Laurence's <i>Life of Sir A. Sullivan</i>, p. 310.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> Smiles' <i>Memoirs of John Murray</i>, ii. p. 300.</p></div>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="QUEEN_VICTORIA" id="QUEEN_VICTORIA"></a>QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>At a time when the unprecedented increase of gigantic and rapidly
+acquired fortunes has deeply infected both English and American
+society with the characteristic vices of a Plutocracy, the profound
+feeling of sorrow and admiration elicited by the death of Queen
+Victoria is an encouraging sign. It shows that the vulgar ideals, the
+false moral measurements, the feverish social ambitions, the love of
+the ostentatious and the factitious, and the disdain for simple
+habits, pleasures, and characters so apparent in certain conspicuous
+sections of society, have not yet blunted the moral sense or perverted
+the moral perceptions of the great masses on either side of the
+Atlantic. To this type, indeed, we could scarcely find a more complete
+antithesis than in the life and character of the great Queen who has
+passed away. Nothing more deeply impressed all who came in contact
+with her than the essential simplicity and genuineness of her nature.</p>
+
+<p>She was a great ruler, but she was also to the last a true, kindly,
+simple-minded woman, retaining with undiminished intensity all the
+warmth of a most affectionate nature, all the soundness of a most
+excellent judgment. Brought up from childhood in the artificial
+atmosphere of a Court, called while still a girl to the isolation of a
+throne; deprived, when her reign had yet forty years to run, of the
+support and counsel of her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>husband, she might well have been pardoned
+if she often found herself out of touch with large sections of her
+people, and had viewed life through a false medium or in partial
+aspects. Yet Lord Salisbury probably in no degree exaggerated when he
+said that if he wished to ascertain the feelings and opinions of the
+English people, and especially of the English middle classes, he knew
+no truer or more enlightening judgment than that of the Queen. She
+thought with them and she felt with them; she shared their ambitions;
+she knew by a kind of intuitive instinct the course of their
+judgments; she sympathised deeply with their trials and their sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>She could hardly be called a brilliant woman. It is difficult indeed
+to judge the full social capacities of anyone who lives under the
+constant restraints of a royal position, but I do not think that in
+any sphere of life the Queen would have been regarded as a woman of
+striking wit, or originality, or even commanding power. The qualities
+that made her so successful in her high calling were of another kind:
+supreme good sense; a tact in dealing with men and circumstances so
+unfailing that it almost amounted to genius; an indefatigable industry
+which never flagged from early youth till extreme old age; a sense of
+duty so steady and so strong that it governed all her actions and
+pleasures, and saved her not only from the grosser and more common
+temptations of an exalted position, but also in a most unusual degree
+from the subtle and often half-concealed deflecting influences that
+spring from ambition or resentment, from personal predilections and
+personal dislikes. It was these qualities, combined with her
+unrivalled experience of affairs, and strengthened by long and
+constant intercourse <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>with the foremost English statesmen of two
+generations, that made her what she undoubtedly was&mdash;a perfect model
+of a constitutional Sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>The position of a Sovereign under a parliamentary government like ours
+is a singular and difficult one. There was a school of politicians who
+were much more prominent in the last generation than in the present
+one, who regarded the Sovereign, in political life at least, as little
+more than a figure-head or a cipher, absolved from all responsibility,
+but also divested of all power, and fulfilling functions in the
+Constitution which are little more than mechanical. This view of the
+unimportance of the Monarchy will now be held by few really
+intelligent men. Those take but a false and narrow view of human
+affairs who fail to realise the part which sentiment and enthusiasm
+play in the government of men; and no one who knows England will
+question that the throne is the centre of a great strength of personal
+attachment which is wholly different from any attachment to a party or
+a parliament.</p>
+
+<p>In India and the Colonies this is still more the case. It is not the
+British Parliament or the British Cabinet that there forms the centre
+of unity or excites genuine attachment. The Crown is the main link
+binding the different States to one another, and the pervading
+sentiment of a common loyalty unites them in one great and living
+whole. In foreign politics it cannot be a matter of indifference that
+a Sovereign is closely related to nearly all the greatest rulers in
+the world, and in frequent, intimate, unconstrained correspondence
+with them. This is a kind of influence which no Minister, however
+powerful, can exercise, and it was possessed by Queen Victoria
+probably to a greater degree than by any <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>Sovereign on record, for
+there has scarcely ever been one who included among her relations so
+many of the Sovereigns of the world. Future historians will no doubt
+have ample means of judging how frequently and how judiciously it was
+employed in assuaging differences and promoting European peace. All
+the great offices in Church and State, all the great distributions of
+honours were submitted to her; and though in a large number of cases
+this patronage is purely Ministerial or professional, there are many
+cases in which the Sovereign had a real voice, and a strong objection
+on her part was usually attended to. In Church patronage and in the
+distribution of honours she is known to have taken a great interest,
+and to have exercised a considerable influence.</p>
+
+<p>The one subject on which the Queen was not always in harmony with her
+people was that of foreign politics. She and the Prince Consort took a
+keen interest in them, and during his lifetime she followed very
+implicitly his guidance. The strong German sympathies she imbued from
+her own marriage were much intensified by the marriages of her
+children, and especially by that of her eldest daughter to the heir of
+the Prussian throne. The influence also of Stockmar, who was the
+closest adviser of her early married life, was not wholly for good,
+and the theory which the Prince held that the direction of foreign
+affairs is in a peculiar degree under the care of the Sovereign, and
+that the Prince, her husband, should be regarded as 'her permanent
+Minister,' created during many years much friction. In a
+constitutional country, where the responsibility of affairs rests
+wholly on the Minister, who is doubly responsible to the Cabinet and
+to the Parliament, such a theory can only be maintained with great
+qualifications.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>On the other hand, the government of the country was carried on in the
+name of the Queen. Foreign despatches were addressed to her and could
+only be answered with her sanction. The right of the English
+Sovereigns to be present at the Cabinet Councils of their Ministers
+was abdicated when George I. came to the throne, but every important
+departure in policy was submitted to the Queen and required her
+assent. The testimony of Ministers of all shades of policy supports
+the belief that this was no idle form. The Queen, though always open
+to argument and tolerant of contradiction, had her own decided
+opinions; she exercised her undoubted right of expressing and
+defending them, and even apart from her royal position, her great
+experience and her singular clearness and rectitude of judgment made
+her opinion well worth listening to.</p>
+
+<p>The claim put forward by the Queen in her famous memorandum of August
+1850, can, I think, hardly be pronounced excessive. She demanded only
+that before a line of policy was adopted and brought before her she
+should be distinctly informed of the facts of the case and of the
+motives that inspired it; that when she had given her sanction to a
+measure it should not be arbitrarily altered or modified by the
+Minister; that she must be kept acquainted with all important
+communications between foreign Ministers and her own Foreign
+Secretary, and that the drafts of foreign despatches must be sent to
+her for her approval in sufficient time for her to make herself
+acquainted with them. She complained that Lord Palmerston was
+accustomed to send despatches to the Continent without submitting
+them, in their last revise, to the Sovereign; that in one case he
+retained without her knowledge a passage which the Prince Consort <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>had
+deleted; that he paid little or no attention to the numerous memoranda
+which were drawn up by the Prince for his instruction; that he of his
+own will and without any consultation committed his Government, in a
+conversation with the French Ambassador, to an approbation of the
+<i>coup d'&eacute;tat</i> of Napoleon III. If the general line of his policy had
+been in accordance with the royal wishes, indiscretions of detail
+could probably have been overlooked, but the Queen and Prince were
+both undoubtedly on many occasions&mdash;and especially in 1848 and
+1849&mdash;strongly opposed to the policy of Lord Palmerston. In the
+interests of peace they objected to the remarkably provocative
+character of his despatches, which excited a degree of animosity and
+resentment among the Governments of the Continent that has rarely been
+paralleled&mdash;on two, if not three, occasions it brought England into
+grave danger of a war with France&mdash;and which aroused a very widespread
+indignation among statesmen of his own party at home.</p>
+
+<p>The widely different tone which was adopted by Lord Clarendon and Lord
+Granville, the open breach between Palmerston and Lord John Russell on
+account of the way in which the former conducted his foreign policy
+without consultation with the Cabinet, and the refusal of Lord Grey,
+in a most critical moment, to take office in a Government in which
+Lord Palmerston held the seals of the Foreign Office, show how fully
+in this respect the sentiments of the Queen accorded with those of
+many of Lord Palmerston's own colleagues. But in addition to mere
+questions of manner and procedure, there was much in the substance of
+the policy of Palmerston to which the Queen objected. Her dislike to
+the Revolutionary element on the Continent, which Lord Palmerston
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>either encouraged or viewed with indifference, her sympathy with the
+old governments and dynasties, that were so gravely shaken in the year
+of the Revolution, were very marked. In the disputes between Germany
+and Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein question her sympathies, unlike
+those of her people, were decidedly with Germany, and although she was
+fully sensible of the misgovernment of some of the Italian States, she
+was not favourable to that cause of Italian unity which Lord John
+Russell and Lord Palmerston so strenuously upheld. Her nature, which
+was very frank, made it impossible for her, even if she desired it, to
+conceal her opinions, and she devoted much time and pains to making
+herself acquainted with the details of every question as it arose. She
+made it a rule to sign no paper that she had not read. She did not
+hesitate fully to apprise her Ministers of her views when they
+differed from their own, and she enforced her views by argument and
+remonstrance. She more than once drew up memoranda of her dissent from
+the opinions of her Foreign Minister, and insisted on their being
+brought before the Cabinet for consideration. In the formation of a
+new Ministry she more than once exercised her power of deciding to
+whom the succession of the first places should be offered. After an
+adverse vote of the House of Commons, she considered herself fully
+authorised to decide whether she would accept the resignation of a
+Minister or submit the issue to the test of a dissolution, and there
+were occasions on which she remonstrated with her Ministers on their
+too ready determination to resign.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time it is certain that the Queen fulfilled with
+perfection that most difficult duty of an able constitutional
+Sovereign&mdash;the duty of yielding her convictions <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>to those of her
+responsible Ministers and acting faithfully with Ministers she
+distrusted. To a Sovereign with clear views and a more than common
+force of character this must often have been very painful, and to have
+fulfilled it faithfully and with no loss of dignity is no small merit.
+It is the universal testimony of all who served her, that no Sovereign
+ever supported her successive Ministers with a more perfect loyalty or
+held the scales between contending parties with a more complete
+impartiality. No one understood better to what point a constitutional
+Sovereign may press her opinions and at what point she is bound to
+give way; and while maintaining her rightful authority she never in
+any degree transgressed its bounds. In the very beginning of her reign
+she showed this quality in a high degree. She looked up to Lord
+Melbourne with an almost filial affection, and there were peculiar
+reasons why his great opponent, Sir Robert Peel, should have been
+distasteful to her. The dispute about the removal of her Ladies of the
+Bedchamber, and still more the conduct of Sir Robert Peel in
+supporting the reduction of the income which the Whigs had proposed
+for Prince Albert, must have touched her feelings on the most
+sensitive points, and the stiff, formal, somewhat awkward manner of
+Peel seemed very little fitted to ingratiate him with a young
+Sovereign. Yet when the change of Ministry arrived, Peel found no
+trace of resentment in the Queen. She gave him her complete
+confidence, and she fully estimated his great qualities. Of all the
+Ministers who served her there is indeed none of whom she has written
+in warmer terms. When Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister in 1855 it
+was contrary to her earnest desire, but when the change was made
+Palmerston himself acknowledged that he had 'no reason to complain of
+the least want of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>cordiality or confidence on the part of the Court.'
+At the time when she was most opposed to her Ministers, she fully
+acquiesced in the principle that she must submit all letters on public
+affairs to them and frame her replies upon their advice. There were
+constant attempts on the part of foreign Sovereigns who were connected
+with her to carry on affairs by correspondence with her without the
+knowledge and sanction of her Ministers, but the Queen steadily
+resisted them. Anything, indeed, that in any way savoured of intrigue
+was in the highest degree repugnant to her nature.</p>
+
+<p>She acted in the same way in internal affairs. Few measures that were
+carried in her time were more repugnant to her than Gladstone's
+disestablishment of the Irish Church. It abolished an institution of
+which she was herself the head and which a special clause in the
+Coronation Oath required her to uphold, and she foretold, not without
+good reason, that it would not pacify Ireland but would be an
+encouragement to further agitation. The question, however, had been
+submitted at a general election to the decision of the country, and
+after that decision had been unequivocally given in favour of the
+policy of Gladstone, she frankly accepted it with the assent of the
+Prime Minister. When a great danger of a conflict between the two
+Houses of Parliament had arisen, she devoted herself actively in
+preventing it. She employed for that service the instrumentality of
+Archbishop Tait&mdash;a great statesman-prelate, whose promotion to the see
+of Canterbury was due to her own personal initiative, contrary to the
+wish of Lord Beaconsfield, but most fully justified by the result&mdash;and
+it was largely due to the intervention of the Queen that the Church
+Bill was not thrown out in the House of Lords. She acted in a
+somewhat <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>similar way with reference to the Franchise Bill of 1884,
+though on this occasion she does not seem to have disliked the
+measure, which she urged the House of Lords to accept.</p>
+
+<p>On three very memorable occasions the intervention of the Queen had
+probably a great effect on English politics. It is well known that at
+the time when the issue of peace or war with the United States was
+trembling in the balance on account of the seizure of the Southern
+envoys on the 'Trent,' the Queen, acting in accordance with the Prince
+Consort, by softening and revising the language of an English despatch
+to America, did very much to prevent the dispute from leading to a
+great war; that in the proclamation which was issued to the Indian
+people after the Sepoy Mutiny, she insisted on the excision of some
+most unfortunate words that seemed to menace the native creeds, and on
+the insertion of an emphatic promise that they should in no wise be
+interfered with, and thus probably prevented a new outburst of most
+dangerous fanaticism; that at the time of the Schleswig-Holstein
+dispute she contributed powerfully and actively to give a turn to the
+negotiations that averted a war with Prussia and Austria, which, as is
+now almost universally recognised, could only have led to a great
+catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever opinions may be formed of the merits of the dispute between
+Denmark and the German powers about Schleswig-Holstein, few persons
+who judge by the event can doubt that an isolated intervention of
+England on behalf of Denmark against the combined forces of Austria
+and Prussia would have been absolutely impotent to effect the object
+that was desired, and that even if France had consented to join in the
+struggle it would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>have led to a military disaster hardly less than
+that of the war of Sedan. If, contrary to all probability, the
+combined forces of France and England had proved stronger than those
+of Austria and Germany, the result could have hardly failed to be that
+France would have been established on the left bank of the Rhine, and
+that the treaty of Vienna, which it was one of the great objects of
+English policy to maintain, would have been torn into shreds.</p>
+
+<p>The dangers, however, of conflict arising from the extreme
+irritability of English public opinion against Germany on the Danish
+question, were very great, and there can be little doubt that the
+personal influence of the Queen with the German Sovereign was an
+appreciable influence, and it was her desire that a paragraph in the
+Queen's Speech opening Parliament in February 1864 was erased. Words
+which contained at least a veiled or attributed threat to Germany were
+omitted, and instead of them an inoffensive paragraph was inserted
+expressing the Queen's ardent desire for peace and recording the
+earnest efforts she had made to maintain it.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> At the same time
+when, by the Convention of Gastein in August 1865, the Duchies were
+severed from the Danish throne and placed in the virtual possession of
+Prussia and Austria, the protest of Lord Russell against so flagrant a
+violation of public right, and especially of the right of the people
+to be consulted on their own destiny, was drawn up with her full
+assent and indeed in a great measure at her suggestion.<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a></p>
+
+<p>On other occasions her remonstrances were disregarded, and courses
+were pursued to which she strongly objected. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>The surrender after
+Majuba was in her opinion a pusillanimous abandonment of the English
+flag, and it was with extreme reluctance that she acquiesced in it.
+Still more vehement were her feelings about the long abandonment of
+General Gordon in the Soudan. She had been indefatigable in urging on
+the Ministry of Gladstone the duty of speedy measures for his rescue,
+and when, owing to the long delay of the Ministry, the most heroic of
+modern Englishmen perished at Khartoum, her indignation knew no
+bounds. In a letter to his sisters, burning with mingled pity and
+indignation, she pronounced his 'cruel though heroic fate' to be 'a
+stain left upon England,' which she keenly felt. This was one of the
+few occasions in which she allowed her sentiments in hostility to the
+policy of her Ministers to appear publicly before the world. In
+general, she had a profound distrust of the policy and judgment of Mr.
+Gladstone, and she fully shared the dread with which the great body of
+English statesmen looked upon the Home Rule policy. It was no new
+sentiment on her part, for she had lived through the Repeal agitation
+of O'Connell, and as far back as 1843 Sir Robert Peel had somewhat
+unconstitutionally declared in Parliament that he was authorised by
+the Queen to state that she, like her predecessor, was resolved to
+maintain the Union inviolate by all the means in her power.</p>
+
+<p>There can now be no harm in saying&mdash;what when both parties were alive
+was naturally kept in the background&mdash;that the relations of the Queen
+with Mr. Gladstone were usually of a very painful character. She had
+personally not much to complain of. The skill and firmness with which
+Mr. Gladstone resisted the attempts to diminish the parliamentary
+subsidies for her family were <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>fully and gratefully recognised by the
+Queen, but the main course of his politics, both foreign and domestic,
+filled her with alarm, and she never appears to have experienced the
+attraction which his great personal gifts exercised over most of those
+with whom he came in immediate contact. The extreme copiousness of his
+vocabulary, the extreme subtlety of his mind and reasoning, and the
+imperiousness of temper with which he seldom failed to meet
+opposition, were all repugnant to her. To those who have experienced
+the sustained emphasis of language with which Mr. Gladstone was
+accustomed in conversation to enforce his views, there is much truth
+as well as humour in the saying which was attributed to the Queen, 'I
+wish Mr. Gladstone would not always speak to me as if I was a public
+meeting'; and a little episode which is related by Sir Theodore Martin
+illustrates the irritation which Mr. Gladstone's methods of business
+must have caused to a very busy and overworked lady who always loved
+few words and simple and direct arguments.<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> At all times the Queen
+had decided political opinions, and the experience of a long reign had
+given her a large measure of not unjustifiable self-confidence. Few
+persons had studied as she had during all those years the various
+political questions that arose, and she had had the advantage of
+discussing them at length with a long succession of the leading
+statesmen of England. Under such circumstances her opinions had no
+small weight, and although in the Liberal Government she gave her full
+confidence to Lord Clarendon and Lord Granville, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>she looked with the
+gravest apprehension on the policy of Mr. Gladstone.</p>
+
+<p>It was a painful and irksome position, but it did not lead the Queen
+to any unconstitutional course. No public act or word ever disclosed
+her feelings. It was indeed in most cases very slowly, and in small
+circles and through private channels, that the convictions of the
+Queen became known.</p>
+
+<p>At the close of the second Ministry of Mr. Gladstone she at once
+offered him an earldom, which he refused, and on his death she fully
+acquiesced in the public funeral in Westminster Abbey, and the Prince
+of Wales attended it as her representative. In an autograph letter to
+Mrs. Gladstone she spoke with the deep and genuine warmth that was
+never wanting in her letters of condolence of her sympathy with the
+bereavement of that lady. She spoke of his illustrious gifts and of
+his personal kindness to herself, but it was noticed that no sentence
+in the letter intimated any approbation of his general policy. 'Truth
+in the inmost parts' was indeed a prominent characteristic of the
+Queen, and she wrote nothing which was not in accordance with her true
+convictions.</p>
+
+<p>There were occasions when she took independent steps, and some of
+these had a considerable influence on politics. Louis Napoleon was one
+of the few great Sovereigns who were not related to her, and to few
+persons could the <i>coup d'&eacute;tat</i> which brought him to the throne have
+been more repugnant, but the cordial personal relations she
+established with him undoubtedly contributed considerably to the good
+relations which for many years subsisted between England and France.
+Bismarck detested English Court influence and was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>greatly prejudiced
+against her, but he has left a striking testimony to the favourable
+impression which her tact and good sense made upon him when he first
+came into contact with her. She possessed to a high degree the power
+of choosing the right moment and striking the true chord, and she
+appears to have been an excellent judge not only of the feelings of
+large bodies of men, but also of the individual characters of those
+with whom she dealt. She had a style of writing which was eminently
+characteristic and eminently feminine, and it is easy to trace the
+letters which were entirely her own. Her letters of congratulation, or
+sympathy, or encouragement on public occasions scarcely ever failed in
+their effect and never contained an injudicious word. The same thing
+may be said of her many beautiful letters to those who were suffering
+from some grievous calamity. Whether she was writing to a great public
+character like the widow of an American President, or expressing her
+sorrow for obscure sufferers, there was the same note of true womanly
+sympathy, so manifestly spontaneous and so manifestly heartfelt, that
+it found its way to the hearts of thousands. The tact for which she
+was so justly celebrated, like all true tact, sprang largely from
+character, from the quick and lively sympathies of an eminently
+affectionate nature. No one could have been less theatrical, or less
+likely in any unworthy way to seek for popularity; but she knew
+admirably the occasions or the methods by which she could strike the
+imagination and appeal most favourably to the feelings of her people.
+She showed this in the very beginning of her reign when she insisted,
+in defiance of the opinion of the Duke of Wellington, on riding
+herself through the ranks of her troops at her first review. She
+showed it on countless other occasions of her long
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>reign&mdash;pre-eminently in her two Jubilees and in her last visit to
+Ireland. It is well known that this visit was entirely her own idea.
+To many it seemed rash or even positively dangerous. They dwelt upon
+the bitter disaffection of a great portion of the Irish people, upon
+the danger of mob outrage or even assassination, upon the extreme
+difficulty of preventing a royal visit to Ireland from taking a party
+character and being regarded as a party triumph or defeat. But the
+Queen, as Sir William Harcourt once truly said, 'never feared her
+people,' and nothing could be more happy than the manner in which she
+availed herself of the new turn given to Irish feeling by the splendid
+achievements of Irish soldiers in South Africa, to come over, as if to
+thank her Irish people in person, and at the same time to repair in
+extreme old age a neglect for which she had been often, and not
+altogether unjustly, blamed. There never indeed was a more brilliant
+and unqualified success. To those who witnessed the spontaneous and
+passionate enthusiasm with which she was everywhere greeted, it seemed
+as if all bitter feeling vanished at her presence; and the Irish
+visit, which was one of the last, was also one of the brightest pages
+of her reign. The credit of its most skilful arrangements belongs
+chiefly to the officials in Dublin, but the Irish people will long
+remember the patient courage with which the aged Queen went through
+its fatigues; the tactful kindness and the gracious dignity with which
+she won the hearts of multitudes who had never before seen her or
+spoken to her; the evident enjoyment with which she responded to the
+cordiality of her reception. One feature of that visit was especially
+characteristic. It was the Children's Review in Ph&oelig;nix Park, where,
+by the desire of the Queen, 'some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>fifty thousand children were
+brought together to meet her. No act of kindness could have gone more
+directly home to the hearts of the parents, and it left a memory in
+many young minds that will never be effaced.</p>
+
+<p>It is rather, however, by the example of a life than by any public
+acts that a constitutional Sovereign can impress her personality on
+the affections of her people. Of the reign of Queen Victoria it may be
+truly said that very few in English history have been so blameless as
+this, which was the longest of all. Her Court was a model of quiet
+dignity and decorum, singularly free from all the atmosphere of
+intrigue and from all suspicion of injudicious or unworthy
+favouritism. She managed it as she managed her family, with a happy
+mixture of tact and affection; and though she gave her confidence to
+many she gave it to such persons and in such a way that it seemed
+never to be abused. No domestic life could in all its relations have
+been more perfect, and her love of children amounted to a passion.
+Among the great female rulers it would be difficult to find one less
+like Queen Victoria than the Empress Catherine of Russia, but they had
+this common trait of an intense love of children and a great power of
+winning their affection. There is a charming letter of Catherine to
+Grimm, describing her life among her grandchildren, which might almost
+have been written by the English Queen. Her vast family, spread
+through many countries, was her abiding interest and delight, and
+although she had to pay in full measure the natural penalty of many
+bereavements, she at least never knew the dreary loneliness that
+clouded the last days of her great predecessor, Elizabeth.</p>
+
+<p>In the early years of her reign she fully filled her place as the
+leader of English society. In the plays she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>patronised, in the art
+she preferred, in the restrictions of her Drawing Rooms, in the
+fashions she countenanced, in the intimacies she selected or
+encouraged, her influence was always healthy and pure, and for some
+years it powerfully affected the tone of English society.
+Unfortunately, after the great calamity of her widowhood the nerves of
+the Queen seem to have been shaken, and though she never intermitted
+her political duties and spent daily many hours over her
+correspondence, she allowed her social duties to fall too much and too
+long into abeyance. She still, it is true, occasionally appeared in
+public ceremonies. She laid the first stones of several hospitals and
+infirmaries. She presided over the inauguration of several great
+industrial enterprises. She sometimes opened Parliament in person, and
+was sometimes present at military and naval reviews. But she scarcely
+ever appeared in London, except for a few days. She never appeared in
+a London theatre. She shrank from great crowds and large social
+gatherings, and buried herself too much in her Highland home. This is
+one of the few real reproaches that history is likely to bring against
+her. Her influence on English society was never wholly lost, and it
+was always an influence for good, but for many years it was exerted
+less frequently and less powerfully than it should have been, and the
+tone of large sections of society lost something by her retirement.</p>
+
+<p>It may be doubted, however, whether this long retirement really
+injured her in the minds of her people. Her rare occasional
+appearances had a greater weight, and the depth of feeling exhibited
+by her long widowhood became a new title to respect. The transparent
+simplicity and unselfishness of her character were now generally
+appreciated, and her own books contributed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span>greatly to make her people
+understand her. It is in general far from a wise thing for royal
+personages to descend into the arena of literature unless they possess
+some special aptitude for it. They expose themselves to a kind of
+criticism wholly different from that which follows them in their
+public lives&mdash;a criticism more minute and often more deliberately
+malevolent than that to which an ordinary writer is subject. The Queen
+wrote pure and excellent English and she had a good literary taste,
+but she certainly could never have become a great writer; and the
+complete frankness and unreserve of her Journals, as well as their
+curious homeliness of thought and feeling, were not viewed with favour
+in some sections of the fashionable and of the literary world. There
+were circles in which the word 'bourgeois,' and there were others in
+which the word 'commonplace,' was often pronounced. Yet in this, as on
+nearly all occasions when the Queen acted on her own impulse, she
+acted wisely. Her books had at once an enormous circulation, and there
+can be no doubt that they contributed very widely to her popularity.
+Multitudes to whom she had before been little more than a name, now
+realised that she was one with whom they had very much in common. Her
+evident longing for sympathy produced an immediate response. Her deep
+domestic affection, her constant interest in her servants, her high
+spirits, her love of scenery, her love of animals, her power of taking
+delight in little things, appeared vividly in her pages and came home
+to the largest classes of her people.</p>
+
+<p>In some respects the Queen was an eminently democratic Sovereign.
+While maintaining the dignity of her position, rank and wealth were in
+her eyes always subordinate to the great realities of life and to
+true <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>human affections. In no one was the touch of Nature that makes
+the whole world kin more constantly visible. She was never more in her
+place than in visiting some poor tenant on the morrow of a great
+bereavement, or uttering words of comfort by the sick bed of some
+humble dependant. Men of all ranks who came in contact with her were
+struck with her thoughtful kindness, and her royal gift of an
+excellent memory never showed itself more frequently than in the
+manner in which she remembered and inquired after the fortunes and
+happiness of obscure persons related to those with whom she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Her religious opinions were brought very little before the public.
+Beyond a deep sense of Providential guidance and of the comforting
+power of religion, little is to be gathered from her published
+utterances; but she seemed equally at home in the Scotch Presbyterian
+and the Anglican Episcopal Church, and her marked admiration for such
+men as Dean Stanley and Norman Macleod, and for the preaching of
+Principal Caird, gives some clue to the bias of her opinions. Her mind
+was not speculative but eminently practical, and while she patronised
+good works of the most various kinds, there is reason to believe that
+those which most appealed to her personal feelings were those which
+directly contributed to alleviate the sufferings, or promote the
+material welfare, of the poor. She devoted the greater part of her
+Jubilee present to institutions for providing nurses for the sick
+poor, and this is said to have been one of the charities in which she
+took the warmest and most constant interest.</p>
+
+<p>She is said not to have had any sympathy with the movement for the
+extension of political power to women, which became so conspicuous in
+her reign; but her own <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>success in filling for sixty-three years the
+highest political position in the nation will always be quoted in its
+support. Considering, indeed, how comparatively small has been the
+number of reigning female Sovereigns, it is remarkable how many in
+modern times have shown themselves pre-eminently capable. Isabella of
+Spain, Catherine of Russia, Maria Theresa of Austria, and our own
+Elizabeth, all rise far above the level of ordinary Sovereigns. Some
+of these seem figures of a larger and stronger mould than Queen
+Victoria, but they governed under very different constitutional
+conditions, and, with one exception, there are serious blots on their
+memory. There are few sadder facts in history than that the pure and
+tender-hearted Spanish Queen should have been deeply tinged with the
+persecuting fanaticism of her age and country; that she should have
+consented to the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile, to the
+expulsion of the Moors from her dominions, to the first law in Europe
+establishing a practical censorship of the Press. The unscrupulous
+ambition, the shameless favouritism, the gross personal vices of
+Catherine, are as conspicuous as her high intelligence, her
+indomitable will, her majestic commanding power. The reign of
+Elizabeth is perhaps the most glorious in English history, but the
+character of that great Queen is lamentably tarnished by waywardness
+and caprice. Among purely constitutional Sovereigns Queen Anne holds a
+respectable, though certainly not a brilliant, place, and it may be
+added that much of the merit of the very constitutional though not
+very glorious reign of George II. is due to the excellent sense and
+judgment of Queen Caroline. In spite of the saying of Burke, the age
+of chivalry is not wholly dead. The sex of Queen <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>Victoria no doubt
+gave an additional touch of warmth to the loyalty of her people, and
+many of the qualities that made her most popular are intensely, if not
+distinctively, feminine. They would not, however, have given her the
+place she will always hold in English history, if they had not been
+united with what men are accustomed to regard as more peculiarly
+masculine&mdash;a clear, well-balanced mind, singularly free from
+fanaticisms and exaggerations, excellently fitted to estimate rightly
+the true proportion of things.</p>
+
+<p>In the last years of her reign the political horizon greatly cleared.
+Lord Beaconsfield, during his later Ministries, obtained not only her
+fullest political confidence, but also won a warmer degree of personal
+friendship than she had bestowed on any Minister since the death of
+Lord Melbourne; and her relations with his successor, Lord Salisbury,
+appear to have been perfectly harmonious. The decisive rejection by
+the country of the Home Rule policy removed a great incubus from her
+mind, and she was fully in harmony with the strong Imperialist
+sentiments which now began to prevail in English thought, and
+especially with the warmer feeling towards our distant colonies which
+was one of its chief characteristics. Her own popularity also rapidly
+grew. She had keenly felt and bitterly resented the reproaches which
+had at one period been frequently brought against her for her neglect
+of social and ceremonial duties during many years of her widowhood.
+Her censors, she maintained, made no allowance for her loneliness, her
+advancing years, her feeble health, the overwhelming and incessant
+pressure of her more serious political duties. But her two Jubilees,
+bringing her once more into close touch with her people, put an end to
+these reproaches. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>The Queen found with pleasure and perhaps with
+surprise how capable she still was of performing great public
+functions, and the vast outburst of spontaneous loyalty and affection
+of which she became the object gave her deep and unconcealed pleasure.
+To those, however, who were closely in connection with her it was
+touching to observe the gracious and unaffected modesty with which she
+received the homage of her subjects. Flattery was one of the things
+she disliked the most, and all who knew her best were struck with the
+singularly modest view she always took of herself. But blending with
+this modesty, and even with a shyness which she never wholly
+conquered, was the craving of a deeply affectionate and womanly nature
+for sympathy, and this craving was now abundantly gratified.</p>
+
+<p>Still, with all this there was much that was melancholy in her later
+days. She had survived nearly all the intimacies of her youth. Death
+had made&mdash;especially in very recent times&mdash;many gaps in the circle of
+those who were nearest to her, and several of her children and of her
+children's husbands had preceded her to the tomb. Her sight had
+greatly failed. She was bowed down by physical infirmity, and her last
+year was saddened by a long, sanguinary, and inglorious war. Yet
+almost to the very end she continued with unabated courage to fulfil
+her daily task, and there was no sign that she had lost anything of
+her quick sympathy and her admirable judgment and tact. Her life was a
+most harmonious whole in which mind and character were happily
+attuned,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Like perfect music set to noble words.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 15%;" />
+
+
+<h4>FOOTNOTES:</h4>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Queen Victoria</i>, by Sidney Lee, p. 349.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> Ollivier, <i>L'Empire Lib&eacute;ral</i>, vii. p. 455.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p class="noin"><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> Sir Theodore Martin was asked by the Queen to give her a
+<i>pr&eacute;cis</i> of a very long and unintelligible letter of Mr. Gladstone
+purporting to explain the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill (<i>Queen
+Victoria as I knew Her</i>, by Sir Theodore Martin).&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ed.</span></p></div>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="OLD-AGE_PENSIONS" id="OLD-AGE_PENSIONS"></a>OLD-AGE PENSIONS<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+
+<p>There are many signs that the question of old-age pensions is destined
+to assume a great prominence in England; although it is probable that
+the large increase of national expenditure which is certain to follow
+the unhappy war in South Africa may, for some time, postpone actual
+legislation on the subject. The generation has passed away which
+witnessed the enormous abuses of Poor Law relief that existed, under
+the old English Poor Law, before 1834, and the rapid diminution of
+pauperism that was effected by the sterner administration introduced
+in that year.</p>
+
+<p>The principles of poor-law relief which were then recognised by the
+best minds in England have been somewhat forgotten. These principles
+were that, while in England provision is made for the support of all
+who are absolutely destitute, it is of the utmost importance that on
+the whole the condition of the pauper should be a less eligible one
+than that of an independent labourer; that nothing should be done that
+could diminish habits of thrift, forethought, and steady industry
+among the poor; nothing that could weaken their sense of the necessity
+of providing for their latter days, or of their duty of supporting,
+when they have the means, their aged parents and relations. In
+accordance with these principles it was laid down that outdoor relief
+should be either absolutely refused to the able-bodied or only
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>granted under most exceptional circumstances; that the workhouse test,
+with its stringent, deterrent discipline, should be steadily
+maintained; that relaxations and special favours granted out of public
+funds should be limited, as far as possible, to cases of special
+calamity which it was impossible for any prudence or foresight to have
+averted.</p>
+
+<p>It would certainly be a great exaggeration to say that these
+principles have disappeared. Indeed, the robust, independent,
+self-respecting character which it was the object of the Manchester
+School to encourage is abundantly displayed in the gigantic Friendly
+and other working-class Co-operative Societies which have so largely
+increased in England during the last half-century. Two of these
+Friendly Societies&mdash;the Manchester Unity and the Foresters&mdash;have each
+of them more than seven hundred thousand members on their roll. At the
+same time, it is equally certain that in many quarters a different,
+and, in my opinion, very dangerous, spirit prevails. In England as
+elsewhere there is an increased tendency to aggrandise the functions
+of the State and to look to State aid or State control rather than
+individual or co-operative effort as the remedy of every evil. Social
+questions have assumed a greater prominence in politics; and, with the
+lowering of the franchise, the vague State Socialism, which, in
+different degrees, pervades most working-class politics, has given a
+bias to both parties in the State. It has become prominent in every
+election and has produced many rash pledges.</p>
+
+<p>The close connection between taxation and representation, which was
+once considered the cardinal principle of English Liberalism, has, in
+a marked degree, diminished, both in Imperial and local taxation. It
+used <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>to be contended that those who chiefly paid should chiefly
+regulate, and that taxation should be as much as possible the
+voluntary grant of the taxpayers, restricted to their common purposes.
+But in many quarters a different belief has grown up. It is held that
+in the hands of a democracy taxation should be made the means of
+redressing the inequalities of fortune, ability, or industry; the
+preponderant class voting and spending money which another class are
+obliged to pay. The income-tax is so arranged that a large majority of
+the voters are exempt from its burden; a highly graduated system of
+death duties is now nearly the most prominent of our Imperial taxes;
+and the Local Government Act of 1894 has placed local taxation on the
+most democratic basis. The latter has given the power of voting rates
+to many who do not pay them; and, by abolishing the nominated, or
+ex-officio, guardians, and the plural voting of the larger ratepayers,
+it has almost destroyed the influence of property on local taxation.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the doctrine has arisen, and is now sedulously
+propagated in England, that the State ought to undertake to provide at
+the public expense for all old persons, or at least for all deserving
+old persons, who have not succeeded in obtaining a sufficient
+livelihood for themselves; that this provision should not be regarded
+as an eleemosynary grant, but as a positive right; and that, in order
+to free it from the taint of pauperism, and take away from the
+recipient all reluctance to receive it, a new fund should be created,
+entirely distinct from poor-law relief, and administered by some other
+tribunal than the poor-law guardians.</p>
+
+<p>The claim has been supported on another ground. The immense
+improvement of the material condition of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>English working classes
+during the last half-century is beyond all question; but it is much
+more evident among the young and the strong than among the old. The
+intense competition of modern industry, stimulated to the highest
+point by free trade, by the factory system, and by the vast
+development of machinery, has expelled the old and feeble from some of
+its most important fields; and the influence of trade-unions in
+enforcing, in each trade which they can control, a uniform and minimum
+wage, has obliged the employer to employ only the most efficient
+labour.</p>
+
+<p>The old man who could once easily obtain a little work at low wages
+now finds it much more difficult; and the recent legislation
+compelling the employer to compensate his workmen for all accidents
+that take place in his employment, even when those accidents are in no
+degree due to any negligence on his own part or on that of his
+servants, has acted in the same direction. Such serious obligations
+have been thrown on the employer in the more dangerous trades, that he
+is obliged in self-defence to restrict himself to the workmen who are
+least liable to accidents; and they are naturally those whose
+strength, activity, and eyesight are at their best. Among the
+recipients of poor-law relief the proportion of men over sixty-five is
+enormously great; and some figures which, in 1893, were brought before
+the Commission on the Aged Poor, made a great impression on the
+country. It was stated that in a single year 29.3 of the whole
+population over sixty-five were in receipt of poor-law relief in
+England and Wales; and assuming that a third part of these old persons
+belonged to the well-to-do, it was calculated that not much less than
+three in seven must fall into the ranks of pauperism.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>There has been much controversy about the accuracy of this statement;
+and, even if it be admitted, a good deal has been said to attenuate
+its force. In the poor-law system as it was reformed in 1834, it was a
+first principle that the workhouse, with its painful and degrading
+associations, was to be the chief form of poor-law relief, and that
+outdoor relief should only be granted on exceptional occasions and on
+stringent conditions. This provision has been gradually relaxed.
+Outdoor relief, which, in the eyes of the poor, carries with it very
+little of the discredit and dislike that gathers round the workhouse,
+is now by far the larger part of poor-law relief; and in many
+districts it is administered with great laxity.</p>
+
+<p>It has been proved by the clearest evidence that the immense majority
+of the aged and deserving poor who are in receipt of poor-law relief
+only receive it in the form of outdoor relief, and very often only in
+the form of medical relief, and that if they go to the workhouse it is
+only when their peculiar circumstances make it desirable for them to
+do so. Wherever a more stringent system of relief is imposed,
+pauperism invariably and rapidly decreases; and Mr. Loch, the
+Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, has collected much
+evidence to show that, on the whole, old-age pauperism is diminishing,
+though it has not been diminishing at the same rate as pauperism under
+the age of sixty. The administration of the workhouses has also
+greatly improved; and the poor-law infirmaries are becoming hospitals
+which are largely resorted to in time of sickness by many who might
+easily avoid them. On the whole, old-age destitution is, and must be,
+a grave question for philanthropists; but there has been great
+exaggeration about its magnitude and its hardships.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>The expediency of devising a new and better method of providing for
+the destitute aged poor of deserving character has long been
+smouldering obscurely in English politics; but it obtained a real
+importance for the first time when a very strong Royal Commission,
+under the presidency of Lord Aberdare, was appointed, at the beginning
+of 1893, to inquire into the question. After long and careful inquiry,
+and after hearing a great multitude of witnesses, this Commission
+reported in the spring of 1895. The majority of the members, while
+recommending various reforms in the administration of the poor-law,
+reported decisively against any system of old-age pensions, either in
+the form of endowment or assisted assurance, as likely to do more harm
+than good; but a minority, which derived special importance from the
+presence of Mr. Chamberlain, refused to accept this decision as final,
+and urged that the question should be submitted to a smaller body of
+experts. In the election which took place in 1895 the question
+appeared frequently upon the platform, and many members on both sides
+of politics pledged themselves on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>The weight which is always attached to the speeches of Mr. Chamberlain
+gave a great impulse to the movement. He never countenanced the idea
+of universal old-age pensions, which was already advocated by many;
+but he strongly maintained that special provision, apart from the
+poor-law and in the shape of pensions, might, and ought to, be made
+for the old and deserving poor; he expressed his belief that such a
+measure 'would do more than anything else to secure the happiness of
+the working classes'; and he suggested as the most feasible scheme
+that 'whenever a man acquires for himself in a Friendly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>Society or
+any other society a pension of 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a week the State should
+come in and double that pension.' Mr. Chamberlain, however, did not
+insist on this precise proposal; but he gave the question a great
+prominence; and among politicians on both sides there was a manifest
+tendency to make party capital out of it.</p>
+
+<p>A purely non-party Committee, presided over by Lord Rothschild, and
+consisting mainly of distinguished financial authorities connected
+with the permanent Civil Service, and therefore removed from active
+politics, was appointed in 1896, in accordance with the recommendation
+of the Aberdare Commission, to inquire especially into the question of
+old-age pensions; and it reported in a document of conspicuous
+ability. It was unanimous in condemning as impracticable or dangerous
+all the schemes for such pensions that were brought before it; and it
+fully confirmed the views of the preceding Commission. The report, and
+the evidence on which it is based, clearly show the ways in which
+measures intended for the benefit of the working class may prove in
+the highest degree injurious to them.</p>
+
+<p>If the matter could have been decided by pure reasoning, this report
+might have been generally accepted as decisive. But many of the
+supporters of the Government had at the election made speeches in
+favour of old-age pensions. One of its most powerful members had
+thrown his weight into the scale. The idea had taken hold of great
+sections of the working classes. The trade-unions, that see in
+increasing old-age poverty the chief drawback to their policy of
+enforcing in each trade a uniform and minimum wage, were naturally
+delighted that the State should undertake, out of public funds, to
+remove their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span>difficulty. A number of Bills dealing with the question
+had been introduced into the House of Commons by private members; and
+the reluctance of the Government to take it up had become a favourite
+form of party attack. The Government acted as perhaps most
+Governments, under the circumstances, would have done. While refusing
+to give any pledge, and repudiating any sympathy with the idea of
+universal pensions, and insisting that an encouragement of thrift
+should be an essential condition of any old-age pension scheme, they
+refused to admit that a false departure had been made; and they
+appointed a new Committee&mdash;of which the writer of these lines was a
+member&mdash;to report upon the best means of improving the condition of
+the aged deserving poor, and upon the feasibility of dealing with
+their case by old-age pensions.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chaplin, the President of the Local Government Board, an
+experienced and very popular member of the Cabinet, presided over the
+Committee; and the fact that he drew up the report of the majority
+gave that report its chief political importance. The Committee
+consisted largely of members who had already committed themselves
+deeply in favour of old-age pensions; and it will hardly be disputed
+in England that it carried with it much less financial and political
+weight than its predecessors; and that the majority report&mdash;which was
+carried by 9 to 4&mdash;is more remarkable for the boldness of its
+recommendations than for the cogency of its reasoning. It completely,
+and almost contemptuously, discarded the conclusions of the majority
+of the Aberdare Commission, and the unanimous opinion of the
+Rothschild Committee; and it recommended that old-age pensions,
+derived in part from Imperial and in part from local sources, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>varying from 5<i>s.</i> to 7<i>s.</i> a week, should be granted to all the
+deserving poor who had attained the age of sixty-five and whose
+incomes did not exceed 10<i>s.</i> a week. It proposed that these pensions
+should be granted by committees established in every poor-law union
+and elected by the poor-law guardians; that they should be revised
+every three years; and that they should be distributed through the
+agency of the post-office.</p>
+
+<p>On the great difficulties that seemed so formidable to its
+predecessors it touched very lightly. How many of the poor were likely
+under the proposed system to become pensioners, and what burden of
+taxation was likely to be thrown on the State, were questions that
+were put aside as irrelevant to the inquiry. To meet the enormous
+difficulty of deciding upon the real merits, and of investigating the
+real circumstances, of the great masses of independent and industrious
+labourers who live in the manufacturing towns, or are constantly
+moving from one great centre of population to another, and circulating
+in quest of work through the whole extent of the Empire, it was
+suggested that the relief be confined to those who were resident in a
+single locality; and it was pointed out that a number of charities,
+endowed out of old legacies or donations, and applying to particular
+classes or districts, had come to be administered by the Charity
+Commissioners, and that in this restricted field they had been able to
+convert a large part of the income at their disposal from doles into
+permanent pensions.</p>
+
+<p>The thrift test and the character test, which previous inquirers had
+found it almost impossible to establish on a satisfactory basis, were
+defined on the loosest lines. The pensioner must not, during the
+preceding twenty years, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>have been sentenced to penal servitude or
+imprisonment without the option of a fine; he must not, during the
+same period of time, have been in receipt of poor-law relief 'other
+than medical relief or unless under circumstances of a wholly
+exceptional character'; and he must have 'endeavoured to the best of
+his ability, by his industry and by the exercise of reasonable
+providence, to make provision for himself and those immediately
+dependent on him.'</p>
+
+<p>The extreme vagueness and the extreme elasticity of such provisions
+are sufficiently manifest; and it is difficult to see how they can
+give any real assistance in practical legislation; while they leave
+the door open to the largest and most lavish expenditure. I have
+endeavoured in a minority report to deal with these questions at
+somewhat greater length than my present space will admit; but a few
+pages may suffice to give an outline of the case of those who believe
+the new policy to be both mistaken and dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing is more certain or more cheering in the condition of modern
+England than the extraordinary diminution that has taken place, during
+the present generation, in pauperism. It began with the reform of the
+poor law in 1834; and although it has been found possible to relax
+greatly the stringency of the poor-law regulations that were then
+made, it has steadily continued. Much of this is due to the increase
+in the rate of wages which has taken place in most departments of
+English industry, and which has been accompanied by a great decrease
+in the cost of most of the chief necessaries of life, as well as by a
+considerable reduction in the hours of work. Sir Robert Giffen, in the
+very remarkable paper which he published, in 1883, on the condition of
+the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>working classes in England during the preceding fifty years, has
+shown that in every class of work in which it is possible to make a
+comparison the wages of the labourer have in these fifty years risen
+at least 20 per cent., and in most cases between 50 and 100 per cent.;
+and he has clearly demonstrated that no other section of the community
+has obtained so large a proportion of the increase of the national
+wealth, and improved in so great a degree in material prosperity.</p>
+
+<p>But the mere increase of wages is but one element of this improvement.
+The very mainspring of the prosperity of the great masses of the
+British working classes is to be found in their increased sobriety,
+and in the habits of thrift and providence that have followed the
+spread of education. The statistics of the Friendly Societies, the
+Industrial and Provident Societies, the Building Societies, the
+savings-banks, and of countless other institutions, created by
+voluntary working-class effort for the purpose of insuring against
+sickness or death, and providing working-class investments, attest in
+the clearest manner the rapid growth of provident and thrifty habits
+among the wage-earning classes. In no other respect is the improvement
+of the nation so marked and so indisputable and no element in the
+national character is more important to its prosperity and to its
+enduring greatness. In the evidence that was brought before our
+Committee, it was shown that since 1849 the pauperism of Great Britain
+had been reduced from 62.7 per 1,000 to 26.2 per 1,000, if lunatics
+and vagrants are included, to 22.8 per 1,000, if lunatics and vagrants
+are excluded.</p>
+
+<p>The first, and most vital, condition of any sound legislation for the
+relief of poverty is that it should not impair these industrial
+qualities, or weaken these vast <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>voluntary organisations of self-help
+which are their result. Can it be said that the old-age pension policy
+is compatible with this condition?</p>
+
+<p>It proposes to open, in addition to the existing system of poor
+relief, a new fund, amounting to many millions of pounds a year, and
+drawn from compulsory taxation for the purpose of subsidising simple
+poverty; a fund to which it is to be rather creditable than otherwise
+to resort; a fund which is intended to deal, not with exceptional
+calamity, but with that which springs from the mere efflux of time,
+and which is, beyond all others, the most normal and most easily
+foreseen. It proposes to teach the whole working population to look to
+the State, and not to themselves, for the provision for their old age,
+and for the old age of those who might be dependent on them, and thus
+to destroy the most powerful of all motives to thrift&mdash;the very
+mainspring of productive and self-sacrificing industry. And it
+proposes to do this at a time when wages are higher than they have
+ever been before; when voluntary societies for securing the poor from
+want are flourishing and increasing as they have never done before;
+when the rapid decline of pauperism is one of the most marked and most
+universally recognised signs of national improvement. Can it be
+seriously believed that the addition of many millions a year to the
+State funds directly employed in the relief of poverty will, in the
+long run, tend to diminish pauperism or to encourage self-reliance and
+thrift?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chamberlain and the other more considerable advocates of old-age
+pensions clearly see that if such pensions are to be of real value
+they must discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving; and
+they believe that they may have the effect of stimulating, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>instead of
+weakening, thrift. For this purpose several schemes have been devised.</p>
+
+<p>The most popular Continental method of achieving this end is by a law
+obliging the working man in early life to insure against old age, and
+by supplementing the income derived from this insurance by a State
+subsidy. In Germany, where this system is actually carried out, the
+old-age pension is derived from three sources&mdash;viz. compulsory
+insurance by the workers, compulsory contribution by the employer, and
+a State subsidy. Compulsory insurance found for many years a powerful
+English advocate in Canon Blackley; and it has been recommended by a
+recent inquiry in Holland, which, however, refused to propose any
+system of old-age pensions. According to the best accounts, the German
+system has been far from successful either economically or
+politically; and it has certainly not prevented Socialism from
+becoming one of the great dangers of the State. Into this question,
+however, it is needless to enter, as it is now universally admitted in
+England that compulsory insurance for old age is an impossibility; for
+it would certainly be repudiated by the working classes.</p>
+
+<p>A large group of proposals are to the effect that old-age pensions
+should be granted to all poor persons over the age of sixty-five whose
+total income is less than 10<i>s.</i> a week, provided that a certain
+portion of that income consists of a fixed annuity acquired by their
+own industry and thrift. It is urged that in most of the great
+branches of industry a deserving man in his earlier and stronger years
+could easily earn such an annuity; and it is suggested that the State
+should double it, or add to it sufficient to make it up to 10<i>s.</i> a
+week, or supplement it by a fixed grant of 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, or 5<i>s.</i>, or
+even 7<i>s.</i> a week.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>The objections to such schemes are very serious. It is obvious that if
+they encourage a workman to save up to the amount required to secure a
+pension, they would have a directly opposite effect as soon as that
+amount had been attained. The first result of any addition to his
+income would then be to disqualify him for a pension. It is also
+obvious that the pensioner of sixty-five would have a strong
+inducement to abstain from the work he could easily do, and that if he
+continued to do it he would compete on exceptionally favourable terms
+with the workman who, though he had passed the prime of life, was not
+yet entitled to a pension, restricting his means of employment and
+beating down his wages. Many of the most necessitous and deserving
+poor would also be left unrelieved.</p>
+
+<p>Although it is true that in the more flourishing trades men could
+easily in early life save out of their wages a sufficient sum to
+acquire this annuity, there are large fields of industry in which such
+a saving would be almost or absolutely impossible. We have had
+melancholy evidence of how utterly insufficient most forms of women's
+wages are to provide the needed margin. The same thing is true of the
+agricultural labourer in the more depressed districts in England and
+in large tracts of Ireland and Scotland. Even in the more remunerative
+employments innumerable special circumstances would prevent a thrifty
+and deserving man from obtaining this annuity. Certainly no one is
+more deserving of compassion and State aid than the widow and young
+orphans of a working man; but the scheme we are considering would not
+only not help them, but would most seriously injure them. It is a
+direct incentive to the workman to sink his savings in an annuity
+which would terminate with his own life.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>The whole policy, indeed, of attempting to turn all working-class
+savings into this one channel is a false one; and it has been shown
+that no kind of saving is in fact less popular among working men than
+the purchase of a deferred annuity. I may here be allowed to quote a
+few lines from my own report:</p>
+
+<p>'In the infinitely various conditions of a working-man's life thrift
+will take many forms, and an attempt to prescribe a single form is
+eminently injudicious. The whole life-plan of a farmer whose farm will
+remain with him to the end will be different from that of an artisan
+or a domestic servant whose power of earning a livelihood depends
+entirely upon his physical strength. The former will probably find it
+most profitable to expend his savings on the improvement of his farm.
+Where the system of peasant proprietorship prevails most agricultural
+thrift is directed to the purchase and enlargement of farms. In
+Ireland it is largely directed to the purchase of tenant right, or to
+enabling the younger members of the family to emigrate.</p>
+
+<p>'Nor is it true that even the artisan will find the purchase of an
+annuity the best thing to be aimed at. To buy a house or some
+furniture; to start a small business; to expend his savings in tiding
+over periods of slack or failing work; to avail himself of the
+advantage which some fluctuation in the market gives to the man who
+can transport himself promptly to a new locality or a new business is
+often far more to his advantage. Above all, money expended in settling
+his family is often his best policy as well as the course which is
+most beneficial to the community. At present a large proportion of
+working men look forward to their children to help them in their old
+age, and make it a main object of their lives to place them in a
+position to do so. It does <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>not seem to me a wise thing for the State
+either to emancipate children from this duty or to induce every
+married working man to sink his savings in an annuity which will end
+with his life and from which his widow and children can derive no
+benefit. It is certainly not for the advantage of the country that in
+selecting between alternative ways of providing for old age he should
+be induced to choose that which throws the greatest burden on the
+State. With the vast increase of population, with the great
+fluctuations of modern industry, and with the rapid development of the
+colonies, it is extremely desirable both in the interest of the
+working men and of the State that they should be induced to transfer
+themselves from congested towns and from exhausted industries to new
+fields. A general pension system would certainly contribute most
+powerfully to prevent them from doing so.'</p>
+
+<p>It has been proposed by others that the pension fund should be placed
+in the hands of Friendly or Benefit Societies, and that they should be
+intrusted with its administration, or that subscription to such
+societies for a certain number of years should be taken by the State
+as the thrift test. On the first proposal it is sufficient to say,
+that these great voluntary societies are themselves opposed to it; for
+if they were directly subsidised by the State, they would be obliged
+to submit to a State control of their management and their finances
+which they do not desire. It is observed that only a very small
+proportion of the subscribers to these societies ever find it
+necessary to come upon the poor rates; and if a system of old-age
+pensions were confined to these limits, it would act in the most
+unequal manner. Their members are drawn in a far larger proportion
+from the lucrative and flourishing trades than from those which are
+struggling <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>and underpaid. Few women belong to them. In Ireland, which
+is the poorest part of the Empire, Friendly Societies scarcely exist;
+and the same thing is true of large districts in Wales and Scotland.
+The main result of such proposals would be to concentrate the new
+State fund for the relief of poverty on the richest parts of the
+Empire, and on the trades that need it the least.</p>
+
+<p>The extreme difficulty of finding any efficient test of thrift is very
+evident; and those proposed by a large number of the advocates of
+old-age pensions are so easy as to be almost worthless. Some consider
+it sufficient that a man has for a certain number of years not been in
+receipt of poor-law relief, except medical relief or relief granted
+under 'exceptional circumstances.' Others would accept the mere fact
+that a man has lived to be sixty-five, as the drunken and disreputable
+workman seldom lives so long. A large number of resolutions have
+condemned Mr. Chaplin's report on the grounds that old-age pensions
+ought not to be confined to the 'deserving' poor; that they ought to
+begin at an earlier age than sixty-five; that they ought to be
+administered by a body totally unconnected with the poor law, so as to
+carry with them no taint of pauperism or eleemosynary relief. They
+ought, it is said, to be universal; to be looked on as a matter of
+strict right; to be considered as of the same nature as the pension
+given to the soldier or the Civil Servant.</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious that all this may carry us very far. It is estimated
+that some of the most popular proposals would involve an annual
+expenditure of considerably more than twenty millions of
+pounds&mdash;making allowance for the saving that might be effected in the
+ordinary poor-law relief, but not counting the cost of administration.
+And this expenditure would be a growing one; and once <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>accepted it
+could hardly be withdrawn. The vast addition to the national debt that
+might follow a great European war or the great shrinkage of the
+national income that might easily follow some revolution in trade or
+manufacture, might render the burden of taxation incomparably more
+serious than at present; but once the great mass of the population had
+learned to regard State support in old age as their normal prospect
+and their inalienable right, it would be impossible, without producing
+a social revolution, to recede. All the advantages gained by
+generations of economical administration of the national finance would
+be nullified; while the certain result of this crushing addition to
+taxation would be to weaken incalculably the spirit of thrift,
+providence, and self-reliance, and at the same time to lower wages, by
+removing one of the great considerations by which they are regulated.
+And this reduction of wages would fall not only on the recipient of
+the pension, but also on multitudes who would never live to attain it.
+Nothing can be more certain than that a general system of pensions
+attached to the labour of the wage-earner must lower wages, at least
+among all those who are approaching the pension age; while it would
+prevent or retard their natural increase over a far wider area.</p>
+
+<p>It would also most certainly bring with it the gravest danger of
+corruption. It would not be easy to secure the pure and the impartial
+administration of these vast funds; but the political dangers would be
+much more serious. It is proposed that the pension system should be
+first introduced on a small scale, but gradually extended till it
+included all the aged poor, or at least all who were deserving. Such a
+question would infallibly pass into the competitions of party warfare.
+It would become <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>in most constituencies one of the most prominent of
+electioneering tests. Rival candidates would be competing for the
+votes of a wage-earning electorate who had a direct pecuniary interest
+in increasing or extending pensions and in relaxing the conditions on
+which they are given. Can it be doubted that in many cases their first
+object would be to outbid one another, and that national and party
+politics would soon be forced into a demoralising race of
+extravagance?</p>
+
+<p>I cannot conclude without protesting against the supposition that
+those who think with me are indifferent to the great evil of old-age
+destitution and propose nothing for its relief. The committees which
+have most clearly pointed out the dangers of old-age pensions have
+also urged, that within the lines of our present poor-law system it is
+quite possible to do much, by an improved classification, to
+distinguish among the recipients of poor-law relief between the
+respectable and the worthless. Much has already been done, and in the
+most important unions the guardians have introduced a large amount of
+classification by merit. As I have already said, the immense majority
+of the respectable aged poor are now relieved only in their own homes
+or in comfortable infirmaries. The severe test of absolute destitution
+has in practice been greatly relaxed; there is a legal provision
+preventing those who are receiving help from Friendly Societies from
+being disqualified for relief; husbands and wives are no longer
+separated in the workhouse; and in some unions of which we had
+evidence much more has been done. This, however, depends too much on
+the will of particular Boards of Guardians, and there are in
+consequence great inequalities of treatment. The condition of the
+deserving poor may be greatly improved by relaxation in points of
+hours, discipline, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>and visitors, and by workhouse arrangements
+securing more universally that paupers who have lived respectable
+lives should not be obliged to mix with the drunken, the disreputable,
+and the hopelessly idle. And, though extensions of outdoor relief
+should be carefully watched, and entail great dangers, yet under wise
+and strict administration something more may be done in this
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>But all this should be regarded as essentially poor-law relief, and
+not as the recognition of a claim of right for services supposed to
+have been rendered to the community. No form of State Socialism is
+more dangerous than the doctrine which has been countenanced by Prince
+Bismarck, and which is making many disciples in England&mdash;namely, that
+an industrious man, who has pursued his course in life with perfect
+independence, made his own contracts, chosen his own work, and been
+paid for it by stipulated wages, is entitled, if he fails in obtaining
+a sufficiency for his old age, to be placed as a 'soldier of industry'
+in the same category as State servants, and to receive like them, not
+on the ground of compassion, but of right, a State pension drawn from
+the taxation of the community. There is no real analogy between the
+relief that is very properly granted to such workmen in their
+destitution, and the pensions&mdash;largely of the nature of deferred
+pay&mdash;that are given by the State or by private employers, under the
+terms of distinct contracts, and for specific services duly rendered,
+to those who have entered into their employment and placed themselves
+under their control.</p>
+<p>
+<br />
+<br />
+<br /></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span><br /></p>
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<h3><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h3>
+
+
+<ul><li>Aberdare Commission, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li>Addington, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li>American Revolution, <a  href="#Page_34">34-37</a>, <a  href="#Page_55">55-57</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+
+<li>Anne, Queen, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li>Anti-Semite movement, <a  href="#Page_116">116-121</a>, <a  href="#Page_123">123-125</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li>Arnold, Dr., <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li>Australia, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+<li>Austria, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Bacon, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li>Bayard, Mr., <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
+
+<li>Bayle, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li>Beaconsfield, Earl of (B. Disraeli), <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  imperialism, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</li>
+  <li>  policy regarding Eastern Crisis, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</li>
+  <li>  relations with Lord Derby, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Queen Victoria's regard for, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Beer, George, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
+
+<li>Bentham, J., <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li>Bernard, Claude, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Bismarck, Prince, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Blackley, Canon, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li>Blennerhassett, Lady, <a  href="#Page_131">131-133</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li>Blomfield, Bishop, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+<li>Bossuet, <a  href="#Page_96">96-98</a></li>
+
+<li>Boulanger, General, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li>Bright, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+
+<li>British Empire, growth, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  defence, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
+  <li>  unity, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Browning, Robert, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li>Buckle, H.T., <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a  href="#Page_100">100-102</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Burke, Edmund, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li>Butler's 'Analogy,' <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Caird, Principal, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li>Canada, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+
+<li>Canning, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  attitude towards Catholic Question, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a  href="#Page_166">166-170</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li>
+  <li>  quoted, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Cardan, quoted, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
+
+<li>Carlyle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  school of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</li>
+  <li>  style, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</li>
+  <li>  characteristics, <a  href="#Page_106">106-113</a>;</li>
+  <li>  teaching, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a  href="#Page_110">110-115</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Caroline, Queen, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li>Castlereagh, Viscount, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li>Catherine, of Russia, Empress, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li>Catholic Emancipation, <a  href="#Page_78">78-86</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a  href="#Page_157">157-174</a>, <a  href="#Page_187">187-190</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  <i>see also under</i> Ireland</li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Cato, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
+
+<li>Chamberlain, Joseph, <a  href="#Page_303">303-304</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li>Charlemagne, <a  href="#Page_17">17-19</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li>Charlemont, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li>Chartism, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li>Chatham, Lord, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a  href="#Page_157">157-160</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li>Chaucer, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li>Chivalry, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li>Chrysostom, Dio, <a href="#Page_16">16</a></li>
+
+<li>Church, Dean, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+
+<li>Clarendon, Lord, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li>Cobden, Richard, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
+
+<li>Colenso, Bishop, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+
+<li>Coleridge, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li>Colonial policy of Great Britain, <a  href="#Page_43">43-46</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a  href="#Page_55">55-61</a></li>
+
+<li>Colonies, British:
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  defence, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
+  <li>  federation, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</li>
+  <li>  governors, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li>
+  <li>  representation, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</li>
+  <li>  trade, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a  href="#Page_63">63-65</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;</li>
+  <li>  value of, <a  href="#Page_47">47-50</a>;</li>
+  <li>  attachment to the Crown, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Comte, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></li>
+
+<li>Constant, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+
+<li>Constitutional sovereignty, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+
+<li>Co-operation, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li>Croker, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Crusades, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li>Curchod, Mlle., <i>see</i> Necker, Mme.</li>
+
+<li>Curwen's Act, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Dalling, Lord, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li>Darwin and his teaching, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li>Davies, Sir John, quoted, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li>Delane, J.T., <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+<li>De Quincey, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li>Derby, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>th Earl of, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a  href="#Page_204">204-206</a>, <a  href="#Page_208">208-210</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+<li>Derby, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>th Earl of:
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  career, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a  href="#Page_205">205-213</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a  href="#Page_222">222-224</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>;</li>
+  <li>  views on Church questions, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;</li>
+  <li>  on Reform Bill, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Indian policy, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</li>
+  <li>  foreign policy, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a  href="#Page_217">217-224</a>;</li>
+  <li>  colonial policy, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a  href="#Page_228">228-230</a>;</li>
+  <li>  attitude towards Home Rule, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</li>
+  <li>  contemporary opinion of him, <a  href="#Page_206">206-209</a>, <a  href="#Page_211">211-213</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;</li>
+  <li>  marriage <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</li>
+  <li>  interest in social questions, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>;</li>
+  <li>  in working men, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</li>
+  <li>  tastes, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</li>
+  <li>  conversation, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;</li>
+  <li>  estimate of his talents and character, <a  href="#Page_202">202-204</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a  href="#Page_219">219-224</a>;</li>
+  <li>  speeches, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a  href="#Page_222">222-224</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a  href="#Page_234">234-236</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Dicey, Professor <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li>Disraeli, B., <i>see</i> Beaconsfield</li>
+
+<li>Duigenan, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Eastern Question, Lord Derby's views on, <a  href="#Page_218">218-223</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Edinburgh Review</i>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+
+<li>Education, popular, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+<li>Eldon, Lord, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+
+<li>Elizabeth, Queen, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  inscription on tomb of, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Ellenborough, Lord, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+<li>Emerson, R.W., <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li>Emigration, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li>Erasmus, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li>'Essays and Reviews,' <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Faber, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+<li>Factory legislation, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li>Federation, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>Feudalism, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+
+<li>Fitzwilliam, Lord, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li>Flood, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li>Foster, Leslie, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
+
+<li>Fox, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
+
+<li>France, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li>Franklin, Benjamin, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Fraser's Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li>Free Trade, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></li>
+
+<li>French Revolution, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li>Froude, J.A., <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Galdos' 'Gloria,' <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li>George II., <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li>George III. and Catholic Emancipation, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a  href="#Page_157">157-162</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+<li>George IV., as Prince Regent, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  as King, <a  href="#Page_188">188-191</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>German literature, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li>Germany, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li>Gibbon, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_264">264</a></li>
+
+<li>Giffen, Sir Robert, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li>Gladstone, W.E., <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <a  href="#Page_286">286-288</a></li>
+
+<li>Goethe, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li>Gordon, General, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li>Goulburn, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li>Grattan, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a  href="#Page_168">168-171</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li>Grenville, George, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li>Grenville, Lord, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+<li>Greville, Charles, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+<li>Grey, Lord, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li>Grote, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Guizot, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+<li>Gustavus III., King of Sweden, <a href="#Page_138">138</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Hallam, A., <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li>Harcourt, Sir William, quoted, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li>Hastings, Warren, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li>Haussonville, M. d', <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li>Hawkesbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
+
+<li>Hawtrey, Provost, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></li>
+
+<li>Heber, Bishop, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>High Church movement, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a  href="#Page_249">249-251</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li>Hippisley, Sir John, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
+
+<li>Historians, qualities requisite, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a  href="#Page_4">4-6</a>, <a  href="#Page_10">10-12</a>;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  motto for, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li>
+  <li>  scientific school, <a  href="#Page_2">2-4</a>;</li>
+  <li>  literary, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</li>
+  <li>  methods, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li>
+  <li>  applied to religion, <a  href="#Page_97">97-99</a>;</li>
+  <li>  eighteenth century, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</li>
+  <li>  fatalist school, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li>
+  <li>  individualist school, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>History:
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  biographical element, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;</li>
+  <li>  individual influences, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</li>
+  <li>  fiction and, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</li>
+  <li>  accident as affecting, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</li>
+  <li>  of institutions, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</li>
+  <li>  of revolutions, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a  href="#Page_34">34-38</a>;</li>
+  <li>  speculations, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</li>
+  <li>  advantages of studying, <a  href="#Page_38">38-40</a>;</li>
+  <li>  moral lessons, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Hobbes, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
+
+<li>Home Rule, <i>see under</i> Ireland</li>
+
+<li>Homer, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Ideals, varying popular, <a  href="#Page_14">14-19</a></li>
+
+<li>Imperial Institute, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li>Imperialism, <a  href="#Page_46">46-51</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+<li>India, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a  href="#Page_46">46-48</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></li>
+
+<li>Ireland (<i>see also</i> Ulster):
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  invasions, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</li>
+  <li>  rebellions, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</li>
+  <li>  influence of the Reformation, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</li>
+  <li>  under the Stuarts, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</li>
+  <li>  trade, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</li>
+  <li>  effects of English Revolution, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li>
+  <li>  of American Revolution, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</li>
+  <li>  of French Revolution, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Young's views on, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Catholics and Protestants, <a  href="#Page_70">70-79</a>, <a  href="#Page_81">81-87</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Volunteer movement, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li>
+  <li>  political agitation, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>;</li>
+  <li>  union with Great Britain, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a  href="#Page_83">83-85</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Catholic Emancipation, <a  href="#Page_81">81-86</a>, <a  href="#Page_157">157-174</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a  href="#Page_194">194-198</a>;</li>
+  <li>  corruption, <a  href="#Page_175">175-179</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;</li>
+  <li>  discontent, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li>
+  <li>  tithe commutation, <a  href="#Page_185">185-187</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Church disestablishment, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;</li>
+  <li>  land tenure, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a  href="#Page_75">75-77</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li>
+  <li>  landlords, <a  href="#Page_75">75-77</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Home Rule, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a  href="#Page_87">87-89</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Queen Victoria's visit, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</li>
+  <li>  present condition, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;</li>
+  <li>  representation in Parliament, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Irish Acts of Parliament,
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  of settlement, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</li>
+  <li>  octennial, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;</li>
+  <li>  of 1793, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;</li>
+  <li>  of union, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a  href="#Page_83">83-85</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Irish Parliament, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a  href="#Page_77">77-83</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li>Irishmen, United, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li>Isabella of Spain, Queen, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li>Italian art, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li>Italy, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Jefferson, quoted, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li>Jeffrey, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li>Jewish type,
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  stability of, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li>
+  <li>  trade, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li>
+  <li>  writings, modern investigation of, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a  href="#Page_257">257-259</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Jews,
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  calumnies against, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>;</li>
+  <li>  characteristics, <a  href="#Page_118">118-130</a>;</li>
+  <li>  code, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li>
+  <li>  compared with other tribes, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</li>
+  <li>  continuity of race, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</li>
+  <li>  distinguished, <a  href="#Page_126">126-129</a>;</li>
+  <li>  persecution of, <a  href="#Page_116">116-121</a>, <a  href="#Page_123">123-126</a>;</li>
+  <li>  return of, to Palestine, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Milman's 'History of the', <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+  </ul>
+<br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Kant, Immanuel, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+
+<li>Keats, John, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li>Keble, John, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li>Kruger, President, <a  href="#Page_226">226-228</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Landor, Walter Savage, quoted, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
+
+<li>Leroy, Beaulieu, M. Anatole, <a  href="#Page_116">116-128</a></li>
+
+<li>Lewis, Sir G. Cornewall, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li>Liverpool, Lord, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a  href="#Page_192">192-194</a>, <a  href="#Page_197">197-199</a></li>
+
+<li>Lloyd, Dr., <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+<li>Locke, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li>Lockhart, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></li>
+
+<li>Loughborough, Lord, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li>Louis Napoleon, <i>see</i> Napoleon III.</li>
+
+<li>Lyall, Sir Alfred, <a href="#Page_240">240</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Macaulay, Lord, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li>Macleod, Norman, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li>Malmesbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li>Manchester School, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li>Marie Antoinette, Queen, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li>Martin, Sir Theodore, <a href="#Page_287">287</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Masson's 'Life of Milton,' <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li>Melbourne, Lord, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+<li>Mill, James, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li>Mill, John Stuart, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li>Milman, Dean,
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  career, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a  href="#Page_271">271-274</a>;</li>
+  <li>  dramatist, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</li>
+  <li>  poet, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;</li>
+  <li>  translator, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>;</li>
+  <li>  hymns, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;</li>
+  <li>  historian, <a  href="#Page_257">257-270</a>;</li>
+  <li>  critic, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a  href="#Page_256">256-261</a>, <a  href="#Page_263">263-267</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li>
+  <li>  learning, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li>
+  <li>  style, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;</li>
+  <li>  views on miracles, <a  href="#Page_258">258-260</a>;</li>
+  <li>  on German criticism, <a  href="#Page_260">260-262</a>;</li>
+  <li>  on Christianity, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;</li>
+  <li>  on Tractarian movement, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</li>
+  <li>  on clerical subscription, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Mr. Reeve and, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Dean Stanley and, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;</li>
+  <li>  friendships, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>;</li>
+  <li>  private correspondence, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</li>
+  <li>  social gifts, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>;</li>
+  <li>  characteristics, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a  href="#Page_272">272-274</a>;</li>
+  <li>  works, <a  href="#Page_252">252-270</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>;</li>
+  <li>  portrait, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Milman, Arthur, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li>Milner, Bishop, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
+
+<li>Milton, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li>Mohammedanism, rise of, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li>Molyneux, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+<li>Monasticism, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li>Montesquieu, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li>Montmorin, Mme, de, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li>Moral standard, changes in, <a  href="#Page_14">14-19</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a></li>
+
+<li>Murray, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Napoleon I., <a  href="#Page_142">142-146</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li>Napoleon III., <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></li>
+
+<li>Narbonne, Louis de, <a  href="#Page_138">138-141</a></li>
+
+<li>Necker, Mme., <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li>Necker, Monsieur, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li>Necker, Germaine, <i>see</i> Staël, Mme. de</li>
+
+<li>Newcastle, Duke of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+<li>Newman, Cardinal, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a  href="#Page_249">249-251</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>O'Connell, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li>Old-age pensions, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a  href="#Page_311">311-316</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  proposals for, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Royal Commission, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Rothschild Committee, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Chaplin Committee, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Orangemen, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Palestine, return of Jews to, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li>Paley, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li>Palmerston, Lord, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a  href="#Page_206">206-209</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a  href="#Page_279">279-282</a></li>
+
+<li>Parker, editor of Peel Correspondence, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+<li>Parnell, C.S., <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li>Parnell Commission, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li>
+
+<li>Parsons, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li>Pasteur, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Pauperism, diminution of, <a  href="#Page_298">298-309</a></li>
+
+<li>Peel, Sir Lawrence, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
+
+<li>Peel, Sir Robert,
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  education, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</li>
+  <li>  career, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a  href="#Page_153">153-156</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li>
+  <li>  abolition of Corn Laws, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Irish Secretary, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a  href="#Page_174">174-187</a>;</li>
+  <li>  relations with O'Connell, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</li>
+  <li>  correspondence, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a  href="#Page_175">175-185</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a  href="#Page_197">197-199</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Croker and, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;</li>
+  <li>  advocates unsectarian education for Ireland, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Catholic Emancipation, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a  href="#Page_168">168-174</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a  href="#Page_189">189-191</a>, <a  href="#Page_193">193-195</a>, <a  href="#Page_197">197-199</a>;</li>
+  <li>  financial measures, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</li>
+  <li>  patronage, <a  href="#Page_178">178-183</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</li>
+  <li>  police force organised, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Home Secretary, <a  href="#Page_188">188-198</a>;</li>
+  <li>  parliamentary skill, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>;</li>
+  <li>  debating powers, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Queen Victoria and, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</li>
+  <li>  recantations, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</li>
+  <li>  estimate of his character and abilities, <a  href="#Page_151">151-154</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Perceval, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a  href="#Page_159">159-161</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li>
+
+<li>Pitt, William, <i>see</i> Chatham</li>
+
+<li>Pliny, quoted, <a href="#Page_102">102</a></li>
+
+<li>Plunket, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li>Pobedonosteff, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li>Pole, Wellesley, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
+
+<li>Poor-law relief,
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  improvement in, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>;</li>
+  <li>  principles of, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Portland, Duke of, <a  href="#Page_159">159-161</a></li>
+
+<li>Portugal, Jews in, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
+
+<li>Prince Consort, <a  href="#Page_278">278-280</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+
+<li>Prince Regent, <i>see</i> George IV</li>
+
+<li>Prison reform, Carlyle's views on, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+
+<li>Pusey, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>'Quarterly Review,' <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Rationalism in Europe, author's History of, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li>Redesdale, Lord, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
+
+<li>Reeve, Henry:
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  education, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li>
+  <li>  career, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li>
+  <li>  editor of <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li>
+  <li>  historical knowledge, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li>
+  <li>  views on Home Rule, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</li>
+  <li>  linguistic talent, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;</li>
+  <li>  literary judgment, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li>
+  <li>  religious and philosophical views, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li>
+  <li>  political and social influence, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a  href="#Page_244">244-246</a>;</li>
+  <li>  friendships, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>;</li>
+  <li>  writings of, <a  href="#Page_242">242-244</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</li>
+  <li>  closing days, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Reform Bills, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li>Reformation,
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  causes of the, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li>
+  <li>  effect in Ireland, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Revolution,
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  American, <a  href="#Page_34">34-37</a>;</li>
+  <li>  effects of, in Ireland, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Revolution,
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  English, effect of, in Ireland, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li>
+  <li>  on trade, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Revolutions, history of, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a  href="#Page_34">34-38</a></li>
+
+<li>Richmond, Duke of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+<li>Ristori, Mme., <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li>Rocca, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+
+<li>Rogers, Sir Frederick, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li>Roumania, anti-Semite movement in, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li>Rousseau, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></li>
+
+<li>Ruskin, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li>Russell, Lord John, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a  href="#Page_211">211-213</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li>Russia, anti-Semite movement in, <a  href="#Page_116">116-118</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Salisbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+
+<li>Saurin, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li>Schiller, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li>Schleswig-Holstein question, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li>Scotland, Act of Union with, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
+
+<li>Shaftesbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li>Shelley, P.B., <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li>Sidmouth, Lord, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li>Smith, Goldwin, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li>Socialism, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li>Spain, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li>
+
+<li>Spencer, Herbert, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+
+<li>Staël, Baron de, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li>Staël, Mme. de., parentage, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  personal appearance, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</li>
+  <li>  career, <a  href="#Page_134">134-138</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a  href="#Page_148">148-150</a>;</li>
+  <li>  devotion to her father, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</li>
+  <li>  friendships, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li>
+  <li>  literary works, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a  href="#Page_145">145-150</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Napoleon I., views on, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</li>
+  <li>  political influence, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</li>
+  <li>  religious views, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</li>
+  <li>  travels, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</li>
+  <li>  characteristics, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Stanley, Dean, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li>Stanley, Lord, <i>see</i> Derby, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>th Earl of</li>
+
+<li>Stockmar, Baron, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li>Sullivan, Sir Arthur, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Tait, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li>Talleyrand, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
+
+<li>Taxation of American Colonies, <a  href="#Page_34">34-36</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  democratic principles of, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Taylor, Sir Henry, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li>
+
+<li>Tennyson, Lord, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li>Tocqueville, <a  href="#Page_242">242-244</a></li>
+
+<li>Trade, Colonial, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a  href="#Page_63">63-65</a>;
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  Indian, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Irish, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</li>
+  <li>  Jewish, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</li>
+  <li>  affected by English Revolution, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+<li>Transportation to Australia, <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
+
+<li>Transvaal affairs, <a  href="#Page_225">225-232</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></li>
+
+<li>Trinity College, Dublin, <a  href="#Page_90">90-92</a>, <a  href="#Page_96">96-100</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Ulster, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
+
+<li>United Irishmen, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>Voltaire, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+<li>Volunteer movement in Ireland, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
+
+<li>Victoria, Queen:
+  <ul class="nest">
+  <li>  relations with her Ministers, <a  href="#Page_279">279-283</a>, <a  href="#Page_286">286-288</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li>
+  <li>  memorandum on foreign affairs, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</li>
+  <li>  political influence, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a  href="#Page_282">282-286</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;</li>
+  <li>  patronage, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</li>
+  <li>  views on foreign policy, <a  href="#Page_279">279-281</a>, <a  href="#Page_283">283-286</a>;</li>
+  <li>  on Irish Church disestablishment, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;</li>
+  <li>  on women's suffrage, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</li>
+  <li>  on Home Rule, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li>
+  <li>  wide experience, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;</li>
+  <li>  letters, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;</li>
+  <li>  journals, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>;</li>
+  <li>  widowhood, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;</li>
+  <li>  moral influence, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span></li>
+  <li>  rule of, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a  href="#Page_277">277-279</a>, <a  href="#Page_281">281-284</a>, <a  href="#Page_293">293-295</a>;</li>
+  <li>  popularity, <a  href="#Page_289">289-291</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li>
+  <li>  characteristics, <a  href="#Page_274">274-276</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a  href="#Page_281">281-283</a>, <a  href="#Page_287">287-294</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li>
+  <li>  jubilees, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;</li>
+  <li>  visit to Ireland, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;</li>
+  <li>  closing days, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a><br /><br /></li>
+  </ul>
+</li>
+
+
+<li>Walpole, Spencer, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li>Ward, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li>
+
+<li>Watts, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li>Wellesley, Lord, <i>see</i> Wellington, Duke of</li>
+
+<li>Wellington, Duke of, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a  href="#Page_188">188-190</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></li>
+
+<li>Whateley, Archbishop, <a  href="#Page_92">92-96</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li>Women rulers, <a href="#Page_295">295</a></li>
+
+<li>Working classes, improvement in their condition, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a><br /><br /></li>
+
+
+<li>York, Duke of, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a  href="#Page_197">197-199</a></li>
+
+<li>Young, Arthur, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li>
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+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Historical and Political Essays, by William
+Edward Hartpole Lecky
+
+
+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: Historical and Political Essays
+
+
+Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2007  [eBook #20389]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)
+
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original     |
+    | document have been preserved.                             |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this  |
+    | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this     |
+    | document.                                                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Longmans, Green, and Co.
+39 Paternoster Row, London
+New York, Bombay, and Calcutta
+1908
+All rights reserved
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                             PAGE
+     THOUGHTS ON HISTORY                                        1
+
+     THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY                            21
+
+     THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH                      43
+
+     IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY                           68
+
+     FORMATIVE INFLUENCES                                      90
+
+     CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE                             104
+
+     ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS                                 116
+
+     MADAME DE STAËL                                          131
+
+     THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL            151
+
+     THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY                              200
+
+     MR. HENRY REEVE                                          242
+
+     DEAN MILMAN                                              249
+
+     QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE                          275
+
+     OLD-AGE PENSIONS                                         298
+
+     INDEX                                                    319
+
+
+
+
+The Essays 'Thoughts on History,' 'Formative Influences,'
+'Madame de Staël,' 'Israel among the Nations,' 'Old-age
+Pensions,' appeared originally in the American Review, the
+_Forum_--the first under the title of 'The Art of Writing
+History'; 'Ireland in the Light of History,' in the _North
+American Review_. Those on Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Henry Reeve,
+and Dean Milman were written for the _Edinburgh Review_. The
+Essay on 'Queen Victoria as a Moral Force' appeared first in
+the _Pall Mall Magazine_; 'Carlyle's Message to His Age' in
+the _Contemporary Review_. 'The Political Value of History'
+was a presidential address delivered before the Birmingham and
+Midland Institute; 'The Empire,' an inaugural address
+delivered at the Imperial Institute; and the 'Memoir of the
+Fifteenth Earl of Derby' was originally prefixed to the
+volumes of his speeches and addresses.
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS ON HISTORY
+
+
+I do not propose in this paper to enter into any general inquiry about
+the best method of writing history. Such inquiries appear to me to be
+of no real value, for there are many different kinds of history which
+should be written in many different ways. A diplomatic, a military, or
+a parliamentary history, dealing with a short period or a particular
+episode, must evidently be treated in a very different spirit from an
+extended history where the object of the historian should be to
+describe the various aspects of the national life, and to trace
+through long periods of time the ultimate causes of national progress
+and decay. The history of religion, of art, of literature, of social
+and industrial development, of scientific progress, have all their
+different methods. A writer who treats of some great revolution that
+has transformed human affairs should deal largely in retrospect, for
+the most important part of his task is to explain the long course of
+events that prepared and produced the catastrophe; while a writer who
+treats of more normal times will do well to plunge rapidly into his
+theme.
+
+Historians, too, differ widely in their special talents, and these
+talents are never altogether combined. The power of vividly realising
+and portraying men, or societies or modes of thought that have long
+since passed away; the power of arranging and combining great
+multitudes of various facts; the power of judging with discrimination,
+accuracy, and impartiality conflicting arguments or evidence; the
+power of tracing through the long course of events the true chain of
+cause and effect, selecting the facts that are most valuable and
+significant and explaining the relation between general causes and
+particular effects, are all very different and belong to different
+types of mind. It is idle to expect a writer with the gifts of a
+Clarendon, a Kinglake, or a Froude to write history in the spirit of a
+Hallam or a Grote. Writers who are eminently distinguished for wide,
+patient, and accurate research have sometimes little power either of
+describing or interpreting the facts which they collect. All that can
+be said with any profit is that each writer will do best if he follows
+the natural bent of his genius, and that he should select those kinds
+or periods of history in which his special gifts have most scope and
+the qualities in which he is deficient are least needed.
+
+It is the fashion of a modern school of historical writers to deplore
+what they call the intrusion of literature into history. History, in
+their judgment, should be treated as science and not as literature,
+and the kind of intellect they most value is not unlike that of a
+skilful and well-trained attorney. To collect documents with industry;
+to compare, classify, interpret and estimate them is the main work of
+the historian. It is no doubt true that there are some fields of
+history where the primary facts are so little known, so much contested
+or so largely derived from recondite manuscript sources, that a
+faithful historian will be obliged in justice to his readers to
+sacrifice both proportion and artistic charm to the supreme importance
+of analysing evidence, reproducing documents and accumulating proofs;
+but in general the depreciation of the literary element in history
+seems to me essentially wrong. It is only necessary to recall the
+names of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Livy and Tacitus, of Gibbon and
+Macaulay, and of the long line of great masters of style who have
+related the annals of France. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted
+that there is no subject in which rarer literary qualities are more
+demanded than in the higher forms of history. The art of portraying
+characters; of describing events; of compressing, arranging, and
+selecting great masses of heterogeneous facts, of conducting many
+different chains of narrative without confusion or obscurity; of
+preserving in a vast and complicated subject the true proportion and
+relief, will tax the highest literary skill, and no one who does not
+possess some, at least, of these gifts in an unusual measure is likely
+to attain a permanent place among the great masters of history. It is
+a misfortune when some stirring and momentous period falls into the
+hands of the mere compiler, for he occupies the ground and a really
+great writer will hesitate to appropriate and plagiarise the materials
+his predecessor has collected. There are books of great research and
+erudition which one would have wished to have been all re-written by
+some writer of real genius who could have given order, meaning and
+vividness to a mere chaos of accurate and laboriously sifted learning.
+The great prominence which it is now the fashion to ascribe to the
+study of diplomatic documents, is very apt to destroy the true value
+and perspective of history. It is always the temptation of those who
+are dealing with manuscript materials to overrate the small personal
+details which they bring to light, and to give them much more than
+their due space in their narrative. This tendency the new school
+powerfully encourages. It is quite right that the treasure-houses of
+diplomatic correspondence which have of late years been thrown open
+should be explored and sifted, but history written chiefly from these
+materials, though it has its own importance, is not likely to be
+distinguished either by artistic form or by philosophical value. Those
+who are immersed in these studies are very apt to overrate their
+importance and the part which diplomacy and statesmanship have borne
+in the great movement of human affairs.
+
+A true and comprehensive history should be the life of a nation. It
+should describe it in its larger and more various aspects. It should
+be a study of causes and effects, of distant as well as proximate
+causes, and of the large, slow and permanent evolution of things. It
+should include, as Buckle and Macaulay saw, the social, the
+industrial, the intellectual life of the nation as well as mere
+political changes, and it should be pre-eminently marked by a true
+perspective dealing with subjects at a length proportioned to their
+real importance. All this requires a powerful and original intellect
+quite different from that of a mere compiler. It requires too, in a
+high degree, the kind of imagination which enables a man to reproduce
+not only the acts but the feelings, the ideals, the modes of thought
+and life of a distant past, and pierce through the actions and
+professions of men to their real characters. Insight into character is
+one of the first requisites of a historian. It is therefore, much to
+be desired that he should possess a wide knowledge of the world, the
+knowledge of different types of character, foreign as well as English,
+which travel and society and practical experience of business can
+give, and it will also be of no small advantage to him if he has
+passed through more than one intellectual or religious phase, widening
+the area of his appreciation and realisations. He should also have
+enough of the dramatic element to enable him to throw himself into
+ways of reasoning or feeling very different from his own. One of the
+most valuable of all forms of historical imagination is that which
+enables a writer to place himself in the point of view of the best men
+on different sides, and to bring out the full sense of opposing
+arguments. All these gifts or qualities are never in a high degree
+united, but they are all essential to a great historian, and a true
+school of history should widen instead of narrowing our conception of
+it.
+
+The supreme virtue of the historian is truthfulness, and it may be
+violated in many different degrees. The worst form is when a writer
+deliberately falsifies facts or deliberately excludes from his picture
+qualifying circumstances. But there are other and much more subtle
+ways in which party spirit continually and often quite unconsciously
+distorts history. All history is necessarily a selection of facts, and
+a writer who is animated by a strong sympathy with one side of a
+question or a strong desire to prove some special point will be much
+tempted in his selection to give an undue prominence to those that
+support his view, or, even where neither facts nor arguments are
+suppressed, to give a party character to his work by an unfair
+distribution of lights and shades. The strong and vivid epithets are
+chiefly reserved for the good or bad deeds on one side, the vague,
+general and comparatively colourless epithets for the corresponding
+deeds on the other side; and in this way very similar facts are
+brought before the reader with such different degrees of illumination
+and relief that they make a wholly different impression on his mind.
+In the history of Macaulay this defect may, I think, be especially
+traced. The characteristic defect of that great and in most respects
+admirable writer, both as historian and artist, was the singular
+absence of graduation in his mind. The neutral tints which are
+essential to the accurate shading of character seemed almost wanting,
+and a love of strong contrasted lights and shades, coupled with his
+supreme command of powerful epithets, continually misled him. But no
+attentive reader can fail to observe how unequally those epithets are
+distributed and how clearly this inequality discloses the strong bias
+under which he wrote.
+
+The truth of an historical picture lies mainly in its judicious and
+accurate shading, and it is this art which the historian should
+especially cultivate. He will scarcely do so with success unless it
+becomes to him not merely a matter of duty, but also a pleasure and a
+pride. The kind of interest which he takes in his narrative should be
+much less that of a politician and an advocate than of a painter, who,
+now darkening and now lightening the picture, seeks by many delicate
+touches to catch with exact fidelity the tone and hue of the object he
+represents.
+
+The degree of certainty that it is possible to attain in history
+varies greatly in different departments. The growth of institutions
+and laws, military events, changes in manners and in creeds, can be
+described with much confidence, and although it is more difficult to
+depict the inner moral life of nations, the influences that form their
+characters and prepare them for greatness or decay, yet when the
+materials for our induction are sufficiently large this field of
+history may be studied with great profit. Diplomatic history and the
+more secret springs of political history can only be fully disclosed
+when the archives relating to them have been explored and when the
+confidential correspondence of the chief actors in them has been
+published. The biographical element in history is always the most
+uncertain. Even among contemporaries the judgment of character and
+motives depends largely on indications so slight and subtle that they
+rarely pass into books and are only fully felt by direct personal
+contact, and the smallest knowledge of life shows how quickly
+anecdotes and sayings are distorted, coloured, and misplaced when they
+pass from lip to lip. Most of the 'good sayings' of history are
+invention, and most of them have been attributed to different persons.
+A history which is plainly written under the influence of party bias
+has the value of an advocate's speech giving one side of the question.
+When our only materials for the knowledge of a period are derived from
+such histories, the saying of Voltaire should be remembered--that we
+can confidently believe only the evil which a party writer tells of
+his own side and the good which he recognises in his opponents. In
+judging the historian we must consider his nearness to the events he
+relates, his probable means of information and the internal evidence
+in his narrative of accuracy, honesty, and judgment, and we must also
+consider the standard of proof and the methods of historical writing
+prevailing in his time. A modern writer who placed in the mouths of
+his personages speeches which he himself invented would be justly
+discredited, but in antiquity it was a recognised custom for a
+historian to embody in fictitious speeches the reflections suggested
+by his narrative and the motives which he believed to have actuated
+his heroes.
+
+Different ages differ enormously in the severity of proof which they
+exact, in the degree of accuracy which they attain. The credibility of
+a statement also depends not only on the amount of its evidence, but
+also on its own inherent probability. Everyone will feel that an
+amount of testimony that would be quite sufficient to persuade him
+that a butcher's boy had been seen driving along a highway is wholly
+different from that which would be required to persuade him that a
+ghost had been met there. The same rule applies to the history of the
+past, and it is complicated by the great difference in different ages
+of the measure of probability, or, in other words, by the strong
+predisposition in certain stages of knowledge to accept statements or
+explanations of facts which in later stages we know to be incredible
+or in a high degree improbable. Few subjects in history are more
+difficult than the laws of evidence in dealing with the supernatural
+and the extent to which the authority of historians in relating
+credible and probable facts is invalidated by the presence of a
+mythical element in their narratives.
+
+Connected with this subject is also the question how far it is
+possible by merely internal evidence to decompose an ancient document,
+resolving it into its separate elements, distinguishing its different
+dates and its different degrees of credibility. The reader is no doubt
+aware with what a rare skill this method of inquiry has been pursued
+in the present century, chiefly by great German and Dutch scholars, in
+dealing with the early Jewish writings. At the same time, without
+disputing the value of their work or the importance of many of the
+results at which they have arrived, I may be pardoned for expressing
+my belief that this kind of investigation is often pursued with an
+exaggerated confidence. Plausible conjecture is too frequently
+mistaken for positive proof. Undue significance is attached to what
+may be mere casual coincidences, and a minuteness of accuracy is
+professed in discriminating between the different elements in a
+narrative which cannot be attained by mere internal evidence. In all
+writings, but especially in the writings of an age when criticism was
+unknown, there will be repetitions, contradictions, inconsistencies
+and diversities of style which do not necessarily indicate different
+authorship or dates.
+
+I have spoken of the uncertainty of the biographical element in
+history. It must, however, be said that when a historian is dealing
+with men who have played a very prominent part on the stage of life,
+the general acceptance of his judgment is a strong corroboration of
+its truth. It may be added that the later judgment of men is not
+unfrequently more true than the contemporary judgment. The wisdom of a
+teaching or of a policy is shown by its results, and these results are
+in most cases very gradually disclosed. Great men are like great
+mountains which are surrounded by lower peaks that often obscure their
+grandeur and seem to a near observer to equal or even to overtop them.
+It is only when seen from far off that their true dimensions are fully
+realised and they soar to heaven above all rivals. In the page of
+history men are judged mainly by the net result of their lives, by the
+broad lines of their characters and achievements. Many injudicious
+words, many minor weaknesses of conduct, are forgotten. Faults of
+manner, deficiencies of tact, awkwardnesses of appearance, which tell
+so largely upon the judgments of contemporaries, are no longer seen.
+The conversational nimbleness and versatility of intellect, the charm
+or assurance or magnetism of manner, the weight of social position,
+all of which tend to secure to an inferior man a pre-eminence in the
+circle in which he moves, are equally evanescent, and the shy, rugged,
+and tactless recluse often emerges on the strength of his genuine and
+abiding performances to a position in the eyes of the world which he
+never attained during his lifetime.
+
+That fine saying of Cardan, 'Tempus mea possessio, tempus ager meus,'
+might be the motto of the historian. Time is the field which he
+cultivates, and a true sense of space and distance should be one of
+the chief characteristics of his work. Few things are more difficult
+to attain than a just perspective in history. The most dramatic
+incidents are not the most important, and in weighing the joys and
+sorrows of the past our measures of judgment are almost hopelessly
+false. The most humane man cannot emancipate himself from the law of
+his nature, according to which he is more affected by some tragic
+circumstance which has taken place in his own house or in his own
+street than by a catastrophe which has carried anguish and desolation
+over enormous areas in a distant continent. In history, too, there are
+vast tracts which are almost necessarily unrealised. We judge a period
+mainly by its great men, by its brilliant or salient incidents, by the
+fortunes of a small class; and the great mass of obscure, suffering,
+inarticulate humanity, whose happiness is often so profoundly affected
+by political and military events, almost escapes our notice. It should
+be the object of history to bring before us past events in their true
+proportion and significance, and one of the greatest improvements in
+modern history is the increased attention which is paid to the
+social, industrial, and moral history of the poor. The paucity of our
+information and the difficulty of realising the conditions of obscure
+multitudes will always make this branch of history very imperfect, but
+it is one of the most essential to the just judgment of the past.
+
+Another task which lies before the historian is that of distinguishing
+proximate from ultimate causes. Our first natural impulse is to
+attribute a great change to the men who effected it and to the period
+in which it took place, and to neglect or underrate the long train of
+causes which had been, often through many generations, preparing its
+advent. A faithful historian must especially guard against this error.
+He must study the slow process of growth as well as the moment of
+efflorescence, the long progress of decay as well as the final
+catastrophe. He will probably find that the part played by statesmen
+and legislatures is less than he had imagined, and that the causes of
+the movements he relates must be sought over a wider area and through
+a longer period.
+
+Moral, intellectual, or economical movements very slightly connected
+with political life are often those which have most largely
+contributed to the good or evil fortunes of a nation; and even in the
+sphere of politics it is not the events which attract the most vivid
+contemporary interest that have the most enduring influence. Few
+things contribute so much to the formation of the social type as the
+laws regulating the succession of property and especially the
+agglomeration or division of landed property. The growth of militarism
+in a nation, besides its direct and obvious consequences, forms a type
+of character which will sooner or later show itself in almost every
+department of legislation, and the tendency of politics to enlarge or
+narrow the sphere of individual liberty or of government control, will
+affect most deeply the habits of the people. Laws regulating private
+enterprises, substituting State control or initiative for individual
+action, encouraging or discouraging thrift, and above all interfering
+with free contracts, have much more than an immediate influence, for
+they become the prolific parents of many further extensions. In the
+words of an excellent observer, it will be found 'that our legislative
+interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions,
+every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects
+of the preceding.' It is by studying such tendencies through long
+periods of time that their good or evil influences may be best
+discovered, and this should be one of the great tasks of the
+historian.
+
+But, however large a part may be given to the impersonal influences in
+history, he will still be largely concerned with the record of
+individual achievements, and the great men of the past will form the
+most conspicuous landmarks of his narrative. I have often thought,
+however, that nations are judged too much by the great men they have
+produced and not sufficiently by the way in which they have
+discriminated among them and appreciated them. Genius is like the wind
+that bloweth where it listeth, and it often appears in strangely
+uncongenial quarters. The true nobility of a nation is shown by the
+men they choose, by the men they follow, by the men they admire, by
+the ideals of character and conduct they place before them. Tried by
+such tests, there is often much that is profoundly saddening in the
+history of countries that have been far from poor in the number of
+their great men.
+
+In the judgment of historical characters there are two cautions on
+which it may not be useless to dwell. There is a large class of public
+men who show little capacity in dealing with or directing the present
+conditions of their time, but who see clearly the bourne to which
+existing forces or tendencies are moving and who, judged by their
+distant forecasts, will appear much wiser than their contemporaries.
+It is the natural bias of the historian to place them perhaps higher
+than they deserve. This power of just speculative foresight is no very
+rare gift, and in public affairs it is often as much a hindrance as a
+help. Forms of government and other great religious or political
+institutions, like the products of nature, have their times of
+immaturity, of growth, of ripeness and of decay, and it by no means
+follows because they at last become indefensible, that they have not
+during many generations discharged useful functions and that those who
+first assailed and condemned them are deserving of praise. Not
+unfrequently, indeed, a public man must take his choice whether by
+fully identifying himself with the existing conditions around him and
+employing them to the best advantages he will lead a useful and
+practical life, or whether as an advanced thinker he will associate
+himself with the cause that is one day to conquer, place himself in
+the van of progress and at the sacrifice of much present influence
+deserve the credit of foresight.
+
+Historians will probably always judge men and policies by their net
+results, by their final consequences, and this judgment is on the
+whole the most sure that we can attain. It is not, however, altogether
+infallible. Apart from the question of the moral character of the
+methods employed which a good historian should never omit from his
+consideration, success is not always a decisive proof of sagacity.
+Chance and the unexpected play a great part in human affairs, and a
+judgment founded on a perfectly just estimate of probabilities will
+often prove wrong. The result which was the least probable will come
+true, some wholly unforeseen and unforeseeable occurrence will scatter
+dangers that were very real and give a new complexion to events. The
+rise of some pre-eminently great or of some pre-eminently mischievous
+personage among the guiding influences of a nation will derange the
+most sagacious calculations, and the reckless gambler or the obtuse
+obstructionist may prove more right than the most cautious, the most
+skilful, the most farseeing statesman.
+
+A fatal and very common error is that of judging the actions of the
+past by the moral standard of our own age. This is especially the
+error of novices in history and of those who without any wide and
+general culture devote themselves exclusively to a single period.
+While the primary and essential elements of right and wrong remain
+unchanged, nothing is more certain than that the standard or ideal of
+duty is continually altering. A very humane man in another age may
+have done things which would now be regarded as atrociously barbarous.
+A very virtuous man may have done things which would now indicate
+extreme profligacy. We seldom indeed make sufficient allowance for the
+degree in which the judgments and dispositions of even the best man
+are coloured by the moral tone of the time or society in which they
+live. And what is true of individuals is equally true of nations. In
+order to judge equitably the legislation of any people, we must always
+consider corresponding contemporary legislations and ideas. When this
+is neglected our judgments of the past become wholly false. How often,
+for example, has such a subject as the history of the penal laws
+against Irish Catholics been treated without the smallest reference to
+the contemporary laws against Protestants that existed in every
+Catholic nation and the contemporary laws against Catholics that
+existed in almost every Protestant country in Europe. How often have
+the English commercial restrictions on the American colonies been
+treated as if they were instances of extreme and exceptional tyranny,
+while a more extended knowledge would show that they were simply the
+expression of ideas of commercial policy and about the relation of
+dependencies to the mother-country which then almost universally
+prevailed.
+
+It is not merely the moral standard that changes. A corresponding
+change takes place in the moral type, or, in other words, in the class
+of virtues which is especially cultivated and especially valued. To
+know an age aright we should above all things seek to understand its
+ideal, the direction in which the stream of its self-sacrifice and
+moral energy naturally flowed. Few things in history are more
+interesting and more valuable than a study of the causes that produced
+and modified these successive ideals. Thus in the moral type of pagan
+antiquity the civic virtues occupied incomparably the foremost place.
+The idea of a supremely good man was essentially that of a man of
+action, of a man whose whole life was devoted to the service of his
+country. The life and death of Cato were for generations the favourite
+model. He was deemed, in the words of an old Latin historian, to be of
+all men the one 'most like to virtue.' This pattern retained its force
+till the softening influence of the Greek spirit, permeating Roman
+life, made the stoical ideal seem too hard and unsympathising; till
+the corruption and despotism of the Empire had withdrawn the best men
+from political life and attached a certain taint or stigma to public
+employment; till new religions arose in the East, bringing with them
+new ideals to govern the world. Gradually we may trace the
+contemplative virtues rising to the foremost place until, about the
+fifth century, the ideal had totally changed. The heroic type was
+replaced by the saintly type. The supremely good man was now the
+ascetic. The first condition of sanctity was a complete abandonment of
+secular duties and cares and a complete subjugation of the body. A
+vast literature of legends arose reflecting and glorifying the
+prevailing ideal and holding up the hermit life as the supreme pattern
+of perfection, and this literature occupies a place in mediævalism
+very similar to that held by the 'Lives' of Plutarch in antiquity.
+
+Ancient art was essentially the glorification of the body, a
+representation of the full strength and beauty of developed manhood.
+The saint of the mediæval mosaic represents the body in its extreme
+maceration and humiliation. The rhetorician, Dio Chrysostom, in a
+somewhat whimsical passage, which was suggested by a remark of Plato,
+found a special moral significance in the fact that Homer, though he
+places his heroes on the the banks of what he calls 'the fishy
+Hellespont,' never makes them eat fish, but always flesh and the flesh
+of oxen, for this, as he says, is 'strength-producing food' and is
+therefore suited for the formation of heroes and the proper diet for
+men of virtue. Compare this judgment with the protracted, and indeed
+incredible, fasts which the monkish writers delighted in attributing
+to the saints of the desert, and we have a vivid picture of the change
+that had passed over the ideal.
+
+But as time moved on the ascetic ideal gradually declined and was
+replaced by the very different ideal of chivalry. It consisted chiefly
+of three new elements. The first element was a spirit of gallantry
+which gave women a wholly new place in the imaginations of men. It was
+in part a reaction against the extreme austerity of the saints, and
+this reaction was much intensified after the cessation of the panic
+which had risen at the close of the tenth century about the
+approaching end of the world. It was in part produced by the softer
+and more epicurean civilisation which grew up in the country bordering
+on the Pyrenees. It was especially represented in the romances and
+poems of the Troubadours, and the new tendency even received some
+assistance from the Church when the Council of Clermont, which
+originated the Crusades, imposed on the knight the religious
+obligation of defending all widows and orphans.
+
+The second element was an increased reverence for secular rank, which
+grew out of the feudal system, when a great hereditary aristocracy
+arose and all European society was moulded into a compact hierarchy,
+of which the serf was the basis and the emperor the apex. The
+principle of subordination and obedience ran through the whole
+edifice, and a respect for rank was universally diffused. Men came to
+associate their ideal of greatness with regal or noble authority, and
+they were therefore prepared to idealise any great sovereign who might
+arise. Such a sovereign appeared in Charlemagne, who exercised upon
+Christendom a fascination not less powerful than that which Alexander
+had once exercised upon Greece, and he accordingly soon became the
+centre of a whole literature of romance.
+
+The third element was the fusion of religious enthusiasm with the
+military spirit. Christianity in its first phases was utterly opposed
+to the military spirit; but this opposition was naturally mitigated
+when the Church triumphed under Constantine and became associated with
+governments and armies. The hostility was still further qualified when
+many tribes of warlike barbarians embraced the faith, and the military
+obligation which was an essential element of feudalism acted in the
+same direction. But, above all, the rise and conquests of
+Mohammedanism awoke the military energies of Christendom and
+determined the direction it should take. In the Crusades the two great
+streams of military enthusiasm and of religious enthusiasm met, and
+the result was the formation of a new ideal which for a long period
+mainly governed the imagination of Christendom.
+
+It for a time absorbed, eclipsed, and transformed all purely national
+ideals. No poet was ever more intensely English in his character and
+sympathies than Chaucer, and he wrote when the dazzling glories of
+Crécy and Poitiers were still very recent. Yet it is not on these
+fields, but in the long wars with the Moslems, that his pattern knight
+had won his renown. The military expeditions of Charlemagne were
+directed almost exclusively against the Saxons and against Slavonic
+tribes. With the Spanish Mohammedans he came but very slightly in
+contact. He made in person but one expedition against them, and that
+expedition was both insignificant and unsuccessful. But in the
+Karlovingian romances, which were written when the crusading
+enthusiasm was at its height, the figure of the great emperor
+underwent a strange and most significant transformation. The German
+wars were scarcely noticed. Charlemagne is surrounded with the special
+glory that ought to have belonged to Charles Martel. He is represented
+as having passed his entire life in a victorious struggle with the
+Mohammedans of Europe, and is even gravely credited with a triumphant
+expedition to Jerusalem. The three romances of the Crusades which are
+believed to be the oldest were all written by monks, and they all make
+Charlemagne their hero. Even geography was transformed by the new
+enthusiasm, and old maps sometimes represent Jerusalem as the centre
+of the world.
+
+In few periods has there been so great a difference between the ideals
+created by the popular imagination and the realities that are
+recognised by history. Few wars have been accompanied by more cruelty,
+more outrage, and more licentiousness than the Crusades or have
+brought a blacker cloud of disasters in their train. Yet the idea that
+inspired them was a lofty one, and they were so speedily transfigured
+by the imaginations of men that in combination with the other
+influences I have mentioned they created an ideal which is one of the
+most beautiful in the history of the world. We may trace it clearly in
+the romances of Arthur and Charlemagne and of the "Cid;" in the
+"Red-Cross Knight" of Tasso and Spenser; in the old ballads which
+paint so vividly the hero of chivalry, ever ready to draw his sword
+for his faith and his lady-love and in the cause of the feeble and the
+oppressed. The glorification of military courage and self-sacrifice
+which had been so prominent in antiquity was again in the ascendant,
+but it was combined with a new kind of honour and with a new vein of
+courtesy, modesty, and gentleness. When we apply the epithet
+'chivalrous' to a modern gentleman, this is no unmeaning term. There
+is even now an element in that character which may be distinctly
+traced to the ideal of chivalry which the Crusades made dominant in
+Europe.
+
+I do not propose to follow the history of other ideals that have in
+turn prevailed. What I have written will, I trust, be sufficient to
+illustrate a kind of history which appears to me to possess much
+interest and value. It will show, too, that a faithful historian is
+very largely concerned with the fictions as well as with the facts of
+the past. Legends which have no firm historical basis are often of the
+highest historical value as reflecting the moral sentiments of their
+time. Nor do they merely reflect them. In some periods they contribute
+perhaps more than any other influence to mould and colour them and to
+give them an enduring strength. The facts of history have been largely
+governed by its fictions. Great events often acquire their full power
+over the human mind only when they have passed through the
+transfiguring medium of the imagination, and men as they were supposed
+to be have even sometimes exercised a wider influence than men as they
+actually were. Ideals ultimately rule the world, and each before it
+loses its ascendancy bequeaths some moral truth as an abiding legacy
+to the human race.
+
+
+
+
+THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY
+
+
+When, shortly after I had accepted the honourable task which I am
+endeavouring to fulfil to-night, I received from your Secretary a
+report of the annual proceedings of the Birmingham and Midland
+Institute,--when I observed the immense range and variety of subjects
+included within your programme, illustrating so strikingly the intense
+intellectual activity of this great town,--my first feeling was one of
+some bewilderment and dismay. What, I asked myself, could I say that
+would be of much real value, addressing an unknown audience, and
+relating to fields of knowledge so vast, so multifarious, and in many
+of their parts so far beyond the range of my own studies? On
+reflection, however, it appeared to me that in this, as in most other
+cases, the proverb was a wise one which bids the cobbler stick to his
+last, and that a writer who, during many years of his life, has been
+engaged in the study of English history could hardly do better than
+devote the time at his disposal to-night to a few reflections on the
+political value of history, and on the branches and methods of
+historical study that are most fitted to form a sound political
+judgment.
+
+Is history a study of real use in practical, and especially in
+political, life? The question, as you know, has been by no means
+always answered in the same way. In its earlier stages history was
+regarded chiefly as a form of poetry recording the more dramatic
+actions of kings, warriors, and statesmen. Homer and the early
+ballads are indeed the first historians of their countries, and long
+after Homer one of the most illustrious of the critics of antiquity
+described history as merely 'poetry free from the incumbrance of
+verse.' The portraits that adorned it gave some insight into human
+character; it breathed noble sentiments, rewarded and stimulated noble
+actions, and kindled by its strong appeals to the imagination high
+patriotic feeling; but its end was rather to paint than to guide, to
+consecrate a noble past than to furnish a key for the future; and the
+artist in selecting his facts looked mainly for those which could
+throw the richest colour upon his canvas. Most experience was in his
+eyes (to adopt an image of Coleridge) like the stern light of a ship,
+which illuminates only the path we have already traversed; and a large
+proportion of the subjects which are most significant as illustrating
+the true welfare and development of nations were deliberately rejected
+as below the dignity of history. The old conception of history can
+hardly be better illustrated than in the words of Savage Landor. 'Show
+me,' he makes one of his heroes say, 'how great projects were
+executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Show
+me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend
+to them in reverence.... Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as
+religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and measures in the
+market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the light they
+love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful throne,
+and at the sides of her Eloquence and War.'[1]
+
+It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that a very different
+conception of history grew up. Historians then came to believe that
+their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem;
+to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth,
+prosperity, and adversity. The history of morals, of industry, of
+intellect, and of art; the changes that take place in manners or
+beliefs; the dominant ideas that prevailed in successive periods; the
+rise, fall, and modification of political constitutions; in a word,
+all the conditions of national well-being became the subjects of their
+works. They sought rather to write a history of peoples than a history
+of kings. They looked specially in history for the chain of causes and
+effects. They undertook to study in the past the physiology of
+nations, and hoped by applying the experimental method on a large
+scale to deduce some lessons of real value about the conditions on
+which the well-being of society mainly depends.
+
+How far have they succeeded in their attempt, and furnished us with a
+real compass for political guidance? Let me in the first place frankly
+express my own belief that to many readers of history the study is not
+only useless, but even positively misleading. An unintelligent, a
+superficial, a pedantic or an inaccurate use of history is the source
+of very many errors in practical judgment. Human affairs are so
+infinitely complex that it is vain to expect that they will ever
+exactly reproduce themselves, or that any study of the past can enable
+us to predict the future with the minuteness and the completeness that
+can be attained in the exact sciences. Nor will any wise man judge the
+merits of existing institutions solely on historic grounds. Do not
+persuade yourself that any institution, however great may be its
+antiquity, however transcendent may have been its uses in a remote
+past, can permanently justify its existence, unless it can be shown
+to exercise a really beneficial influence over our own society and our
+own age. It is equally true that no institution which is exercising
+such a beneficial influence should be condemned, because it can be
+shown from history that under other conditions and in other times its
+influence was rather for evil than for good.
+
+These propositions may seem like truisms; yet how often do we hear a
+kind of reasoning that is inconsistent with them! How often, for
+example, in the discussions on the Continent on the advantages and
+disadvantages of monastic institutions has the chief stress of the
+argument been laid upon the great benefits which those institutions
+produced in ages that were utterly different from our own,--in the
+dark period of the barbarian invasions, when they were the only
+refuges of a pacific civilisation, the only libraries, the only
+schools, the only centres of art, the only refuge for gentle and
+intellectual natures; the chief barrier against violence and rapine;
+the chief promoters of agriculture and industry! How often in
+discussions on the merits and demerits of an Established Church in
+England have we heard arguments drawn from the hostility which the
+Church of England showed towards English liberty in the time of the
+Stuarts; although it is abundantly evident that the dangers of a royal
+despotism, which were then so serious, have utterly disappeared, and
+that the political action of the Church of England at that period was
+mainly governed by a doctrine of the Divine right of kings, and of the
+duty of passive obedience, which is now as dead as the old belief that
+the king's touch could cure scrofula! How often have the champions of
+modern democracy appealed in support of their views to the glories of
+the democracies of ancient Greece, without ever reminding their
+hearers that these small municipal republics rested on the basis of
+slavery, and that the bulk of those who would exercise the chief
+controlling influence over affairs in a pure democracy of the modern
+type were absolutely excluded from political power! How often in
+discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of Home Rule in
+Ireland do we find arguments drawn from the merits or demerits of the
+Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century, with a complete
+forgetfulness of the fact that this Parliament consisted exclusively
+of a Protestant gentry; that it represented in the highest degree the
+property of the country, and the classes who are most closely attached
+to English rule; that it was constituted in such a manner that the
+English Government could exercise a complete control over its
+deliberations, and that for good or for ill it was utterly unlike any
+body that could now be constituted in Ireland!
+
+Or again, to turn to another field: it is quite certain that every age
+has special dangers to guard against, and that as time moves on these
+dangers not only change, but are sometimes even reversed. There have
+been periods in English history when the great dangers to be
+encountered sprang from the excessive and encroaching power of a
+monarchy or of an aristocracy. The battle to be then fought was for
+the free exercise of religious worship and expression of religious
+opinion, for a free parliament, for a free press, for a free platform,
+for an independent jury-box. All the best patriotism, all the most
+heroic self-sacrifice of the nation, was thrown into defence of these
+causes; and the wisest statesmen of the time made it the main object
+of their legislation to protect and consolidate them.
+
+These things are now as valuable as they ever were, but no reasonable
+man will maintain that they are in the smallest danger. The battles of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been definitely won. A
+kind of language which at one period of English history implied the
+noblest heroism is now the idlest and cheapest of clap-trap. The
+sycophant and the self-seeker bow before quite other idols than of
+old. The dangers of the time come from other quarters; other
+tendencies prevail, other tasks remain to be accomplished; and a
+public man who in framing his course followed blindly in the steps of
+the heroes or reformers of the past would be like a mariner who set
+his sails to the winds of yesterday.
+
+It is difficult, I think, to doubt that the judgments of all of us are
+more or less affected by causes of this kind. It is, I imagine, true
+of the great majority of educated men that their first political
+impression or bias is formed much less by the events of their own time
+than by childish recollections of the more dramatic conflicts of the
+past. We are Cavaliers or Roundheads before we are Conservatives or
+Liberals; and although we gradually learn to realise how profoundly
+the condition of affairs and the balance of forces have altered, yet
+no wise man can doubt the power which the first bias of the
+imagination exercises in very many cases through a whole life.
+Language which grew out of bygone conflicts continues to be used long
+after those conflicts and their causes have ended; but that which was
+once a very genuine voice comes at last to be little more than an
+insincere echo.
+
+The best corrective for this kind of evil is a really intelligent
+study of history. One of the first tasks that every sincere student
+should set before himself is to endeavour to understand what is the
+dominant idea or characteristic of the period with which he is
+occupied; what forces chiefly ruled it, what forces were then rising
+into a dangerous ascendancy, and what forces were on the decline; what
+illusions, what exaggerations, what false hopes and unworthy
+influences chiefly prevailed. It is only when studied in this spirit
+that the true significance of history is disclosed, and the same
+method which furnishes a key to the past forms also an admirable
+discipline for the judgment of the present. He who has learnt to
+understand the true character and tendencies of many succeeding ages
+is not likely to go very far wrong in estimating his own.
+
+Another branch of history which I would especially commend to the
+attention of all political students is the history of Institutions. In
+the constantly fluctuating conditions of human life no institution
+ever remained for a long period unaltered. Sometimes with changed
+beliefs and changed conditions institutions lose all their original
+utility. They become simply useless, obstructive, and corrupt; and
+though by mere passive resistance they may continue to exist long
+after they have ceased to serve any good purpose, they will at last be
+undermined by their own abuses. Other institutions, on the other hand,
+show the true characteristic of vitality--the power of adapting
+themselves to changed conditions and new utilities. Few things in
+history are more interesting and more instructive than a careful study
+of these transformations. Sometimes the original objects almost wholly
+disappear, and utilities which were either never contemplated by the
+founders or were only regarded as of purely secondary importance take
+the first place on the scene. The old plan and symmetry almost
+disappear as the institution is modified now in this direction and now
+in that to meet some pressing want. The first architects, if they
+could rise from the dead, would scarcely recognise their
+creation--would perhaps look on it with horror. The indirect
+advantages of an institution are sometimes greater than its direct
+ones; and institutions are often more valuable on account of the evils
+they avert than on account of the positive advantages they produce.
+Not unfrequently in their later and transformed condition they
+exercise wider and greater influence than when they were originally
+established; for the strength derived from the long traditions of the
+past and from the habits that are formed around anything that is
+deeply rooted in the national life gives them a vastly increased
+importance.
+
+There is probably no better test of the political genius of a nation
+than the power which it possesses of adapting old institutions to new
+wants; and it is, I think, in this skill and in this disposition that
+the political pre-eminence of the English people has been most
+conspicuously shown. It is difficult to overrate its importance. It is
+the institutions of a country that chiefly maintain the sense of its
+organic unity, its essential connection with its past. By their
+continuous existence they bind together as by a living chain the past
+with the present, the living with the dead.
+
+Few greater calamities can befall a nation than to cut herself off, as
+France did in her great Revolution, from all vital connection with her
+own past. This is one of the chief lessons you will learn from
+Burke--the greatest and truest of all our political teachers. Bacon
+expressed in an admirable sentence the best spirit of English politics
+when he urged that 'men in their innovations should follow the example
+of Time itself, which indeed innovated greatly, but quietly, and by
+degrees scarcely to be perceived.'
+
+There is a third department of history which appears to me especially
+valuable to political students. It is the history of those vast
+Revolutions for good or for ill which seem to have transformed the
+characters or permanently changed the fortunes of nations, either by a
+sudden and violent shock or by the slow process of gradual renovation.
+You will find on this subject, in our country, two great and opposite
+exaggerations. There is a school of writers, of which Buckle is an
+admirable representative, who are so struck by the long chain of
+causes, extending over many centuries, that preceded and prepared
+Revolutions, that they teach a kind of historic fatalism, reducing
+almost to nothing the action of Individualities; and there is another
+school, which is specially represented by Carlyle, who reduce all
+history into biographies, into the action of a few great men upon
+their kind.
+
+The one class of writers will tell you with great truth that the Roman
+Republic was not destroyed by Cæsar, but by the long train of
+influences that made the career of Cæsar a possibility. They will show
+how influences working through many generations had sapped the
+foundations of the Republic--how the beliefs and habits on which it
+once rested had passed away--how its institutions no longer
+corresponded with the prevailing wants and ideas--how a form of
+government which had proved excellently adapted for a restricted
+dominion failed when the Roman eagles flew triumphantly over the whole
+civilised world, and how in this manner the strongest tendencies of
+the time were preparing the downfall of the Republic, and the
+establishment of a great empire upon its ruins. They will show how the
+intellectual influences of the Renaissance, the invention of printing,
+and a crowd of other causes, many of them at first sight very remote
+from theological controversies, had in the sixteenth century so
+shaken the power of the Roman Catholic Church, that the way was
+prepared for the Reformation, and it became possible for Luther and
+Calvin to succeed, where Wyckliffe and Huss had failed. They will show
+how profoundly our theological beliefs are affected by our general
+conception of the system of the universe, and how inevitably, as
+Science changes the latter, the former will undergo a corresponding
+process of modification. Creeds that are no longer in harmony with the
+general spirit of the time may long continue, but a new spirit will be
+breathed into the old forms. Those portions which are most discordant
+with our fresh knowledge will be neglected or attenuated. Although
+they may not be openly discarded, they will cease to be realised or
+vitally operative.
+
+In the sphere of politics a similar law prevails, and the fate of
+nations largely depends upon forces quite different from those on
+which the mere political historian concentrates his attention. The
+growth of military or industrial habits; the elevation or depression
+of different classes; the changes that take place in the distribution
+of wealth; inventions or discoveries that alter the course or
+character of industry or commerce, or reverse the relative advantages
+of different nations in the competitions of life; the increase and,
+still more, the diffusion of knowledge; the many influences that
+affect convictions, habits and ideals, that raise, or lower, or modify
+the moral tone and type--all these things concur in shaping the
+destinies of nations. Legislation is only really successful when it is
+in harmony with the general spirit of the age. Laws and statesmen for
+the most part indicate and ratify, but do not create. They are like
+the hands of the watch, which move obedient to the hidden machinery
+behind.
+
+In all this kind of speculation there is, I believe, great truth, and
+it opens out fields of inquiry that are of the utmost interest and
+importance. I have, however, long thought that it has been pushed by
+some modern writers to extravagant exaggeration. As you well know,
+there is another aspect of history, which, long before Carlyle, was
+enforced by some of the ablest and most independent intellects of
+Christendom. Pascal tells us that if Cleopatra's nose had been
+shorter, the whole face of the world might have been changed, and
+Voltaire is never tired of dwelling on the small springs on which the
+greatest events of history turn. Frederick the Great, who was probably
+the keenest practical intellect of his age, constantly insisted on the
+same view. In the vast field of politics, he maintained, casual events
+which no human sagacity can predict play by far the largest part. We
+are in most cases groping our way blindly in the dark. Occasionally,
+when favourable circumstances occur, there is a gleam of light of
+which the skilful avail themselves. All the rest is uncertainty. The
+world is mainly governed by a multitude of secondary, obscure, or
+impenetrable causes. It is a game of chance in which the most skilful
+may lose like the most ignorant. 'The older one becomes the more
+clearly one sees that King Hazard fashions three-fourths of the events
+in this miserable world.'
+
+My own view of this question is that though there are certain streams
+of tendency, though there is a certain steady and orderly evolution
+that it is impossible in the long run to resist, yet individual action
+and even mere accident have borne a very great part in modifying the
+direction of history. It is with History as with the general laws of
+Nature. We can none of us escape the all-pervading force of
+gravitation, or the influence of the climate under which we live, or
+the succession of the seasons, or the laws of growth and of decay; yet
+man is not a mere passive weed drifting helplessly upon the sea of
+life, and human wisdom and human folly can do and have done much to
+modify the conditions of his being.
+
+It is quite true that religions depend largely for their continued
+vitality upon the knowledge and intellectual atmosphere of their time;
+but there are periods when the human mind is in such a state of
+pliancy that a small pressure can give it a bent which will last for
+generations. If Mohammed had been killed in one of the first
+skirmishes of his career, I know no reason for believing that a great
+monotheistic religion would have arisen in Arabia, capable of moulding
+for more than twelve hundred years not only the beliefs, laws, and
+governments, but also the inmost moral and mental character of a vast
+section of the human race. Gibbon was probably right in his conjecture
+that if Charles Martel had been defeated at the famous battle near
+Tours, the creed of Islam would have overspread a great part of what
+is now Christian Europe, and in that case it might have ruled over it
+for centuries. No one can follow the history of the conversion of the
+barbarians to Christianity without perceiving how often a religion has
+been imposed in the first instance by the mere will of the ruler,
+which gradually took such root that it became far too strong for any
+political power to destroy. Persecution cannot annihilate a creed
+which is firmly established, or maintain a creed which has been
+thoroughly undermined, but there are intermediate stages in which its
+influence on national beliefs has been enormously great. Even at the
+Reformation, though more general causes were of capital importance,
+political events had a very large part in defining the frontier line
+between the rival creeds, and the divisions so created have for the
+most part endured.
+
+In secular politics numerous instances of the same kind will occur to
+every thoughtful reader of history. If, as might easily have happened,
+Hannibal after the battle of Cannae had taken and burned Rome, and
+transferred the supremacy of the world to a maritime commercial State
+upon the Mediterranean; if, instead of the Regency, Louis XV. and
+Louis XVI., France had passed during the eighteenth century under
+sovereigns of the stamp of the elder branch of the House of Orange or
+of Henry IV., or of the Great Elector, or of Frederick the Great; if,
+at the French Revolution, the supreme military genius had been
+connected with the character of Washington rather than with the
+character of Napoleon--who can doubt that the course of European
+history would have been vastly changed? The causes that made
+constitutional liberty succeed in England, while it failed in other
+countries where its prospects seemed once at least as promising, are
+many and complex; but no careful student of English history will doubt
+the prominence among them of the accidental fact that James II., by
+embracing Catholicism, had thrown the Church feeling at a very
+critical moment into opposition to the monarchical feeling, and that
+in the last days of Anne, when the question of the succession was
+trembling most doubtfully in the balance, his son refused to conform
+to the Anglican creed.
+
+Laws are no doubt in a great degree inoperative when they do not
+spring from and represent the opinion of the nation, but they have in
+their turn a great power of consolidating, deepening, and directing
+opinion. When some important progress has been attained, and with the
+support of public opinion has been embodied in a law, that law will do
+much to prevent the natural reflux of the wave. It becomes a kind of
+moral landmark, a powerful educating influence, and by giving what had
+been achieved the sanction of legality, it contributes largely to its
+permanence. Roman law undoubtedly played a great part in European
+history long after all the conditions in which it was first enacted
+had passed away, and the legislator who can determine in any country
+the system of national education, or the succession of property, will
+do much to influence the opinions and social types of many succeeding
+generations.
+
+The point, however, on which I would here especially insist is that
+there has scarcely been a great revolution in the world which might
+not at some stage of its progress have been either averted, or
+materially modified, or at least greatly postponed, by wise
+statesmanship and timely compromise. Take, for example, the American
+Revolution, which destroyed the political unity of the English race.
+You will often hear this event treated as if it were simply due to the
+wanton tyranny of an English Government, which desired to reduce its
+colonies to servitude by taxing them without their consent. But if you
+will look closely into the history of that time--and there is no
+history which is more instructive--you will find that this is a gross
+misrepresentation. What happened was essentially this. England, under
+the guidance of the elder Pitt, had been waging a great and most
+successful war, which left her with an enormously extended Empire, but
+also with an addition of more than seventy millions to her National
+Debt. That debt was now nearly one hundred and forty millions, and
+England was reeling under the taxation it required. The war had been
+waged largely in America, and its most brilliant result was the
+conquest of Canada, by which the old American colonies had benefited
+more than any other part of the Empire, for the expulsion of the
+French from North America put an end to the one great danger which
+hung over them. It was, however, extremely probable that if France
+ever regained her strength, one of her first objects would be to
+recover her dominion in America.
+
+Under these circumstances the English Government concluded that it was
+impossible that England alone, overburdened as she was by taxation,
+could undertake the military defence of her greatly extended Empire.
+Their object, therefore, was to create subsidiary armies for its
+defence. Ireland already raised by the vote of the Irish Parliament,
+and out of exclusively Irish resources, an army consisting of from
+twelve to fifteen thousand men, most of whom were available for the
+general purposes of the Empire. In India, under a despotic system, a
+separate army was maintained for the protection of India. It was the
+strong belief of the English Government that a third army should be
+maintained in America for the defence of the American colonies and of
+the neighbouring islands, and that it was just and reasonable that
+America should bear some part of the expense of her own defence. She
+was charged with no part of the interest of the National Debt; she
+paid nothing towards the cost of the navy which protected her coast;
+she was the most lightly taxed and the most prosperous portion of the
+Empire; she was the part which had benefited most by the late war, and
+she was the part which was most likely to be menaced if the war was
+renewed. Under these circumstances Grenville determined that a small
+army of ten thousand men should be kept in America, under the distinct
+promise that it was never to serve beyond that country and the West
+Indian Isles, and he asked America to contribute 100,000_l._ a year,
+or about a third part of its expense.
+
+But here the difficulty arose. The Irish army was maintained by the
+vote of the Irish Parliament; but there was no single parliament
+representing the American colonies, and it soon became evident that it
+was impossible to induce thirteen State legislatures to agree upon any
+scheme for supporting an army in America. Under these circumstances
+Grenville in an ill-omened moment resolved to revive a dormant power
+which existed in the Constitution, and levy this new war-tax by
+Imperial taxation. He at the same time guaranteed the colonists that
+the proceeds of this tax should be expended solely in America; he
+intimated to them in the clearest way that if they would meet his
+wishes by themselves providing the necessary sum, he would be
+abundantly satisfied, and he delayed the enforcement of the measure
+for a year in order to give them ample time for doing so.
+
+Such and so small was the original cause of difference between England
+and her colonies. Who can fail to see that it was a difference
+abundantly susceptible of compromise, and that a wise and moderate
+statesmanship might easily have averted the catastrophe? There are few
+sadder and few more instructive pages in history than those which show
+how mistake after mistake was committed, till the rift which was once
+so small widened and deepened; till the two sections of the English
+race were thrown into an irreconcilable antagonism, and the fair
+vision of an United Empire in the East and in the West came for ever
+to an end.
+
+Or glance for a moment at the French Revolution. It is a favourite
+task of historians to trace through the preceding generations the long
+train of causes that made the transformation of French institutions
+absolutely inevitable; but it is not so often remembered that when the
+States-General met in 1789 by far the larger part of the benefits of
+the Revolution could have been attained without difficulty, without
+convulsion, and by general consent. The nobles and clergy had pledged
+themselves to surrender their feudal privileges and their privileges
+in taxation; a reforming king was on the throne, and a reforming
+minister was at his side. If the spirit of moderation had then
+prevailed, the inevitable transformation might probably have been made
+without the effusion of a drop of blood. Jefferson was at this time
+the Minister of the United States in Paris. As an old republican he
+knew well the conditions of free governments, and among the
+politicians of his own country he represented the democratic section.
+I know few words in history more pathetic than those in which he
+described the situation. 'I was much acquainted,' he writes, 'with the
+leading patriots of the Assembly. Being from a country which had
+successfully passed through a similar reformation, they were disposed
+to my acquaintance, and had some confidence in me. I urged most
+strenuously an immediate compromise to secure what the Government were
+now ready to yield.... It was well understood that the King would
+grant at this time (1) freedom of the person by Habeas Corpus; (2)
+freedom of conscience; (3) freedom of the press; (4) trial by jury;
+(5) a representative legislature; (6) annual meetings; (7) the
+origination of laws; (8) the exclusive right of taxation and
+appropriation; and (9) the responsibility of Ministers; and with the
+exercise of these powers they could obtain in future whatever might be
+further necessary to improve and preserve their constitution. They
+thought otherwise,' continued Jefferson; 'and events have proved their
+lamentable error; for after thirty years of war, foreign and domestic,
+the loss of millions of lives, the prostration of private happiness,
+and the foreign subjugation of their own country for a time, they have
+obtained no more, nor even that securely.'[2]
+
+Let me, in concluding these observations, sum up in a few words some
+other advantages which you may derive from history. It is, I think,
+one of the best schools for that kind of reasoning which is most
+useful in practical life. It teaches men to weigh conflicting
+probabilities, to estimate degrees of evidence, to form a sound
+judgment of the value of authorities. Reasoning is taught by actual
+practice much more than by any _a priori_ methods. Many good
+judges--and I own I am inclined to agree with them--doubt much whether
+a study of formal logic ever yet made a good reasoner. Mathematics are
+no doubt invaluable in this respect, but they only deal with
+demonstrations; and it has often been observed how many excellent
+mathematicians are somewhat peculiarly destitute of the power of
+measuring degrees of probability. But history is largely concerned
+with the kind of probabilities on which the conduct of life mainly
+depends. There is one hint about historical reasoning which I think
+may not be unworthy of your notice. When studying some great
+historical controversy, place yourselves by an effort of the
+imagination alternately on each side of the battle; try to realise as
+fully as you can the point of view of the best men on either side, and
+then draw up upon paper the arguments of each in the strongest form
+you can give them. You will find that few practices do more to
+elucidate the past, or form a better mental discipline.
+
+History, again, greatly expands our horizon and enlarges our
+experience by bringing us in direct contact with men of many times and
+countries. It gives young men something of the experience of old men,
+and untravelled men something of the experience of travelled ones. A
+great source of error in our judgment of men is that we do not make
+sufficient allowance for the difference of types. The essentials of
+right and wrong no doubt continue the same, but if you look carefully
+into history you will find that the special stress which is attached
+to particular virtues is constantly changing. Sometimes it is the
+civic virtues, sometimes the religious virtues, sometimes the
+industrial virtues, sometimes the love of truth, sometimes the more
+amiable dispositions, that are most valued, and occupy the foremost
+place in the moral type. The men of each age must be judged by the
+ideal of their own age and country, and not by the ideal of ours. Men
+look at life in very different aspects, and they differ greatly in
+their ways of reasoning, in the qualities they admire, in the aims
+which they chiefly prize. In few things do they differ more than in
+their capacity for self-government; in the kinds of liberty they
+especially value; in their love or dislike of government guidance or
+control.
+
+The power of realising and understanding types of character very
+different from our own is not, I think, an English quality, and a
+great many of our mistakes in governing other nations come from this
+deficiency. Some thirty or forty years ago especially it was the
+custom of English statesmen to write and speak as if the salvation of
+every nation depended mainly upon its adoption of a miniature copy of
+the British Constitution. Now, if there is a lesson which history
+teaches clearly, it is that the same institutions are not fitted for
+all nations, and that what in one nation may prove perfectly
+successful, will in another be supremely disastrous. The habits and
+traditions of a nation; the peculiar bent of its character and
+intellect; the degree in which self-control, respect for law, the
+spirit of compromise, and disinterested public spirit are diffused
+through the people; the relations of classes, and the divisions of
+property, are all considerations of capital importance. It is a great
+error, both in history and in practical politics, to attach too much
+value to a political machine. The essential consideration is by what
+men and in what spirit that machine is likely to be worked. Few
+Constitutions contain more theoretical anomalies, and even
+absurdities, than that under which England has attained to such an
+unexampled height of political prosperity; while a servile imitation
+of some of the most skilfully-devised Constitutions in Europe has not
+saved some of the South American States from long courses of anarchy,
+bankruptcy, and revolution.
+
+These are some of the political lessons that may be drawn from
+history. Permit me, in conclusion, to say that its most precious
+lessons are moral ones. It expands the range of our vision, and
+teaches us in judging the true interests of nations to look beyond the
+immediate future. Few good judges will deny that this habit is now
+much wanted. The immensely increased prominence in political life of
+ephemeral influences, and especially of the influence of a daily
+press; the immense multiplication of elections, which intensifies
+party conflicts, all tend to concentrate our thoughts more and more
+upon an immediate issue. They narrow the range of our vision, and make
+us somewhat insensible to distant consequences and remote
+contingencies. It is not easy, in the heat and passion of modern
+political life, to look beyond a parliament or an election, beyond the
+interest of a party or the triumph of an hour. Yet nothing is more
+certain than that the ultimate, distant, and perhaps indirect
+consequences of political measures are often far more important than
+their immediate fruits, and that in the prosperity of nations a large
+amount of continuity in politics and the gradual formation of
+political habits are of transcendent importance. History is never more
+valuable than when it enables us, standing as on a height, to look
+beyond the smoke and turmoil of our petty quarrels, and to detect in
+the slow developments of the past the great permanent forces that are
+steadily bearing nations onwards to improvement or decay.
+
+The strongest of these forces are the moral ones. Mistakes in
+statesmanship, military triumphs or disasters, no doubt affect
+materially the prosperity of nations, but their permanent political
+well-being is essentially the outcome of their moral state. Its
+foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in
+a high standard of moral worth and of public spirit; in simple habits,
+in courage, uprightness, and self-sacrifice, in a certain soundness
+and moderation of judgment, which springs quite as much from character
+as from intellect. If you would form a wise judgment of the future of
+a nation, observe carefully whether these qualities are increasing or
+decaying. Observe especially what qualities count for most in public
+life. Is character becoming of greater or less importance? Are the men
+who obtain the highest posts in the nation men of whom in private life
+and irrespective of party competent judges speak with genuine respect?
+Are they men of sincere convictions, sound judgment, consistent lives,
+indisputable integrity, or are they men who have won their positions
+by the arts of a demagogue or an intriguer; men of nimble tongues and
+not earnest beliefs--skilful, above all things, in spreading their
+sails to each passing breeze of popularity? Such considerations as
+these are apt to be forgotten in the fierce excitement of a party
+contest; but if history has any meaning, it is such considerations
+that affect most vitally the permanent well-being of communities, and
+it is by observing this moral current that you can best cast the
+horoscope of a nation.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Pericles and Aspasia._
+
+[2] Jefferson's _Memoirs_, i. 80.
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH
+
+
+I have been asked on the present occasion to deliver a short address
+which might serve as an introduction to the course of lectures and
+conferences on the history and resources of the different portions of
+the Empire which are to take place in the Imperial Institute. In
+attempting to discharge this task my first reflection is one which the
+very existence of the Institute can hardly fail to suggest to anyone
+with any knowledge of recent history. It is the great revolution of
+opinion which has taken place in England within the last few years
+about the real value to her both of her colonies and of her Indian
+Empire. Not many years ago it was a popular doctrine among a large and
+important class of politicians that these vast dominions were not
+merely useless but detrimental to the mother-country, and that it
+should be the end of a wise policy to prepare and facilitate their
+disruption. Bentham, in a pamphlet called 'Emancipate your Colonies,'
+advocated a speedy and complete separation. James Mill, who held a
+high place among these politicians, wrote an article on Colonies for
+the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' which clearly expresses their view.
+Colonies, he contended, are very little calculated to yield any
+advantage whatever to the countries that hold them, and their chief
+influence is to produce and prolong bad government. Why, then, he
+asks, do European nations maintain them? The answer is very
+characteristic, both of the man and of his school. Something, he
+charitably admits, is due to mere ignorance, to mistaken views of
+utility; but the main cause is of another kind. He quotes the saying
+of Sancho Panza, who desired to possess an island in order that he
+might sell its inhabitants as slaves, and put the money in his pocket;
+and he maintains that the chief cause of our Colonial Empire is the
+selfish interest of the governing few who valued colonies because they
+gave them places and enabled them to multiply wars. In more moderate
+and decorous language, Goldwin Smith wrote a book, the object of which
+was to show how desirable it was that this Empire should be gradually
+but steadily reduced to the sweet simplicity of two islands. Similar
+views prevailed very generally in the Manchester school. Cobden
+frequently expressed them. The question of the colonies, he
+maintained, was mainly a question of pounds, shillings, and pence; he
+proved, as he imagined, by many figures that they were a very bad
+bargain; and he expressed his confident hope that one of the results
+of free trade would be 'gradually and imperceptibly to loosen the
+bands which unite our colonies to us.' About our Indian Empire he
+entertained much stronger opinions. He described it as a calamity and
+a curse to the people of England. He looked on it, in his own words,
+'with an eye of despair,' and declared that it was destroying and
+demoralising the national character. It was the belief of his school
+of politicians that all the nations of the world would speedily follow
+the example of England and adopt a policy of perfect free trade; that
+when all men were able to sell their industries with equal facility in
+all countries, it would become a matter of little consequence to them
+under what flag they lived, and that this complete commercial
+assimilation would soon be followed by a general movement for
+disarming, which would put an end to all fear of future war.
+
+Many politicians who certainly cannot be classified with the
+Manchester school held views tending in some degree in the same
+direction. Even Sir Cornewall Lewis in his treatise on the 'Government
+of Dependencies,' which was published in 1841, summed up the
+advantages and disadvantages of a great empire in a manner that gives
+the impression that in his own judgment the disadvantages on the whole
+predominated. In the Autobiography of that great writer and excellent
+public servant Sir Henry Taylor, who for many years exercised much
+influence in the Colonial Office, we have a curious picture of the
+opinions which were held on this subject about thirty years ago, both
+by Sir Henry Taylor himself and by Sir Frederick Rogers, who was at
+this time permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. They
+both agreed that all our North American colonies were a kind of
+_damnosa hereditas_, and that it was in a high degree desirable that
+they should be amicably separated from Great Britain. Sir Henry Taylor
+wrote his views on the subject with great frankness to the Duke of
+Newcastle, who was then Secretary of State. 'When your Grace and the
+Prince of Wales,' he said, 'were employing yourselves so successfully
+in conciliating the colonists, I thought that you were drawing closer
+ties which might better be slackened, if there were any chance of
+their slipping away altogether. I think that a policy which has regard
+to a not very far off future should prepare facilities and
+propensities for separation.... In my estimation the worst consequence
+of the late dispute with the United States has been that of involving
+this country and its North American provinces in closer relations and
+a common cause.'[3] 'I have always believed,' wrote Sir Frederick
+Rogers in 1885--'and the belief has so confirmed and consolidated
+itself, that I can hardly realise the possibility of anyone seriously
+thinking the contrary--that the destiny of our colonies is
+independence; and that in this point of view the function of the
+Colonial Office is to secure that our connection while it lasts shall
+be as profitable to both parties, and our separation when it comes as
+amicable as possible.'
+
+I do not believe that opinions of this kind, though they were held by
+a large and powerful section of English politicians, ever penetrated
+very deeply into the English nation. One of the causes of Mr. Cobden's
+'despair' was his conviction that the English people would never be
+persuaded to surrender India except at the close of a disastrous and
+exhausting war, and in his day the policy of national surrender was
+certainly not that of the statesmen who led either party in
+Parliament. No one would attribute it to Mr. Disraeli, in whose long
+political life the note of Imperialism was perhaps that which sounded
+with the clearest ring, and it was quite as repugnant to Lord
+Palmerston and Lord John Russell. In an admirable speech which was
+delivered in the beginning of 1850, Lord John Russell disclaimed all
+sympathy with it, and I can well remember the indignation with which
+in his latter days he was accustomed to speak of the views on the
+subject which were then frequently expressed. 'When I was young,' he
+once said to me, 'it was thought the mark of a wise statesman that he
+had turned a small kingdom into a great empire. In my old age it
+appears to be thought the object of a statesman to turn a great
+empire into a small kingdom.'
+
+I do not think that anyone who has watched the current of English
+opinion will doubt that the views of the Manchester school on this
+subject have within the last few years steadily lost ground, and that
+a far warmer and, in my opinion, nobler and more healthy feeling
+towards India and the colonies has grown up. The change may be
+attributed to many causes. In the first place, what Carlyle called
+'The Calico Millennium' has not arrived. The nations have not adopted
+free trade, but nearly all of them, including unfortunately many of
+our own colonies, have raised tariff walls against our trade. The
+Reign of Peace has not come. National antipathies and jealousies play
+about as great a part in human affairs as they ever did, and there are
+certainly not less than three and a half millions, there are probably
+nearly four millions, of men under arms in what are called the peace
+establishments of Europe. It is beginning to be clearly seen that,
+with our vast, redundant, ever-growing population, with our enormous
+manufactures, and our utterly insufficient supply of home-grown food,
+it is a matter of life and death to the nation, and especially to its
+working classes, that there should be secure and extending fields open
+to our goods, and in the present condition of the world we must mainly
+look for these fields within our own Empire. The gigantic dimensions
+that Indian trade has assumed within the last few years, and the
+extraordinary commercial development of some other parts of our
+Empire, have pointed the moral, and it has been made still more
+apparent by the eagerness with which other Powers, and especially
+Germany, have flung themselves into the path of colonisation. In an
+age, too, when all the paths of professional and industrial life in
+our country are crowded to excess, the competitive system has combined
+with our new acquisitions of territory to throw open noble fields of
+employment, enterprise and ambition to poor and struggling talent, and
+India is proving a school of inestimable value for maintaining some of
+the best and most masculine qualities of our race. It is the great
+seed-plot of our military strength; and the problems of Indian
+administration are peculiarly fitted to form men of a kind that is
+much needed among us--men of strong purpose and firm will, and high
+ruling and organising powers, men accustomed to deal with facts rather
+than with words, and to estimate measures by their intrinsic value,
+and not merely by their party advantages, men skilful in judging human
+character under its many types and aspects and disguises.
+
+If again we turn to our great self-governing colonies, we have learnt
+to feel how valuable it is, in an age in which international
+jealousies are so rife, that there should be vast and rapidly growing
+portions of the globe that are not only at peace with us, but at one
+with us; how unspeakably important it is to the future of the world
+that the English race, through the ages that are to come, should cling
+as closely as possible together. As a distinguished statesman who
+lately represented the United States in England[4] has admirably said,
+'If it is not always true that trade follows flag, it is at least true
+that "heart follows flag,"' and the feeling that our fellow-subjects
+in distant parts of the Empire bear to us is very different from the
+feeling even of the most friendly foreign nation. Our great colonies
+have readily undertaken the responsibility of providing for their own
+defence by land, and even in some degree by sea. If the protection of
+their coasts in time of war might become a great strain upon our navy,
+this disadvantage is largely balanced by the importance of distant
+maritime possessions to every nation that desires to maintain an
+efficient fleet; by the immense advantage to a great commercial Power
+of secure harbours and coaling stations scattered over the world. It
+is not difficult to conceive circumstances in which the destruction of
+some of our main industries, occurring, perhaps, in the midst of a
+great war, might make it utterly impossible for our present population
+to live upon British soil, and when the possession of vast territories
+under the British flag, and in the hands of the British race, might
+become a matter of transcendent importance. Think for a moment of the
+colossal, and indeed appalling, proportions which our great towns are
+assuming! Think of all the vice and ignorance and disease, of all the
+sordid abject misery, of all the lawless passions that are festering
+within them! And then consider how precarious are many of the
+conditions of our industrial prosperity, how grave and how numerous
+are the dangers that threaten it both from within and from without.
+Who can reflect seriously on these things without feeling that the day
+may come--perhaps at no distant date--when the question of emigration
+may overshadow all others? To many of us, indeed, it seems one of the
+greatest errors of modern English statesmanship that when the great
+exodus from Ireland took place after the famine, Government took no
+step to aid it, or to direct it to quarters where it would have been
+of real benefit to the Empire. Many good judges think that the
+advantages of such interference in allaying bitter feelings,
+softening a disastrous crisis, and permanently strengthening the
+Empire, might have been well purchased even if they cost as much as
+England has sometimes lost by one comparatively insignificant war or
+by one disastrous strike. In dealing with this question of emigration
+in the future, colonial assistance may be of supreme importance. And
+those who have understood the significance of that memorable incident
+in our recent history--the despatch of Australian troops to fight our
+battles in the Soudan--may perceive that there is at least a
+possibility of a still closer and more beneficent union between
+England and her colonies--a union that would vastly increase the
+strength of both, and by doing so become a great guarantee of peace in
+the world.
+
+It would be a calumny to suppose that the change of feeling I have
+described was solely due to a calculation of interests. Patriotism
+cannot be reduced to a mere question of money, and a nation which has
+grown tired of the responsibilities of empire, and careless of the
+acquisitions of its past and of its greatness in the future, would
+indeed have entered into a period of inevitable decadence. Happily we
+have not yet come to this. I believe the overwhelming majority of the
+people of these islands are convinced that an England reduced to the
+limits which the Manchester school would assign to it would be an
+England shorn of the chief elements of its dignity in the world, and
+that no greater disgrace could befall them than to have sacrificed
+through indifference, or negligence, or faint-heartedness, an Empire
+which has been built up by so much genius and so much heroism in the
+past. Railways and telegraphs and newspapers have brought us into
+closer touch with our distant possessions, have enabled us to realise
+more vividly both their character and their greatness, and have thus
+extended the horizon of our sympathies and interests. The figures of
+illustrious colonial statesmen are becoming familiar to us. Men formed
+in Indian and colonial spheres are becoming more numerous and
+prominent in our own public life. The presence in England of a High
+Commissioner from Canada, and of Agents-General from our other
+colonies, constitutes a real though informal colonial representation,
+and on more than one recent occasion our foreign policy has been
+swayed by colonial pressure. These young democracies, with their vast
+undeveloped resources, their unwearied energies, their great social
+and industrial problems, are beginning to loom largely in the
+imaginations of Europe. They feel, we believe, a just pride in being
+members of a great and ancient Empire, and heirs to the glories of its
+past. We, in our turn, feel a no less just pride in our union with
+those coming nations which are still lit with the hues of sunrise and
+rich in the promise of the future.
+
+It has been suggested to me that I should on the present occasion say
+something about the methods by which this great Empire was built up,
+but it is obvious that in a short address like the present it is only
+possible to touch on so large a subject in the most cursory manner.
+Much is due to our insular position and our command of the sea, which
+gave Englishmen, in the competition of nations, a peculiar power both
+of conquering and holding distant dependencies. Being precluded,
+perhaps quite as much by their position as by their desire, from
+throwing themselves, like most continental nations, into a long course
+of European aggression, they have largely employed their redundant
+energies in exploring, conquering, civilising, and governing distant
+and half-savage lands. They have found, like all other nations, that
+an Empire planted amid the shifting sands of half-civilised and
+anarchical races is compelled for its own security, and as a mere
+matter of police, to extend its borders. The chapter of
+accidents--which has played a larger part in most human affairs than
+many very philosophical enquirers are inclined to admit--has counted
+for something. But, in addition to these things, there are certain
+general characteristics of English policy which have contributed very
+largely to the success of the Empire.
+
+It has been the habit of most nations to regulate colonial governments
+in all their details according to the best metropolitan ideas, and to
+surround them with a network of restrictions. England has in general
+pursued a different course. Partly on system, but partly also, I
+think, from neglect, she has always allowed an unusual latitude to
+local knowledge and to local wishes. She has endeavoured to secure,
+wherever her power extends, life and property, and contract and
+personal freedom, and, in these latter days, religious liberty; but
+for the rest she has meddled very little; she has allowed her
+settlements to develop much as they please, and has given, in practice
+if not in theory, the fullest powers to her governors. It is
+astonishing, in the history of the British Empire, how large a part of
+its greatness is due to the independent action of individual
+adventurers, or groups of emigrants, or commercial companies, almost
+wholly unassisted and uncontrolled by the Government at home. An
+Empire formed by such methods is not likely to exhibit much symmetry
+and unity of plan, but it is certain to be pervaded in an unusual
+degree, in all its parts, by a spirit of enterprise and self-reliance;
+it will probably be peculiarly fertile in men not only of energy but
+of resource, capable of dealing with strange conditions and
+unforeseen exigencies. England in the past periods of her history has,
+on the whole, been singularly successful in adapting her different
+administrations to widely different national circumstances and
+characters, and governments of the most various types have arisen
+under her rule. Nothing in the history of the world is more wonderful
+than that under the flag of these two little islands there should have
+grown up the greatest and most beneficent despotism in the world,
+comprising nearly two hundred and thirty millions of inhabitants under
+direct British rule, and more than fifty millions under British
+protectorates; while at the same time British colonies and settlements
+that are scattered throughout the globe number not less than fifty-six
+distinct subordinate governments.
+
+This system would have been less successful if it had not been for two
+important facts. The original stuff of which our Colonial Empire was
+formed was singularly good. Some of the most important of our colonies
+were founded in the days of religious war, and the early settlers
+consisted largely of religious refugees--a class who are usually
+superior to the average of men in intellectual and industrial
+qualities, and are nearly always greatly superior to them in strength
+of conviction, and in those high moral qualities which play so great a
+part in the well-being of nations. Besides this, in those distant
+days, the difficulties of emigration were so great that they were
+rarely voluntarily encountered except by men of much more than average
+courage, enterprise and resource. These early adventurers were
+certainly often of no saintly type, but they were largely endowed with
+the robuster qualities that are most needed for grappling with new
+circumstances and carving out the empires of the future.
+
+The second fact is the high standard of patriotism and honour which we
+may, I think, truly say has nearly always prevailed among English
+public servants. It is not an easy thing to secure honest and faithful
+administration in remote countries, far from the supervision and
+practical control of the central government. I think we may boast with
+truth that England has attained this end, not indeed perfectly, but at
+least to a greater degree than most other nations. The history of
+Indian and colonial governors has never been written as a whole, but
+it is well worthy of study. In the appointment of these men party has
+always counted for something, and family has counted for something;
+but they have never been the only considerations, and, on the whole, I
+believe it will be found, if we consider the three elements of
+character, capacity and experience, that our Indian and colonial
+governors represent a higher level of ruling qualities than has been
+attained by any line of hereditary sovereigns, or by any line of
+elected presidents. In the period of the foundation of our Indian
+Empire much was done that was violent and rapacious, but the best
+modern research seems to show that the picture which a few years ago
+was generally accepted had been greatly overcharged. The history of
+Warren Hastings and his companions has been recently studied with
+great knowledge and ability, and with the result that the more serious
+opinions on the subject have been considerably modified. Much
+exaggeration undoubtedly grew up in the last century, partly through
+ignorance of Oriental affairs, and partly also through the eloquence
+of Burke. There is no figure in English political history for which I
+at least entertain a greater reverence than Edmund Burke. I believe
+him to have been a man of transparent honesty, as well as of
+transcendent genius; but his politics were too apt to be steeped in
+passion, and he was often carried away by the irresistible force of
+his own imagination and feelings. Misrepresentations were greatly
+consolidated by the Indian History of James Mill, which was for a long
+time the main, and indeed almost the only, source from which
+Englishmen obtained their knowledge of Indian history. It was written,
+as might be expected, with the strongest bias of hostility to the
+English in India, yet I suspect that many superficial readers imagined
+that a history which was so unquestionably dull must be at least
+impartial and philosophical. Unfortunately, Macaulay relied greatly on
+it, and, without having made any serious independent studies on the
+subject, he invested some of its misrepresentations with all the
+splendour of his eloquence. I believe all competent authorities are
+now agreed that his essay on Warren Hastings, though it is one of the
+most brilliant of his writings, is also one of the most seriously
+misleading.
+
+I am not prepared to say that the reaction of opinion produced by the
+new school of Indian historians has not been sometimes carried too
+far, but these writers have certainly dispelled much exaggeration and
+some positive falsehood. They have shown that, although under
+circumstances of extreme difficulty and extraordinary temptation, some
+very bad things were done by Englishmen in India, these things were
+neither as numerous nor as grave as has been alleged.
+
+On the whole, too, it may be truly said that English colonial policy
+in its broad lines has to a remarkable degree avoided grave errors.
+The chief exception is to be found in the series of mistakes which
+produced the American Revolution, and ended in the loss of our chief
+American colonies. Yet even in this instance it is, I believe, coming
+to be perceived that there is much more to be said for the English
+case than the historians of the last generation were apt to imagine.
+In imposing commercial restrictions on the colonies and endeavouring
+to secure for the mother-country the monopoly of their trade, we
+merely acted upon ideas that were then almost universally received,
+and our commercial code was on the whole less illiberal than that of
+other nations. Both Spain and France imposed restrictions on their
+colonies which were far more severe, and the English restrictions were
+at least mitigated by frequent partial relaxations and exceptions, by
+some important monopolies granted in favour of the colonies in the
+English market and by bounties encouraging several branches of
+colonial produce. It is at least certain that under the large measure
+of political liberty granted by the English Government to the English
+colonies their material prosperity, even in the worst period of
+commercial restriction, steadily and rapidly advanced. This has been
+clearly shown by more than one writer on our side of the Atlantic, but
+the subject has never been treated with more exhaustive knowledge and
+more perfect impartiality than by an American writer--Mr. George
+Beer--whose work on the Commercial Policy of England has recently been
+published by Columbia College, in New York. No one will now altogether
+defend Grenville's policy of taxing America by the Imperial
+Parliament, but it ought not to be forgotten that it was expressly
+provided that every farthing of this taxation was to be expended in
+America, and devoted to colonial defence. England had just terminated
+a great war, which, by expelling the French from Canada, had been of
+inestimable advantage to her colonies, but which had left the
+mother-country almost crushed by debt. All that Grenville desired was,
+that the American colonies should provide a portion of the cost of
+their own defence, as our great colonies are doing at the present
+time, and he only resorted to Imperial taxation because he despaired
+of achieving this end by any other means. The step which he took was
+no doubt a false one. As is so often the case in England, it was made
+worse by party changes and by party recriminations, and many later
+mistakes aggravated and embittered the original dispute; but I think
+an impartial reader of this melancholy chapter of English history will
+come to the conclusion that these mistakes were by no means all on one
+side.
+
+It is a story which is certainly not without its lesson to our own
+time. It is very improbable that any future statesman will follow the
+example of George Grenville, and endeavour by Act of Parliament to
+impose taxation on a self-governing colony; but it would be a grave
+error to suppose that the danger of unwise parliamentary interference
+in Indian and colonial affairs has diminished. Great as are the
+advantages of telegraphs and newspapers in the government of the
+Empire, they are not without their drawbacks. Government by telegraph
+is a very dangerous thing, and there is, I fear, an increasing
+tendency to override local knowledge, and to apply English standards
+and methods of government to wholly un-English conditions.
+Ill-considered resolutions of the House of Commons, often passed in
+obedience to some popular fad, and without any real intention of
+carrying them into effect; language used in Parliament which is often
+due to no deeper motive than a desire to win the favour of some class
+of voters in an English constituency, may do as much as serious
+misgovernment to alienate great masses of British subjects beyond the
+sea. All really competent judges are agreed that one of the first
+conditions of successful government in India has been that Indian
+questions have for the most part been kept out of the range of English
+party politics, and that Indian government has been conducted on
+principles essentially different from democratic government at home.
+
+On the whole, however, it is impossible to review the colonial history
+of England without being struck with the many serious dangers that
+might easily have shattered the Empire, which were averted by wise
+statesmanship and timely--or at least not fatally tardy--concession.
+There was the question of the criminal population which we once
+transported to Australia. In the early stage of the colony, when the
+population was very sparse and the need for labour very imperative,
+this was not regarded as in any degree a grievance; but the time came
+when it became a grievance of the gravest kind, and the Imperial power
+had at length the wisdom to abandon it. There was the question of the
+different and hostile religious bodies existing in different portions
+of the Empire, at a time when the monopoly of political power by the
+members of a single Established Church, the exclusive endowment of its
+clergy, and the maintenance of the purely Protestant character of the
+English Government were cherished as religious duties by politicians
+at home. Yet at this very time an established and endowed Roman
+Catholic Church was flourishing in Canada, and there were numerous
+examples throughout the British dominions of the concurrent endowment
+of different forms of religious belief by the State,[5] while in India
+it abstained, with an extreme, and sometimes even an exaggerated,
+scrupulousness, from all measures that could by any possibility offend
+the native religious prejudices. There was the question of
+Slavery--though we were freed from the most difficult part of this
+problem by the secession of America. In addition, however, to its
+moral aspects, it affected most vitally the material prosperity of
+some of our richest colonies; it raised the very dangerous
+constitutional question of the right of the Imperial Parliament to
+interfere with the internal affairs of a self-governing colony, and it
+brought the Home Government into more serious collision with the local
+Governments than any question since the American Revolution. Whatever
+may be thought of the wisdom of the measures by which we abolished
+slavery in our West Indian colonies, no one at least can deny the
+liberality of a Parliament which voted from Imperial resources twenty
+millions for the accomplishment of the work. There was the conflict of
+race and creed which between 1830 and 1840 had brought Canada to
+absolute rebellion, and threatened a complete alienation of Canadian
+feeling from the mother-country. This discontent was effectually
+allayed and dispelled by the union of Upper and Lower Canada under a
+system of constitutional government of the most liberal character,
+which gave the colonists on all subjects of internal legislation a
+legislative independence that was in practice almost complete.
+Considered as a measure of conciliation this has proved one of the
+most successful of the nineteenth century, and in spite of a few
+discordant notes it may be truly said that there are few greater
+contrasts in the present reign than are presented between Canadian
+feeling towards the mother-country when Queen Victoria ascended the
+throne and Canadian feeling at the present hour. There was also the
+great and dangerous task to be accomplished of adapting the system of
+colonial government to the different stages of colonial development.
+There was a time when the colonies were so weak that they depended
+mainly on England for their protection; but, unlike some of the great
+colonising Powers of ancient and modern times, England never drew a
+direct tribute from her colonies, and, in spite of much unwise and
+some unjust legislation, I believe there was never a time when they
+were not on the whole benefited by the connection. Soon, however, the
+colonies grew to the strength and maturity of nationhood, and the
+mother-country speedily recognised the fact, and allowed no unworthy
+or ungenerous fears to restrain her from granting them the fullest
+powers, both of self-government and of federation. It is true that she
+still sends out a governor--usually drawn from the ranks of
+experienced and considerable English public men--to preside over
+colonial affairs. It is true that she retains a right of veto which is
+scarcely ever exercised except to prevent some intercolonial or
+international dispute, some act of violence, or some grave anomaly in
+the legislation of the Empire. It is true that colonial cases may be
+carried, on appeal, to an English tribunal, representing the very
+highest judicial capacity of the mother-country, and free from all
+possibility and suspicion of partiality; but I do not believe that any
+of these light ties are unpopular with any considerable section of the
+colonists. On the other hand, though it would be idle to suppose that
+our great colonies depend largely upon the mother-country, I believe
+that most colonists recognise that there is something in the weight
+and dignity attaching to fellow-membership and fellow-citizenship in
+a great Empire--something in the protection of the greatest navy in
+the world--something in the improved credit which connection with a
+very rich centre undoubtedly gives to colonial finance.
+
+It is the custom of our friends and neighbours on the Continent to
+bestow much scornful remark on the egotism of English policy, which
+attends mainly to the interests of the British Empire, and is not
+ready to make war for an idea and in support of the interests of
+others. I think, if it were necessary, we might fairly defend
+ourselves by showing that in the past we have meddled with the affairs
+of other nations quite as much as is reasonable. For my own part, I
+confess that I distrust greatly these explosions of military
+benevolence. They always begin by killing a great many men. They
+usually end in ways that are not those of a disinterested
+philanthropy. After all, an egotism that mainly confines itself to the
+well-being of about a fifth part of the globe cannot be said to be of
+a very narrow type, and it is essentially by her conduct to her own
+Empire that the part of England in promoting the happiness of mankind
+must be ultimately judged. It is indeed but too true that many of the
+political causes which have played a great part on platforms, in
+parties, and in Parliaments are of such a nature that their full
+attainment would not bring relief to one suffering human heart, or
+staunch one tear of pain, or add in any appreciable degree to the real
+happiness of a single home. But most assuredly Imperial questions are
+not of this order. Remember what India had been for countless ages
+before the establishment of British rule. Think of its endless wars of
+race and creed, its savage oppressions, its fierce anarchies, its
+barbarous customs; and then consider what it is to have established
+for so many years over the vast space from the Himalayas to Cape
+Comorin a reign of perfect peace; to have conferred upon more than two
+hundred and fifty millions of the human race perfect religious
+freedom, perfect security of life, liberty, and property; to have
+planted in the midst of these teeming multitudes a strong central
+government, enlightened by the best knowledge of Western Europe, and
+steadily occupied in preventing famine, alleviating disease,
+extirpating savage customs, multiplying the agencies of civilisation
+and progress. This is the true meaning of that system of government on
+which Mr. Cobden looked with 'an eye of despair.' What work of human
+policy--I would even say what form of human philanthropy--has ever
+contributed more largely to reduce the great sum of human misery and
+to add to the possibilities of human happiness?
+
+And if we turn to the other side of our Empire, although it is quite
+true that our great free colonies are fully capable of shaping their
+destinies for themselves, may we not truly say that these noble
+flowers have sprung from British and from Irish seeds? May we not say
+that the laws, the Constitutions, the habits of thought and character
+that have so largely made them what they are, are mainly of English
+origin? May we not even add that it is in no small part due to their
+place in the British Empire that these vast sections of the globe,
+with their diverse and sometimes jarring interests, have remained at
+perfect peace with us and with each other, and have escaped the curse
+of an exaggerated militarism, which is fast eating like a canker into
+the prosperity of the great nations of Europe?
+
+When responsible government was conceded by the British Government to
+her more important colonies, it was done in the fullest and largest
+measure. Although the mother-country remained burdened with the task
+of defending them she made no reservation securing for herself free
+trade with her colonies or even preferential treatment, and she
+surrendered unconditionally to the local legislatures the waste and
+unoccupied lands which had long been regarded in England as held in
+trust for the benefit of the Empire as a whole. The growing belief
+that the connection with the colonies was likely to be a very
+transitory one, and also the belief that free-trade doctrines were
+likely speedily to prevail, no doubt influenced English statesmen, and
+it is not probable that any of them foresaw that both Canada and
+Australia would speedily make use of their newly acquired power to
+impose heavy duties on English goods. The strongly protectionist
+character which the English colonies assumed at a time when England
+had committed herself to the most extreme free-trade policy tended no
+doubt to separation, and when the English Government adopted the
+policy of withdrawing its garrisons from the colonies, when the North
+American colonies, with the full assent of the mother-country, formed
+themselves into a great federation, and when a movement in the same
+direction sprang up in Australia, it was the opinion of some of the
+most sagacious statesmen and thinkers in England that the time of
+separation was very near.[6]
+
+On the whole, however, these predictions have hitherto been falsified.
+The federation of North America and, at a later period, the federation
+of Australia have been followed by an increased and not a diminished
+disposition on the side of the colonists to draw closer the ties with
+the mother-country, while in England the popular imagination has been
+more and more impressed with the growing magnitude and importance of
+her colonial dominions. The tendency towards great political
+agglomerations based upon an affinity of race, language and creed,
+which has produced the Pan-Slavonic movement and the Pan-Germanic
+movement, and which chiefly made the unity of Italy, has not been
+without its influence in the English-speaking world, and it is felt
+that a close union between its several parts is essential if it is
+fully to maintain its relative position under the new conditions of
+the world. The English-speaking nations comprise the most rapidly
+increasing, the most progressive, the most happily situated nations of
+the earth, and if their power and influence are not wasted by internal
+quarrels their type of civilisation must one day become dominant in
+the world.
+
+Whether their harmony and unity are likely to be attained is one of
+the great problems of the future, but the ideal is one which every
+patriotic Englishman should at least set before him. It is not one
+which can be called an assured destiny, and to many the chances seem
+on the whole against it. Unexpected collisions of interest or passion
+or ambition may at any time mar the prospects, and in great
+democracies largely influenced by demagogues and by an irresponsible
+and anonymous Press there are always powerful agencies that do not
+make for peace. Immediate party interests both at home and in the
+colonies too frequently blind men to distant and ulterior
+consequences, and the many ill-wishers to the British Empire are sure
+to direct their policy largely to its disruption. The natural bond of
+union of a great Empire is economical unity, binding its several parts
+together by a common system of free trade and by a common commercial
+policy towards other Powers. Unfortunately the profoundly different
+policy adopted on these matters in England and her colonies has made
+such a Union almost impracticable, and it is quite possible for the
+English colonies to be united by closer commercial ties with foreign
+countries than with the mother-country. The question of the common
+defence of the Empire and the question of the representation of the
+colonies in Imperial politics are also questions of great difficulty
+and of pressing importance.
+
+Something has been done showing at least a disposition to meet them.
+The concession of preferential duties in favour of England by some of
+our most important colonies, the small subsidies made to the
+maintenance of the British navy, and the far more important military
+assistance given by the colonies to the mother-country in the Egyptian
+and the South African wars are indicative of the feeling of closer
+unity which has grown up between England and her colonies, and in
+addition to the appointment of Agents-General, the introduction of a
+few eminent colonial judges into the Judicial Committee of the Privy
+Council, which is the Supreme Court of Appeal of the Empire, has given
+the colonies some real representation in Imperial affairs. Much more,
+however, in this direction may be done. There have been several
+instances of eminent colonials obtaining seats in the English House of
+Commons to the great advantage of the Empire, but a regular
+representation of the colonies in this assembly may, I think, be
+dismissed as altogether impracticable. The mere distance is a
+sufficient objection, and at least nine-tenths of the business of the
+House of Commons deals with purely English questions depending for
+their wise solution on inherited English habits and on compromises
+with existing institutions, and a large proportion of them are
+problems which have been already dealt with in the colonies on other
+grounds and without any of the complexities of an old country. What
+reason could there be for calling in the colonists to adjudicate,
+perhaps even to turn the balance, on questions relating to English
+education, English licensing laws, English taxation, English
+dispositions of property? The difficulty of distinguishing between
+Imperial and local questions would be insuperable. The division of the
+House into two categories of members with distinct spheres of voting
+power would prove unworkable, and the colonial representatives would
+during most of their time in Parliament have nothing to do. An
+increase in the number of peers drawn from the colonies would be less
+impracticable, but there would be much that is invidious in the
+choice; much danger that the colonial peers living in England would
+get out of touch with the colonies and become an object of envy and
+jealousy; and English lawyers do not think that a large infusion of
+colonial law peers would raise the competence of the Supreme Judicial
+Tribunal of the Empire, which represents at present the highest legal
+talent and attainments in England and deals mainly with English legal
+questions. A Consultative Council, however, consisting of the
+Agents-General and perhaps reinforced by additional colonial
+representatives and dealing exclusively with Imperial questions, does
+not seem wholly impracticable, and many competent judges believe that
+a supreme legal tribunal for dealing with inter-colonial and
+international conflicts might be constructed which would be both more
+efficient and more representative than any that now exists.
+
+It is probable, however, that the true tie that must unite the
+different portions of the Empire must be mainly a moral one. In the
+conditions of modern life no power is likely to maintain long a vast,
+scattered, heterogeneous Empire if the central governing power within
+it has declined; if through want of efficiency, or moral energy, or
+moral purity, it ceases to win the respect of its several parts. It is
+no less true that the cohesion can only be permanently maintained by
+the wide diffusion of a larger and Imperial patriotism, pervading the
+whole like a vital principle; binding men by the ties of pride and of
+affection to the great Empire to which they belong, and subordinating
+to its maintenance local and party and class interests. If this spirit
+dies out, the movement of disintegration is sure to begin. No
+political machinery, no utilitarian calculation, will in the long run
+be powerful enough to arrest it.
+
+What may be the future place of these islands in the government of the
+world no human being can foretell. Nations, as history but too plainly
+shows, have their periods of decay as well as their periods of growth.
+The balance of power in the world is constantly shifting. Maxims and
+influences very different from those which made England what she is
+are in the ascendant, and the clouds upon the horizon are neither few
+nor slight. But, whatever fate may be in store for these islands, and
+for the political unity we so justly prize, we may at least
+confidently predict that no revolution in human affairs can now
+destroy the future ascendancy of the English language and of the
+Imperial race. Whatever misfortunes, whatever humiliations the future
+may reserve to us, they cannot deprive England of the glory of having
+created this mighty Empire.
+
+    Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power.
+    But what has been, has been--and we have had our hour.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Autobiography_, ii. pp. 234, 235.
+
+[4] Mr. Bayard.
+
+[5] See the enumeration of these endowments in Gladstone's _State and
+Church_, Ch. IX.
+
+[6] See Cairnes' _Political Essays_, 49-50, 56.
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY
+
+
+The kind of interest which belongs to Irish history is curiously
+different from that which attaches to the history of England and to
+that of most of the great nations of the Continent. In very few
+histories do we find so little national unity or continuous progress,
+or such long spaces which are almost wholly occupied by perplexed,
+petty internal broils, often stained by atrocious crimes, but turning
+on no large issue and leading to no clear or stable results. Except
+during the great missionary period of the sixth and seventh centuries,
+and during a brief portion of the eighteenth century, we have little
+of the interest that arises from dramatic situations or shining
+characters, and in few countries has the highest intellect been, on
+the whole, so slightly connected with the administration of affairs.
+To a philosophical student of politics, however, Irish history
+possesses an interest of the highest order. It is an invaluable study
+of morbid anatomy. In very few histories can we trace so clearly the
+effects of political and social circumstances in forming national
+character; the calamity of missed opportunities and of fluctuating and
+procrastinating policy; the folly of attempting to govern by the same
+methods and institutions nations that are wholly different in their
+characters and their civilisation.
+
+The idea which still floats vaguely in many minds that Ireland, before
+the arrival of the Normans, was a single and independent nation, is
+wholly false. Ireland was not a nation, but a collection of separate
+tribes and kingdoms, engaged in almost constant warfare. In this
+respect, however, she resembled many countries which have since
+attained the most perfect unity, and there can be little doubt that,
+if her development had been impeded by no extraneous influences,
+Ireland would have followed the same path as England or France. Much
+stress has been justly laid on the disorganising influence of a long
+succession of Danish invasions, though it must be remembered that
+Ireland owes to the Danes the foundation of some of her most important
+cities. Roman conquest, which introduced into most of Europe
+invaluable elements of order, organisation, and respect for law, never
+extended to Ireland. The Anglo-Norman invasion and conquest produced
+consequences which were almost wholly evil. If the invaders had been
+driven from the Irish shore, the natural course of development would,
+no doubt, have been in time continued. If the invaders had completely
+conquered Ireland, a fusion might have taken place as complete and as
+healthy as in England. Neither of these two events occurred. The
+English conquest was prolonged over nearly four hundred years. A
+hostile and separate power was planted in the centre of Ireland
+sufficiently powerful to prevent the formation of another
+civilisation, yet not sufficiently powerful to impose a civilisation
+of its own. Feudalism was introduced, but the keystone of the system,
+a strong resident sovereign, was wanting, and Ireland was soon torn by
+the wars of great Anglo-Norman nobles, who were, in fact, independent
+sovereigns, much like the old Irish kings. The Scotch invasion of the
+fourteenth century added enormously to the anarchy and confusion; the
+English power as a living reality contracted to the narrow limits of
+the pale; in outlying districts the Anglo-Norman assimilated quickly
+with the Celtic element, while the English legislators in Ireland,
+alarmed at the tendency, made it the main object of their policy, in
+the words of Sir John Davies, 'to make a perpetual separation and
+enmity between the English and Irish, pretending no doubt that the
+English should in the end root out the Irish.'
+
+Such a state of things continued till the long and terrible wars of
+Henry VIII. and Elizabeth broke the power of the independent chiefs
+and of the Celtic clans, and gave Ireland, for the first time, a
+political unity. It is one of the great infelicities of Irish history
+that this result was obtained at the very period of the Reformation.
+The conquerors adopted one religion, while the conquered retained the
+other, and thus a new and most enduring barrier was raised between the
+two nations in Ireland, and a pernicious antagonism was established
+between law and religion.
+
+Another influence not less powerful than religion had at the same time
+come into play. It had become the English policy to place great bodies
+of English and Scotch settlers on the land that was confiscated in
+consequence of rebellion, and under the impulse of the strong spirit
+of adventure which grew up in the generation that followed the
+Reformation, streams of English and Scotch adventurers poured over.
+The great settlement of Ulster under James I. proved ultimately a
+success, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of that province.
+Other plantations were in time absorbed and assimilated by the Celtic
+population; but vast revolutions in the ownership of land, accompanied
+by the subversion of the old tribal customs, laid the foundation of an
+agrarian war which still continues.
+
+Religious and agrarian causes combined with the civil war in England
+to produce the great rebellion of 1641 and the eleven years of
+ghastly, exterminating war which followed. Hardly any page in human
+history is more appalling. A full third of the population of Ireland
+perished. Thirty or forty thousand of the most energetic left the
+country and took service in foreign armies. Great tracts were left
+absolutely depopulated, and after the rearrangement of land, which was
+accomplished by the Act of Settlement, the immense preponderance of
+landed property remained in the hands of the Protestant nation.
+
+New elements, however, of great energy had been planted in Ireland,
+and the field had been thrown open to their exertions. The excellence
+of Irish wool and the cheapness of Irish labour laid the foundation of
+a flourishing woollen manufacture, and with peace, mild
+administration, and much practical tolerance, the wounds of the
+country seemed gradually healing. The later Stuart reigns, which form
+a dark page in English history, were a period of considerable
+prosperity in Ireland, but that period was soon interrupted by the
+Revolution. There was no general or passionate rising in Ireland
+resembling that of 1641, but it was inevitable that the Irish
+Catholics should have adopted the side of the Catholic King, and it
+was equally inevitable that when a Catholic Parliament, consisting
+largely of sons of the men whose properties had recently been
+confiscated, had assembled at Dublin, its members should have made a
+desperate effort to reverse their fortunes and replace the land of the
+country mainly in Catholic hands. The battle of the Boyne shattered
+the Catholic hopes, and it was followed by a new confiscation, by a
+new emigration of the ablest and most energetic Catholics, by a long
+period of commercial restraints, penal laws, and complete Protestant
+ascendancy.
+
+The commercial restraints formed part of a protective policy which was
+at that time general in Europe, and which was severely felt in the
+American colonies. Though it did not absolutely originate in, it was
+greatly intensified by, the Revolution, which gave the manufacturing
+and commercial classes a new power in English government. The linen
+manufacture was spared, but the total destruction by law of the
+flourishing woollen manufacture, followed by a number of restrictions
+imposed on other branches of industry, deprived Ireland of her most
+promising sources of wealth, drove great multitudes of energetic
+Protestants out of the country, and threw the people more and more
+upon the soil as almost their sole means of support.
+
+The penal laws against the Catholics accompanied or closely followed
+the commercial restraints. The blame of them may be divided with some
+equality between the Government of England and the Parliament of
+Ireland. It was the Irish Parliament which enacted these laws, but an
+English Act first made the Irish Parliament exclusively Protestant,
+and the whole legislation was carried at a time when the Irish
+Parliament was completely dependent, and incompetent even to discuss
+any measure without the previous approbation of the English
+Government. In order to judge this legislation with equity, it must be
+remembered that in the beginning of the eighteenth century restrictive
+laws against Protestantism in Catholic countries, and against
+Catholicism in Protestant ones, almost universally prevailed. The laws
+against Irish Catholics were, on the whole, less stringent than those
+against Catholics in England. They were largely modelled after the
+French legislation against the Huguenots, but persecution in Ireland
+never approached in severity that of Louis XIV., and was absolutely
+insignificant compared with that which had extirpated Protestantism
+and Judaism from Spain. The code, however, was not mainly the product
+of religious feeling, but of policy, and in this respect it has been
+defended in its broad outlines, though not in all its details, by such
+Irishmen as Charlemont, Flood, and Parsons. They argued that at the
+close of a long period of savage civil war it was absolutely necessary
+for a small minority, who found themselves in possession of the
+government and land of the country, to deprive the conquered and
+hostile majority of every element of political and military strength.
+This was the real object of the code. It was a measure of self-defence
+justified by necessity and by the fact that it produced in Ireland for
+the space of about eighty years the most perfect tranquillity.
+
+There is much truth in these considerations, but it is also true that
+the penal code produced more pernicious moral, social, and political
+effects than many sanguinary persecutions. In other countries
+disqualifying or persecuting laws were directed against small
+fractions of the nation. In Ireland they were directed against the
+bulk of the community. Being supported by little or no genuine
+religious fanaticism or proselytising ardour, they made few
+Protestants except in the upper orders, where many conformed in order
+to keep their land or to enter professions; but they drove nearly all
+the best and most energetic Catholics to the Continent; they
+discouraged industry; closed the door of knowledge; taught the people
+to look upon law as something hostile to religion; introduced
+division and immorality into families by the rewards they offered to
+apostasy; and condemned the whole country to poverty and impotence by
+fatally depressing the great majority of its people. Under the
+influence of the penal laws the Catholics inevitably acquired the
+vices of serfs, and the Protestants the vices of monopolists. A great
+portion of the code was pronounced, with good reason, to be flagrantly
+opposed to the articles of the Treaty of Limerick, and it completed
+the work of the confiscations by making the landlord class in Ireland
+almost wholly Protestant, while the great majority of the tenantry
+were Catholics.
+
+There was a moment, however, in the beginning of the century when the
+whole current of Irish history might easily have changed. Scotland had
+suffered, like Ireland, from the protective policy that followed the
+Revolution, and her independent Parliament had retaliated by measures
+which threatened the speedy separation of the two crowns, and soon led
+to a legislative Union. In Ireland such a Union was ardently desired
+by enlightened Irishmen, and there is every reason to believe that it
+could then have been carried with universal consent. The Catholics
+were perfectly passive, and would gladly have accepted a change which
+withdrew them from the direct government of the conquerors in a recent
+civil war. The Protestants had as yet no distinctively national
+feeling, and a legislative Union would have emancipated their industry
+and added enormously to their security. Molyneux, the first great
+champion of the legislative independence of Ireland, emphatically
+declared that he and those who thought with him would gladly have
+accepted the alternative of a Union, and both the Irish Houses of
+Parliament voted addresses in favour of such a measure. If it had
+been carried, Ireland would have been at least saved from the evils
+that rose from the commercial restrictions and from the extreme
+jobbing that grew up around the local legislature, and she would,
+perhaps, have been saved from some parts of the penal code. But the
+golden opportunity was lost. The English commercial classes dreaded
+Irish competition in their markets, and the petition of the Irish
+legislature was disregarded.
+
+Nearly seventy years of quiet followed. The establishment of the
+Hanoverian dynasty, the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, the
+different wars in which England was engaged, left Ireland absolutely
+undisturbed. The House of Commons then sat for a whole reign and met
+only every second year. It was completely subservient to the English
+Privy Council, and it consisted so largely of nomination boroughs that
+a few great nobles commanded a decisive preponderance, and they
+practically conducted the government and administered the patronage of
+Ireland. There was great jobbing and corruption, but taxation, on the
+whole, was exceedingly light, and there was no tendency to throw it
+unduly on the poor, or to create in Ireland any of the many feudal
+burdens that prevailed in France and Germany. The practical evil most
+felt was the system of tithes for the support of the Protestant
+establishment, and it was aggravated by a very unfair exemption of
+pasture land, and also by the prevailing system of farming out tithes
+to a class of men known as tithe proctors. In the country districts
+all power was concentrated in the hands of the landlords, who, with
+many faults and under many difficulties, at least succeeded in
+attaining a large measure of genuine popularity.
+
+There was an Irish army of twelve thousand men, but the greater part
+of it was always sent abroad in time of war, and Ireland was then
+often left with not more than five thousand soldiers. No militia and
+no constabulary force existed, but when Whiteboy or other disturbances
+arose, the landlords put themselves at the head of their tenantry, and
+usually succeeded in suppressing them. Law was very little observed;
+industrial virtues were at the lowest ebb; there was abundance of
+drunkenness, idleness, turbulence, neglect of duty, extreme ignorance,
+and extreme poverty; but there was not much real oppression or
+religious bigotry, and there were no signs of political disturbance or
+conspiracy. After a few years the portions of the penal code which
+restricted the Catholic worship became a dead letter, and Catholic
+chapels were everywhere rising on the Protestant estates. The
+monopoly, however, of place and power continued, though the legal
+profession was full of professing converts. The theological
+temperature in both sects had greatly subsided. Land was usually let
+by the owner on long leases, and at very low rents, to tenants who
+almost invariably divided and sublet their tenancies.
+
+At a later period of the century, when population pressed closely on
+subsistence, the system of middlemen produced a fierce competition
+which raised rent in the lower grades to an enormous height, but this
+evil was less felt with a scanty population, and the hierarchy of
+tenants at least saved the landlords from the dangerous isolation
+which their circumstances tended to produce. Arthur Young, who
+examined the condition of the country very carefully between 1776 and
+1778, perceived great signs of growing prosperity, especially in the
+towns, and, although agriculture was far behind that of England, he
+found a considerable number of active, intelligent, and improving
+landlords. In the opinion of Young the rental of Ireland was unduly
+and unnaturally low, but he urged the landlords to exercise a more
+direct and controlling influence over their estates, and he
+recommended them, for this purpose, to give leases for shorter periods
+and gradually to abolish the system of middlemen and subletting.
+
+In the north there was a powerful, intelligent Protestant community,
+with a strong leaning to republicanism. They were chiefly
+Presbyterians, and they resented bitterly the commercial restrictions
+and the obligation of paying tithes to an Episcopal church. The Irish
+Parliament was so constituted that they had no political power at all
+equivalent to their importance, and, like the Presbyterians in
+England, they were burdened by the Test Act, and their marriages were
+only valid if celebrated in the Established Church. The great power of
+the bishops, both in the Privy Council and in the House of Lords,
+formed a very serious obstacle to church reform. In all classes of
+Protestants, however, in the closing years of George II., there was a
+strong resentment at the political subjection of Ireland, and a
+determination to obtain, if possible, those constitutional rights
+which the Revolution of 1688 had secured for England.
+
+It is impossible, within the narrow limits assigned to me, to give
+even a sketch of the successive stages by which the independence of
+the Irish Parliament was established. The movement began with the
+Octennial Act, limiting the duration of Parliament, and it came to
+full maturity during the war of the American Revolution. Among the
+Irish Catholics there appears to have been absolutely no sympathy with
+the American cause, but Ulster Protestantism was enthusiastically on
+the side of America. Presbyterians from Ulster bore a considerable
+part in the American armies, and under the influence of American
+example public opinion in Ireland rapidly advanced. The great
+Volunteer movement of 1778 and the following years was originated by
+the fact that the Government could supply no troops for the defence of
+Ulster at a time when it was in imminent danger of attack from France.
+The Protestant gentry called their people to arms; and a great
+Protestant force was created, which not only secured the country
+against foreign danger and maintained the most perfect internal order,
+but also exercised a decisive influence over Irish politics. Volunteer
+conventions were assembled which represented both property and
+educated Protestant opinion much more truly than the borough
+Parliament, and which loudly demanded free trade and Parliamentary
+independence. Grattan made himself the mouthpiece of the popular
+feeling; and the English Government and Parliament yielded to the
+demand. The whole system of commercial restraints, which prevented
+Ireland from developing her resources and trading with foreign
+countries and the British colonies, was abolished, leaving the
+commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland to be
+regulated by special Acts. The power of the Privy Council over
+legislation was abolished. The appellate jurisdiction of the Irish
+House of Lords was restored, and, above all, the sole competence of
+the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to legislate for Ireland was
+recognised. The Irish Parliament nearly at the same time made great
+steps towards uniting the people by relieving the Presbyterians from
+the Test Act and from the restrictions on their marriages, and the
+Catholics from those parts of the penal code which chiefly restrained
+their worship, their education, and their industry. At the same time
+the Protestant monopoly of political power and of the higher offices
+remained.
+
+Ireland thus found herself in possession of a Parliament which was, in
+name at least, perfectly independent. It was a purely Protestant
+Parliament, elected by Protestants, consisting mainly of landlords and
+great Protestant lawyers, and representing pre-eminently the property
+of the country. It was intensely and exclusively loyal, and always
+ready to adopt far more stringent coercive measures against anarchy
+and sedition than have ever been adopted by an Imperial Parliament. It
+included many men of great talents and great liberality, and through
+the county constituencies and the representatives of the chief towns
+educated public opinion was seriously felt within its walls; but the
+large majority of its members sat for nomination boroughs within the
+control of the government, and places and pensions were inordinately
+multiplied for the purpose of securing a majority.
+
+Could this constitution last? In framing the course of foreign and
+Imperial policy, in all questions of peace or war, of negotiations or
+alliances, the Irish Parliament had no voice. Yet it might in time of
+war, by withholding its concurrence, withdraw the whole weight of
+Ireland from the forces and fatally dislocate the policy of the
+Empire. It might pursue a commercial policy absolutely inconsistent
+with Imperial interests, and bring Ireland into intimate commercial
+connection with the enemies of England; and if English party spirit
+extended to Ireland and ran in opposite directions in the two
+legislatures, a collision was inevitable. The Lord Lieutenant and
+Chief Secretary, who administered the government of Ireland, were
+appointed by a British Ministry representing the dominant British
+party; the counsels of the Irish Government were framed in a British
+Cabinet; the royal consent was given to every Irish Bill under the
+Great Seal of Great Britain and upon the advice of a British Minister.
+If a machine so constituted could work as long as it was in the hands
+of a small and undoubtedly loyal and largely influenced class, could
+it work if Parliamentary reform made the Irish Parliament subject to
+the fierce and fluctuating tides of popular opinion? above all, if
+Catholic enfranchisement brought a vast, ignorant, and possibly
+seditious element into political life?
+
+It was the recorded opinion of each successive Lord Lieutenant who
+administered the Irish Government after 1782 that it could not, and
+that it must sooner or later end either in a union or a separation.
+They said this, though they fully acknowledged the perfect loyalty
+hitherto shown by the Irish Parliament; the liberality with which it
+voted its supplies; the care with which it subordinated its particular
+measures to the general interests of the Empire. The failure--not
+solely or even mainly through Irish fault--of an attempt to establish
+a fixed commercial arrangement between England and Ireland, and a
+difference between the British and Irish Parliaments on the Imperial
+question of a regency, strengthened the opinion of the English
+Government, and for many years before the Union was enacted it was in
+contemplation. On the two great and pressing questions at issue this
+policy exercised a powerful influence. The Government obstinately
+resisted every serious attempt to reform the Parliament, lest they
+should lose that controlling power which they believed to be essential
+to the permanence of the connection. On the Catholic question their
+views were more fluctuating, but their dominant impression was that
+emancipation could only be safely conceded in an Imperial Parliament,
+and that it ought to be reserved as a boon which might one day make a
+legislative Union acceptable to the Irish people.
+
+In Ireland, or at least in Protestant Ireland, the idea of a Union was
+now intensely unpopular, but the reformers in the Irish Parliament
+were seriously divided. Flood and Charlemont desired Parliamentary
+reform on a purely Protestant basis. They believed that this would
+include in political life the bulk of the property, loyalty,
+intelligence, and energy of the country, and that the Irish Catholics
+could not for a long period be safely admitted to political power.
+Grattan, on the other hand, believed that it was the first interest of
+Ireland to efface the political distinction between the two creeds and
+nations, and that an introduction of a certain proportion of Catholic
+gentry into the Irish Parliament would be in the highest degree
+beneficial. He, at the same time, always taught that Ireland was
+utterly unfit for democracy, and that under her peculiar conditions no
+policy could be more disastrous than one which would 'destroy the
+influence of landed property'; 'set population adrift from the
+influence of property'; subvert or weaken the guiding influence of the
+loyal and educated. When the United Irishmen proposed a Reform Bill
+which would have made the Irish Parliament a purely democratic body,
+Grattan denounced it with the greatest vehemence. 'This plan of
+personal representation,' he said, 'from a revolution of power, would
+speedily lead to a revolution of property, and become a plan of
+plunder as well as a scene of confusion.... Of such a representation
+the first ordinance would be robbery, accompanied with the
+circumstance incidental to robbery, murder.' He believed, however,
+that with a substantial property qualification independent
+constituencies might be formed which would safely represent the best
+elements of both creeds.
+
+The denial of parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation, and the
+refusal of the Irish Parliament to deal with the still more pressing
+question of tithes, produced much disaffection; but still the country
+was steadily improving, and no serious danger was felt till the French
+Revolution burst upon Europe. In every country it stimulated the
+smouldering elements of disorder. In few countries was its influence
+more fatal than in Ireland. I have very lately described at length the
+terrible years of growing conspiracy, anarchy, and crime; of
+fluctuating policy, and savage repression, and revived religious
+animosity, and maddening panic, deliberately and malignantly fomented,
+that preceded and prepared the rebellion. It is sufficient here to say
+that in the beginning of 1798 three provinces were organised to assist
+a French invasion. But at the last moment the leaders were betrayed
+and arrested; the French did not arrive; the rebellion was almost
+confined to a few Leinster counties, and it broke out without leaders
+and without a plan. In most places the rebels proved to be wretched
+bands of marauders intent only on plunder, and, although they
+committed many murders, they were utterly incapable of meeting the
+loyalists in the field. But in Wexford, priests put themselves at the
+head of the movement and turned it into a religious war, deriving its
+main force from religious fanaticism, and waged with desperate courage
+and ferocity. The massacre of Protestants on Vinegar Hill, in
+Scullabogue Barn, and on Wexford Bridge, and the general character
+the rebellion in Leinster assumed, at once and for ever checked all
+that tendency to rebellion which had so long existed among the
+Protestants of Ulster. Some twenty thousand persons perished before
+the flame was extinguished. The repression was as savage as the
+rebellion, and it left Ireland torn by fiercer religious animosities
+than at any period since the Restoration.
+
+It will dispel many illusions if the reader will remember that the
+great Irish rebellion was directed mainly against the Irish
+Parliament, and that it received its death-blow from Irish loyalists
+acting under that Parliament before any assistance arrived from
+England. The conspiracy began among Protestants and Deists, who aimed
+at a union of sects for the purpose of obtaining a democratic
+republic. It turned into a war which was scarcely less essentially
+religious than the wars of the Cevennes or of the Anabaptists. Yet two
+great Catholic provinces remained quiet during the struggle, and a
+great proportion of the loyalist force which crushed the rebellion
+consisted of Catholic militia.
+
+The English Government thought that the time had now come for carrying
+a legislative Union, and, in the eyes of Lord Cornwallis at least, one
+of its chief recommendations was that it would take the government of
+Ireland out of the hands of the triumphant party, and would make
+Catholic emancipation a possibility. The Catholic bishops were sounded
+and found to be very favourable. They declared their full willingness
+to accept an endowment for the priesthood and to give the English
+Government a right of veto on episcopal appointments, and they warmly,
+efficiently, and unanimously supported the Union. The great majority
+of the Catholic landed gentry and probably of the lower priests were
+on the same side; but in general the Catholic laity seem to have
+shown little interest and to have taken little part in the contest. In
+Dublin, Catholics as well as Protestants were generally hostile, but
+Catholic Cork was decidedly favourable, and an assurance that the
+Government desired to carry emancipation in an Imperial Parliament
+proved sufficient to prevent any serious Catholic opposition. The
+United Irishmen seem to have witnessed rather with pleasure than the
+reverse the dethronement of the body which had defeated them, and the
+Presbyterians showed scarcely any interest in the question.
+
+Yet outside the ranks of the Catholic clergy the measure found few
+active supporters, while the Protestants of the Established Church
+were in general ardently and passionately hostile. The great majority
+of the county members and the great preponderance of petitions were
+against the Union, and the opposition to it, which was led by Foster,
+Grattan, Parsons, and Plunket, comprised nearly all the independent
+and unbribed talent in Parliament. The very eminent ability of that
+small group of Protestant gentlemen never flashed more brightly than
+in the closing scenes, and there was a moment when the attitude of the
+Orangemen and the yeomanry was so menacing that the Government were
+seriously alarmed. But a lavish distribution of peerages and places
+purchased a majority, and the troops stationed in Ireland were too
+numerous for armed opposition to be possible. In truth, however, no
+opposition beyond the dimensions of a riot was to be feared. Outside
+Dublin, Catholic, Presbyterian, and seditious Ireland remained almost
+indifferent. Even before the measure had passed, opposition speakers
+complained bitterly that they were deserted by popular support; and it
+is a memorable fact that in the general election that followed the
+Union not a single Irish member of Parliament was defeated because he
+had voted for it.
+
+Pitt intended the Union to be immediately followed by measures
+admitting the Catholics into the Imperial Parliament, paying the
+priests, and commuting the tithes. If these three measures, or even if
+the last two (which were, in truth, the most important), had been
+promptly carried, the Union might have become popular. The Catholic
+question had, of late, been greatly mismanaged. The chief men who
+directed the government in Ireland were bitterly opposed to any
+concession of political power to the Catholics, but the views of the
+English Ministers had been materially changed. They desired above all
+things to separate the Catholics from the United Irishmen, and in 1793
+they forced upon their reluctant advisers in Ireland an Act which
+extended the suffrage to the vast ignorant Catholic masses, though it
+left the Catholic gentry still excluded from Parliament. Two years
+later Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over with instructions to postpone the
+question if possible, but with authority, as he believed, to carry
+emancipation if it could not be postponed, and he found the Irish
+Parliament perfectly prepared to pass it. But the opposition of the
+King and a question of patronage produced a fatal division and led to
+the recall of the Viceroy. The passions aroused by the rebellion
+greatly increased the difficulties of admitting Catholics to a
+separate Parliament, but there is clear evidence that at the time of
+the Union the Irish Protestants were in favour of their admission into
+the Imperial one. The dispositions of the King were well known, but it
+was believed that, if the scheme of Pitt was submitted to him as the
+matured policy of a united Cabinet, he must have yielded. It is well
+known how the plan was prematurely revealed; how Pitt resigned office
+when the King refused his consent; how the agitation of the question
+threw the King into an access of insanity; and how Pitt then promised
+that he would not again raise it during the reign. Pitt's conduct on
+this occasion is, and probably always will be, differently judged.
+There can be but one opinion of its calamitous effect upon Irish
+history.
+
+Ninety years have passed since the Union, and the conditions of
+Ireland have completely changed. The whole system of religious
+disqualification and commercial disability has long since passed away.
+Every path has been thrown open, and English professions, as well as
+the great Colonial and Indian services, are crowded with Irishmen. The
+Established Church no longer exists. Representation has been placed on
+a broadly democratic basis, giving Ireland, however, an absurdly
+disproportioned weight in the representation of the kingdom, and its
+poorest and most backward districts an absurdly disproportioned weight
+in the representation of Ireland. Finally, an attempt has been made to
+put down agrarian agitation by legislation to which there is no real
+parallel in English history, and some parts of which would have been
+impossible under the Constitution of the United States. Landlords who
+possessed by the clearest title known to English law the most absolute
+ownership of their estates have been converted into mere
+rent-chargers. Tenants who entered upon their tenancies under formal
+written contracts for limited periods have been rooted for ever on the
+soil. Rents have been reduced by judicial sentence, with complete
+disregard both to previous contracts and to market value, and the
+legal owner has had no option of refusing the change and re-entering
+on the occupation of his land. A scheme of purchase, too, based upon
+Imperial credit, has been established and will probably soon be
+largely extended, which is so extravagantly and almost grotesquely
+favorable to the tenant that it enables him by paying for the space of
+forty-nine years, instead of his reduced judicial rent, an annual sum
+which is considerably smaller, to purchase the freehold of his farm.
+It is a simple and incontestable truth that neither in the United
+States, nor in England, nor in any portion of the Continent of Europe,
+is the agricultural tenant so favoured by law as in Ireland, or
+anything of the nature of landlord oppression made so impossible. But
+though agitation has diminished, it has not ceased, and the great body
+of the poorer Catholics still follow the banner of Home Rule.
+
+About a third of the population of Ireland, on the other hand, regard
+Home Rule as the greatest catastrophe that could befall themselves,
+their country, or the Empire; and it is worthy of notice that they
+include almost all the descendants of Grattan's Parliament, and of the
+volunteers and of those classes who in the eighteenth century
+sustained the spirit of nationality in Ireland. Belfast and the
+surrounding counties, which alone in Ireland have attained the full
+height and vigour of English industrial civilisation; almost all the
+Protestants, both Episcopalian and Nonconformist; almost all the
+Catholic gentry; the decided preponderance of Catholics in the lay
+professions, and a great and guiding section of the Catholic
+middle-class are on the same side. Their conviction does not rest upon
+any abstract doctrine about the evil of federal governments or of
+local parliaments. It rests upon their firm persuasion that in the
+existing conditions of Ireland no Parliament could be established
+there which could be trusted to fulfil the most elementary conditions
+of honest government--to maintain law; to protect property; to observe
+or enforce contracts; to secure the rights and liberties of
+individuals and minorities; to act loyally in times of difficulty and
+danger in the interests of the Empire.
+
+They know that the existing Home Rule movement has grown up by the
+guidance and by the support of men who are implacable enemies to the
+British Empire; that it has been for years the steady object of its
+leaders to inspire the Irish masses with feelings of hatred to that
+Empire, contempt for contracts, defiance of law and of those who
+administer it; that, having signally failed in rousing the
+agricultural population in a national struggle, those leaders resolved
+to turn the movement into an organised attack upon landed property;
+that in the prosecution of this enterprise they have been guilty, not
+only of measures which are grossly and palpably dishonest, but also of
+an amount of intimidation, of cruelty, of systematic disregard for
+individual freedom scarcely paralleled in any country during the
+present century; and finally that, through subscriptions which are not
+drawn from Ireland, political agitation in Ireland has become a large
+and highly lucrative trade--a trade which, like most others, will no
+doubt continue as long as it pays.
+
+The nature, methods, and objects of the organisation which would
+probably exercise a dominant influence over an Irish Parliament have
+been established by overwhelming evidence and beyond all reasonable
+doubt, after a long, careful, and most impartial judicial
+investigation. The report of the late Special Commissioners[7] and the
+evidence on which it is founded have been published; and their
+conclusions have very recently been summed up in an admirable work by
+Professor Dicey, perhaps the ablest of living writers on political
+subjects. Readers may find in these works abundant evidence of the
+true character of the Irish Home Rule movement. If they read them with
+impartiality they will, I believe, have little difficulty in
+concluding that there have been few political movements in the
+nineteenth century which are less deserving of the respect or support
+of honest men.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] The Parnell Commission.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+FORMATIVE INFLUENCES
+
+
+It was about four years before the great upheaval of beliefs in
+England, which was partly caused and partly disclosed by the
+publication of the 'Essays and Reviews,' in 1860, that I entered
+Trinity College, Dublin. I had then a strong leaning toward
+theological studies and looked forward to a peaceful clerical life in
+a family living near Cork; and in addition to the ordinary university
+course, I went through that appointed for divinity students. I found
+my life at the university one of more than common intellectual
+activity, for although circumstances and temperament made me perhaps
+culpably indifferent to college ambitions and competitions, I soon
+threw myself with intense eagerness into a long course of private
+reading, chiefly relating to the formation and history of opinions.
+The great High Church wave which had a few years before been so
+powerful, had been broken when Newman and many other leaders of the
+party had passed to Catholicism. Darwin and Herbert Spencer had not
+yet risen above the horizon. Mill was in the zenith of his fame and
+influence. The intellectual atmosphere was much agitated by the recent
+discoveries of geology, by their manifest bearing on the Mosaic
+cosmogony and on the history of the Fall, and by the attempts of Hugh
+Miller, Hitchcock, and other writers to reconcile them with the
+received theology. In poetry, Tennyson and Longfellow reigned, I
+think with an approach to equality which has not continued. In
+politics, the school of orthodox political economy was almost
+unchallenged. In spite of the protests of Carlyle, all sound Liberals
+in England then desired to restrict as much as possible the functions
+of government, and to enlarge as much as possible the sphere of
+individual liberty; and they regarded unrestrained competition and
+inviolable contracts as the chief conditions of material progress.
+
+The first great intellectual influence which I experienced was, I
+believe, that of Bishop Butler, who was at that time probably studied
+more assiduously at Dublin than in any other university in the
+kingdom. There were few sermons in the college chapel in which some
+allusion to his writings might not be found, and few serious students
+whose modes of thought were not at least coloured by his influence.
+That influence now appears to me to have been not only various, but
+even in some measure contradictory. The 'Analogy' is perhaps the most
+original, if not the most powerful, book ever written in defence of
+the Christian creed; but it has probably been the parent of much
+modern Agnosticism, for its method is to parallel every difficulty in
+revealed religion by a corresponding difficulty in natural religion,
+and to argue that the two must stand or fall together. Butler's
+unrivalled sermons on human nature, on the other hand, have been
+essentially conservative and constructive, and their influence has
+been at least as strong on character as on belief. Their doctrine is
+that consciousness reveals in the inner principles of our being a
+moral hierarchy, 'a difference in nature and kind altogether distinct
+from strength'; and that among these principles conscience has, by the
+very structure of our nature, a recognised supremacy or guiding
+authority which clearly distinguishes it from all others.
+
+'The principle of reflection or conscience being compared with the
+various appetites, affections, and passions in men, the former is
+manifestly supreme and chief, without regard to strength.... From its
+very nature it manifestly claims superiority over all others, so that
+you cannot form a notion of this faculty, conscience, without taking
+in judgment, direction, superintendency. To preside and govern, from
+the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it
+strength as it has right, it would govern the world.'
+
+It was a noble philosophy, well fitted to strengthen and elevate the
+character, and it has supported many amid the dissolution of positive
+beliefs. Utilitarian theories of morals move very smoothly as long as
+their only task is to define the course which it is in the interests
+of society that each man should pursue. They are less successful in
+furnishing any firm and adequate reason why a man should pursue that
+course when individual interests and individual passion are opposed to
+it. It is the merit of the schools of Kant and of Butler, that they
+raise the idea of duty above all the calculations of self-interest,
+and make it the supreme and guiding principle of life.
+
+Among living men, the strongest intellectual influence at that time in
+Dublin was, I think, Whately, our archbishop, an original and powerful
+thinker who has scarcely obtained a place in the literary and
+intellectual history of his time commensurate with the wide and deep
+influence he undoubtedly exercised. For this there are many reasons.
+Unlike the High Church leaders who flourished with him at Oxford in
+the second quarter of the nineteenth century, he never identified
+himself with any organised party or school of thought, and he thus
+deprived himself of many echoes and of much support. It was, indeed,
+one of his first principles that there is no more fatal obstacle to
+the discovery of truth than the deflecting influence of party and
+system, and that the jealous maintenance of an independent judgment is
+the first element of intellectual honesty. Few considerable writers
+have appealed less to common passions or wide sympathies; and the only
+passion--if it can be called so--that appears strongly in his
+writings, is the love of truth for its own sake, which is the rarest
+and highest of all. He was accustomed to speculate much upon that
+strange power of intellectual magnetism which enables some men to draw
+others to their views apart from any process of definite reasoning;
+and he acknowledged with truth that he was wholly destitute of it;
+that he had never produced any effect which could not be clearly
+accounted for, or altered any judgment except by distinct reasons. As
+a writer, his style, though wholly without grace, was admirable in its
+lucidity. He had a singular felicity of illustration, and especially
+of metaphor, and a rare power of throwing his thoughts into terse and
+pithy sentences; but his many books, though full of original thinking
+and in a high degree suggestive to other writers, had always a certain
+fragmentary and occasional character, which prevented them from taking
+a place in standard literature. He was conscious of it himself, and
+was accustomed to say that it was the mission of his life to make up
+cartridges for others to fire. The little volume of 'Miscellanies,'
+including his commonplace book and his notes for his books, which was
+published by his daughter, exhibits with great clearness the character
+of his mind. Though a very candid and, in the best sense of the word,
+a very tolerant man, and an excellent scholar, he had, I think, little
+power of reproducing the modes of thought of men whose mental
+structure was widely different from his own, or of entering into the
+intellectual conditions of other ages; but he touched a large circle
+of subjects, social, political, and even scientific, as well as moral
+and religious, with an original and most independent judgment; and he
+raised greatly the moral standard of love of truth and the
+intellectual standard of severe reasoning wherever his influence
+extended. He delighted in that fine saying of Hobbes that, 'words are
+the counters of the wise man, but the money of the fool'; he believed
+that most controversies might be resolved into verbal ambiguities; and
+his hatred of vagueness, grandiloquence, affected obscurity, and
+rhetorical exaggeration exercised a very useful influence over young
+men. He was also a most attentive and sagacious observer of human
+nature, and few modern writers have written so wisely on the
+diversities and the management of character and on the science of
+life. In this respect he had a strong affinity to Bacon--the Bacon not
+of the 'Organon,' but of the 'Essays'--and perhaps still more to
+Benjamin Franklin. In theology he challenged the severest inquiry, and
+believed that if honestly pursued it would lead only to orthodox
+belief. 'A good man,' he once wrote, 'will indeed wish to find the
+evidence of the Christian religion satisfactory; but a wise man will
+not for that reason think it satisfactory, but will weigh the evidence
+the more carefully on account of the importance of the question.'
+
+His strongest antipathy was to the teaching of the Oxford 'Tracts,'
+and he wrote about them with great severity, but more from the moral
+than the intellectual side. He believed the Tractarian doctrines of
+'reserve' and 'economy' to be essentially disingenuous; he considered
+that there was good reason to conclude that leading members of the
+Oxford school had remained in the Church of England for a considerable
+time after they had adopted the Roman theology, had used language
+deliberately intended to mask their position, and had employed their
+influence as English clergymen to sap the English Church; and he
+especially denounced as the grossest dishonesty the attempt that was
+made in Tract XC. to show that a man was justified in subscribing to
+the Articles of the Church of England and at the same time holding
+everything laid down by the Council of Trent, 'though the Articles
+were expressly drawn up to condemn the authoritative teaching of the
+Roman Church, and after the Council of Trent had held 22 out of its
+whole number of 25 sessions.' The quibbling, special-pleading,
+equivocating mind which is consciously or half-consciously
+endeavouring by subtle distinctions to maintain an untenable position,
+was of all things the most abhorrent to him, and while the
+Evangelicals denounced the Tractarians as leading men to Rome,
+Whately, perhaps alone among his contemporaries, steadily predicted
+that their teachings would be followed by a great period of religious
+scepticism. This, he said, would be the result of the discredit they
+were throwing on the evidential school, of their habit of coupling
+ecclesiastical with Scripture miracles, and of their doctrine that it
+is the function of faith to supply the missing links of imperfect
+evidence and to impart the character of certainty to propositions
+which in reason rest only on probabilities. He himself was of the
+school of Grotius and Paley, and believed that simple historical
+evidence established supernatural facts. This subject long held a
+foremost place in my thoughts and studies, and I afterward wrote much
+upon it in connection with the history of witchcraft and the miracles
+of the Saints.
+
+I owed much to Whately, but I was studying concurrently with him
+teachers of very opposite schools, among others Coleridge, Newman, and
+Emerson in English; Pascal, Bossuet, Rousseau, and Voltaire in French.
+Locke's writings formed part of the college course, and I became very
+familiar with them, and fully shared Hallam's special admiration for
+the little treatise 'On the Conduct of the Understanding,' while
+Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh, and Mill opened out wide and various
+vistas in moral philosophy. The following passage from Coleridge,
+which I chose as the motto of almost my first published writing,
+exercised so great an influence over my later studies, and shows so
+happily the direction in which I was endeavoring to turn my mind, that
+I may be excused from quoting it at length:
+
+'Let it be remembered by controversialists on all subjects, that every
+speculative error which boasts a multitude of advocates has its golden
+as well as its dark side; that there is always some truth connected
+with it, the exclusive attention to which has misled the
+understanding; some moral beauty which has given it charms for the
+heart. Let it be remembered that no assailant of an error can
+reasonably hope to be listened to by its advocates, who has not proved
+to them that he has seen the disputed subject in the same point of
+view and is capable of contemplating it with the same feelings as
+themselves; for why should we abandon a cause at the persuasion of one
+who is ignorant of the reasons which have attached us to it?'
+
+Adopting an illustration which had been employed by Bossuet for
+another purpose, I came to believe that religious systems resemble
+those pictures occasionally seen in the museums of the curious, which
+appear at first to be mere incongruous assemblages of unconnected and
+unmeaning figures, till they are regarded from one particular point of
+view, when these figures immediately mass themselves into a regular
+form, and the whole picture assumes a coherent and symmetrical
+appearance. To discover in each system this point of view; to
+cultivate that peculiar form of imagination which makes it possible to
+realise how different forms of opinions are held by their more
+intelligent adherents, appeared to me the first condition of
+understanding them.
+
+In this method of inquiry I was, at a little later period, much aided
+by the writings of Bayle, a great critic who brought to the study of
+opinions an almost unrivalled knowledge, and one of the keenest and
+most detached of human intellects. Gradually, however, by a natural
+and insensible process I passed into the habit of examining opinions
+mainly from an historical point of view--investigating the
+circumstances under which they grow up; their relation to the general
+conditions of their time; the direction in which they naturally
+develop; the part, whether for good or ill, which during long spaces
+of time they have played in the world. It was first of all in
+connection with the Roman Catholic controversy, with which we were
+much occupied in Ireland, that I learnt to pursue this course. Of the
+enormous and essential difference between matured Catholicism and the
+Christianity of the New Testament, I never doubted, and my convictions
+were much deepened by long travels in Italy, France, and Spain, during
+which I endeavoured to study carefully Catholicism in its actual
+workings as a popular religion, and not as it appears clarified and
+rationalised in such books as the 'Exposition,' by Bossuet. I often
+asked myself, who could have imagined from a perusal of the New
+Testament that Christianity was intended to be a highly centralised
+monarchy, governed with supreme divine authority by the Bishop of
+Rome; that this bishop was to be connected, not with the great author
+of the Epistle to the Romans, but with St. Peter; that the figure
+which was to occupy the most prominent place in the devotions and
+imaginations of millions of Christian worshippers was to be the Virgin
+Mary, who is not so much as mentioned in the Epistles; that in the
+immediate neighbourhood, and with the full sanction of the highest
+ecclesiastical authorities, graven images were to be employed in
+devotion as conspicuously as in a pagan temple, particular images
+being singled out from all others for particular devotion by special
+indulgences and by special miracles? I soon convinced myself that
+popular Catholicism, as it exists in southern Europe and as it has
+existed through a long course of centuries, is as literally
+polytheistic and idolatrous as any form of paganism, though it has
+many beauties, and though much of its very mingled influence has been
+for good. In the teaching of my early youth, this transformation of
+Christianity was described as the great predicted apostasy, the
+mystery of iniquity, the work of Antichrist among mankind. Under the
+influence of the historic method it assumed a different aspect, and
+the mystery became very explicable. Hobbes had struck the keynote in a
+passage of profound truth as well as of admirable beauty:
+
+'If a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical
+dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the
+ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave
+thereof.'
+
+Few evolutions in history, indeed, can be more clearly traced than the
+successive stages through which Rome, by a gradual and very natural
+process, obtained the primacy of Christendom. In the condition of
+Europe, again, at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire, the
+invasion, the triumph, and the rapid conversion of the barbarians, the
+chief causes of the materialising transformation which Christian ideas
+underwent appeared abundantly evident; and it became clear to me that
+some such transformation was inevitable, and essential to their enduring
+influence. Was it possible, I asked myself, that in ages of anarchy and
+convulsion, any religion resembling Protestant Christianity could have
+prevailed among great masses of wild and ignorant barbarians, with all
+the associations and mental habits of idolaters, at a time when neither
+rag paper nor printing was invented, and when a wide diffusion of the
+Bible was absolutely impossible? But such methods of reasoning could not
+stop there. I was naturally led to consider how different are the
+measures of probability, the predispositions toward the miraculous, the
+canons of evidence and proof, the standards and ideals of morals in
+different ages, and how largely these differences affect the whole
+question of evidence. I began to realise the existence of climates of
+opinion; to observe how particular forms of belief naturally grow and
+flourish in certain stages of intellectual development, and fade when
+these conditions have changed; how much that is called apostasy and
+imposture is in reality anachronism, the survival in one age of forms of
+belief that were the appropriate product of an earlier one.
+
+A writer of extraordinary brilliancy and power was at this time
+exercising a great influence either of attraction or repulsion on all
+serious students of history. Those who are old enough to remember the
+appearance of the first volume of Buckle's 'History,' in 1857, and of
+the second volume, in 1861, will remember also how rapidly and how
+passionately it divided opinion. It was in truth a book in which
+extraordinary merits were balanced by extraordinary defects. On the
+special subject of the growth of religions, which most interested me,
+it was peculiarly deficient, for with all his great gifts Buckle was
+almost colour-blind to the devotional and reverential aspect of things,
+and he had little more power than Whately of projecting himself into
+the beliefs, ideals, and modes of thought of other men and ages. His
+unqualified, undiscriminating contempt for the ages of superstition is
+the more remarkable, because fifteen years before the appearance of his
+first volume, Comte, with whom Buckle had some affinity, and for whom
+he expressed great admiration, had been placing those ages on a
+pinnacle of extravagant eulogy. His doctrine that there is no real
+progress in moral ideas and no real history of morals, I have always
+believed to be profoundly untrue, and to have vitiated a large part of
+his conclusions; and although he rendered valuable service in showing
+by ample illustrations that the capital changes in history are much
+less due to the great men who directly effected them than to the long
+train of intellectual, political, or industrial tendencies that had
+prepared them, he pushed this, like many of his other generalisations,
+to exaggeration and even to extravagance. Individuals, and even
+accidents, have had a great modifying and deflecting influence in
+history, and sometimes the part they have played can scarcely be
+over-estimated. If, as I have elsewhere said, a stray dart had struck
+down Mohammed in one of the early skirmishes of his career, there is no
+reason to believe that the world would have seen a great military and
+monotheistic religion arise in Arabia, powerful enough to sweep over a
+large part of three continents, and to mould during many centuries the
+lives and characters of about a fifth part of the human race. In one
+respect, too, Buckle was singularly unfortunate in the time in which he
+appeared. From the days of Bacon and Locke to the days of Condillac and
+Bentham, it had been the tendency of advanced liberal thinkers to
+aggrandise as much as possible the power of circumstances and
+experience over the individual, and to reduce to the narrowest limits
+every influence that is innate, transmitted, or hereditary. They
+represented man as essentially the creature of circumstances, and his
+mind as a sheet of blank paper on which education might write what it
+pleased. Buckle pushed this habit of thought so far that he even
+questioned the reality of such an evident and well-known fact as
+hereditary insanity. But only two years after the appearance of the
+first volume of the 'History of Civilisation,' Darwin published his
+'Origin of Species,' which gradually effected a revolution in
+speculative philosophy almost as great as it effected in natural
+science; and from that time the supreme importance of inborn and
+hereditary tendencies has become the very central fact in English
+philosophy. It must be added that Buckle had many of the distinctive
+faults of a young writer; of a writer who had mixed little with men,
+and had formed his mind almost exclusively by solitary, unguided study.
+He had a very imperfect appreciation of the extreme complexity of
+social phenomena, an excessive tendency to sweeping generalisations,
+and an arrogance of assertion which provoked much hostility. His wide
+and multifarious knowledge was not always discriminating, and he
+sometimes mixed good and bad authorities with a strange indifference.
+
+This is a long catalogue of defects, but in spite of them Buckle
+opened out wider horizons than any previous writer in the field of
+history. No other English historian had sketched his plan with so bold
+a hand, or had shown so clearly the transcendent importance of
+studying not merely the actions of soldiers, politicians, and
+diplomatists, but also those great connected evolutions of
+intellectual, social, and industrial life on which the type of each
+succeeding age mainly depends. To not a few of his contemporaries he
+imparted an altogether new interest in history, and his admirable
+literary talent, the vast range of topics which he illuminated with a
+fresh significance, and the noble enthusiasm for knowledge and for
+freedom that pervades his work, made its appearance an epoch in the
+lives of many who have passed far from its definite conclusions. The
+task which he had undertaken was almost too vast for the longest life,
+and when he died at Damascus, in 1862, he had not yet completed his
+fortieth year, and his judgment was probably still far from its full
+maturity. A few lines of Pliny which I wrote on the title-page of his
+history, will suffice to show the feelings with which I heard of his
+death:
+
+'Mihi autem videtur acerba semper et immatura mors eorum qui immortale
+aliquid parant. Nam qui voluptatibus dediti quasi in diem vivunt,
+vivendi causas quotidie finiunt; qui vero posteros cogitant et
+memoriam sui operibus extendunt, his nulla mors non repentina est, ut
+quæ semper inchoatum aliquid abrumpat.'
+
+I do not purpose to pursue these recollections further. I had drifted
+far from my Cork living and very decisively into the ways of
+literature, and after I left the university I spent about four years
+on the Continent. I read much in foreign libraries, and I also derived
+great profit as well as keen pleasure from the study of Italian art,
+which throws an invaluable light on the branches of history I was then
+investigating. In its earlier phase especially, before the sense of
+beauty dominates over the idea, art represents with a singular
+fidelity not only the religious beliefs of men, but also the far more
+delicate and evanescent shades of their realisations, ideals, and
+emotions.
+
+The result of those years of study was my 'History of the Spirit of
+Rationalism in Europe,' which appeared in the early part of 1865. With
+many defects, it had at least the merit of describing with great
+sincerity the process by which the opinions of its author had been
+formed, and to this sincerity it probably owed no small part of its
+success.
+
+
+
+
+CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE.
+
+
+When Carlyle came to London in 1831, bringing with him the 'Sartor
+Resartus,' which is now perhaps the most famous of all his works, it
+is well known that he applied in turn to three of the principal
+publishers in London, and that each of them, after due deliberation,
+positively refused to print his manuscript. When at last, with great
+difficulty, he procured its admission into 'Fraser's Magazine,'
+Carlyle was accustomed to say that he only knew of two men who found
+anything to admire in it. One of them was the great American writer,
+Emerson, who afterwards superintended its publication in America. The
+other was a priest from Cork, who wrote to say that he wished to take
+in 'Fraser's Magazine' as long as anything by this writer appeared in
+it. On the other hand, several persons told Fraser that they would
+stop taking in the magazine if any more of such nonsense appeared in
+it. The editor wrote to Carlyle that the work had been received with
+'unqualified disapprobation.' Five years elapsed before it was
+reprinted as a separate book, and in order that it should be reprinted
+it was found necessary for a number of Carlyle's private friends to
+club together and guarantee the publisher from loss by engaging to
+take three hundred copies. But when, a few years before his death, a
+cheap edition of Carlyle's works was published, 'Sartor Resartus' had
+acquired such a popularity that thirty thousand copies were almost
+immediately sold, and since his death it has been reprinted in a
+sixpenny form; it has penetrated far and wide through all classes, and
+it is now, I suppose, one of the most popular and most influential of
+the books that were published in England in the second quarter of the
+century.
+
+Such a contrast between the first reception and the later judgment of
+a book is very remarkable, and it applies more or less to all
+Carlyle's earlier writings. It is a memorable fact in the literary
+history of the nineteenth century that one of the greatest and most
+industrious writers in England lived for many years in such poverty
+that he often thought of abandoning literature and emigrating to the
+colonies, and he would probably have done so if he had not found in
+public lecturing a means of supplying his frugal wants. The cause of
+this long-continued neglect is partly, no doubt, to be found in his
+style, for, like Browning, Carlyle wrote an English which was so
+contorted and sometimes so obscure that his readers had to be slowly
+educated into understanding, or at least enjoying, it. But there are
+other and deeper causes which I propose to devote the short time at my
+disposal to indicating.
+
+It has been truly said that there are two great classes among writers.
+There are those who are echoes and there are those who are voices.
+There are some writers who represent faithfully and express strongly
+the dominant tendencies, opinions, habits, characteristics of their
+age, collecting as in a focus the half-formed thoughts that are
+prevailing around them, giving them an articulate voice, and by the
+force of their advocacy greatly strengthening them. There are others
+who either start new ways of thinking for which the public around
+them are still unprepared, or who throw themselves in opposition to
+the dominant tendencies of their times, pointing out the evils and
+dangers connected with them, and dwelling specially on neglected
+truths. It is not surprising that the first class are by far the most
+popular. The public is much like Narcissus in the fable, who fell in
+love with his own reflection in the water. All men like to find their
+own opinions expressed with a power and eloquence they cannot
+themselves attain, and most men dislike a writer who, in the first
+flush of a great enthusiasm, points out all that can be said on the
+other side. But when the first enthusiasm is over--when the prevailing
+tendency has fully triumphed and the evils and defects connected with
+it are disclosed--the words of this unpopular or neglected teacher
+will begin to gather weight. It will be found that although he may not
+have been wiser than those who advocated the other side, yet his words
+contained exactly that kind of truth which was most needed or most
+generally forgotten, and his reputation will steadily rise.
+
+This appears to me to have been very much the position which Carlyle
+occupied towards the chief questions of his day, and it explains, I
+think, in a great degree the growth of his influence. It is
+remarkable, indeed, how many things there are in his writings which
+appeared paradoxes when he wrote, and which now seem almost truisms.
+Thus at a time when the political and intellectual ascendency of
+France over the Continent was at its height, Carlyle was one of the
+few men who clearly recognised the essential greatness that lay hid in
+Germany, and especially in Prussia--a greatness which after the wars
+of 1866 and 1870 became very evident to the world. He was one of the
+first men in England to recognise the importance of German
+literature, and especially the supreme greatness of Goethe. His
+translation of 'Wilhelm Meister' was published in 1824, and his noble
+essay on Goethe in 1832; but at first it seemed to find scarcely any
+echo. The editor for whom he wrote it reported that all the opinions
+he could gather about this essay were 'eminently unfavourable.' De
+Quincey, who of all English critics was believed to know Germany best,
+and Jeffrey, who exercised the greatest influence on English literary
+opinion, combined to depreciate or ridicule Goethe. But there is now
+no educated man who disputes that Carlyle in this matter was
+essentially right, and that his critics were wholly wrong. And to turn
+to subjects more directly connected with England, Carlyle wrote at a
+time when the whole school of what was called advanced thought rested
+upon the theory that the province of Government ought to be made as
+small as possible, and that all the relations of classes should be
+reduced to simple, temporary contracts founded on mutual interest.
+According to this theory, it was the one duty of Government to keep
+order. For the rest it should stand aside, and not attempt to meddle
+in social or industrial questions. The most complete liberty of
+thought and action should be established, and everything should be
+left to unrestricted competition--to the free play of unprivileged,
+untrammelled, unguided social forces. This was the theory which was
+called orthodox political economy--the _laisser-faire_ system--the
+philosophy of competition or supply and demand, and it was incessantly
+denounced by Carlyle as Mammon worship, as 'devil take the hindmost,'
+as 'pure egoism'; 'the shabbiest gospel that had been taught among
+men.' He declared that in the long run no society could flourish, or
+even permanently cohere, if the only relation between man and man was
+a mere money tie. He maintained that what he called the condition of
+England question, or, in other words, the great mass of struggling,
+anarchical poverty that was growing up in the chief centres of
+population, was a question which imperiously demanded the most
+strenuous Government intervention--which was, in fact, far more
+important than any of the purely political questions. The whole system
+of factory legislation, the whole system of legislation about working
+men's dwellings, which has taken place in this century, has been a
+realisation of the ideas of Carlyle. When Carlyle first wrote, it was
+the received opinion that the education of the people was a matter in
+which the Government should in no degree interfere, and that it ought
+to be left altogether to individuals, or Churches, or societies. In
+his work on Chartism, which was published as early as 1834, Carlyle
+argued that the 'universal education of the people' was an
+indispensable duty of the Government. It was not until about twenty
+years ago that this duty was fully recognised in England. In the same
+work he maintained that State-aided, State-organised, State-directed
+emigration must one day be undertaken on a large scale, as the only
+efficient agent in coping with the great masses of growing pauperism.
+In his 'Past and Present,' which was published in 1843, he threw out
+another idea which has proved very prolific, and which is probably
+destined to become still more so. It is that it may become both
+possible and needful for the master worker 'to grant his workers
+permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs.'
+
+It is evident how much less strange those ideas appear now than they
+did when they were first put out some fifty years ago. One of the
+most remarkable changes that has taken place during the lives of men
+who are still of middle age has been in the opinion of advanced
+thinkers about the function of Government. In the early days of
+Carlyle the whole set, or lie, of opinion in England was towards
+cutting in all directions the bands of Government control, diminishing
+as much as possible the sphere of Government functions or
+interference. It was a revolt against the old Tory system of paternal
+Government, against the system of Guilds, against the State
+regulations which once prevailed in all departments of industrial
+life. In the present generation it is not too much to say that the
+current has been absolutely reversed. The constantly increasing
+tendency, whenever any abuse of any kind is discovered, is to call
+upon Parliament to make a law to remedy it. Every year the network of
+regulation is strengthened; every year there is an increasing
+disposition to enlarge and multiply the functions, powers, and
+responsibilities of Government. I should not be dealing sincerely with
+you if I did not express my own opinion that this tendency carries
+with it dangers even more serious than those of the opposite
+exaggerations of a past century: dangers to character by sapping the
+spirit of self-reliance and independence; dangers to liberty by
+accustoming men to the constant interference of authority, and
+abridging in innumerable ways the freedom of action and choice. I wish
+I could persuade those who form their estimate of the province of
+Government from Carlyle's 'Past and Present' and 'Latter-day
+Pamphlets' to study also the admirable little treatise of Herbert
+Spencer, called 'The Man and the State,' in which the opposite side is
+argued. What I have said however, is sufficient to show how
+remarkably Carlyle, in some of the parts of his teaching that were
+once the most unpopular, anticipated tendencies which only became very
+apparent in practical politics when he was an old man or after his
+death.
+
+The main and fundamental part of his teaching is the supreme sanctity
+of work; the duty imposed on every human being, be he rich or be he
+poor, to find a life-purpose and to follow it out strenuously and
+honestly. 'All true work,' he said, 'is religion'; and the essence of
+every sound religion is, 'Know thy work and do it.' In his conception
+of life all true dignity and nobility grows out of the honest
+discharge of practical duty. He had always a strong sympathy with the
+feudal system which annexed indissolubly the idea of public function
+with the possession of property. The great landlord who is wisely
+governing large districts and using all his influence to diffuse
+order, comfort, education, and civilisation among his tenantry; the
+captain of industry who is faithfully and honestly organising the
+labour of thousands, and regarding his task as a moral duty; the rich
+man who, with all the means of enjoyment at his feet, devotes his
+energies 'to make some nook of God's creation a little fruitfuller,
+better, more worthy of God--to make some human hearts a little wiser,
+manfuller, happier, more blessed,' always received his admiration and
+applause. No one, on the other hand, spoke with more contempt of a
+governing class which had ceased to govern; of titles which had lost
+their original meaning, and no longer implied or expressed duties
+performed; of wealth that was employed solely or mainly in selfish
+enjoyment or in idle show. It was Carlyle's deep conviction that the
+best test of the moral worth of every nation, class, and individual,
+is to be found in their standard of work and in their dislike to a
+useless and idle life. As is well known, he had no sympathy with the
+prevailing political ideas. He believed that men were not only not
+equal, but were profoundly unequal; that it was the first interest of
+society that the wisest men should be selected as its leaders, and
+that the popular methods of finding the wisest were by no means those
+which were most likely to succeed. 'No British man,' he complained,
+'can attain to be a statesman or chief of workers till he has first
+proved himself a chief of talkers.' 'The two greatest nations in the
+world, the English and American, are all going to wind and tongue.' He
+believed much more than his contemporaries did that there was need and
+room in our modern English life for strong Government organisation,
+guidance, discipline, reverence, obedience, and control. 'Wise
+command, wise obedience,' he wrote in one of his 'Latter-day
+Pamphlets,' 'the capability of these two is the best measure of
+culture and human virtue in every man.'
+
+There is another class of workers to which he himself belonged--the
+men who are the teachers of mankind. He taught them by his example as
+well as by his precepts. Whatever else may be said about Carlyle, no
+one can question that he took his literary vocation most seriously. He
+was for a long time a very poor man, but he never sought wealth by
+advocating popular opinions, by pandering to common prejudices, or by
+veiling most unpalatable beliefs. In the vast mass of literature which
+he has bequeathed to us there is no scamped work, and every competent
+judge has recognised the untiring and conscientious accuracy with
+which he verified and sifted the minutest fact. His standard of
+truthfulness was extremely high, and one of his great quarrels with
+his age was that it was an age of half-beliefs and insincere
+professions. He maintained that religious beliefs which had once been
+living realities had too often degenerated into mere formulas, untruly
+professed or mechanically repeated with the lips only, and without any
+genuine or heartfelt conviction. He often repeated a saying of
+Coleridge: 'They do not believe--they only believe that they believe.'
+He used to speak of men who 'played false with their intellects'; or,
+in other words, turned away their minds from unwelcome truths and by
+allowing their wishes or interests to sway their judgments, persuaded
+or half-persuaded themselves to believe whatever they wished. A firm
+grasp of facts, he maintained, was the first characteristic of an
+honest mind; the main element in all honest, intellectual work. His
+own special talent was the gift of insight, the power of looking into
+the heart of things, piercing to essential facts, discerning the real
+characters of men, their true measure of genuine, solid worth. Creeds,
+professions, opinions, circumstances, all these are the externals or
+clothes of men. It is necessary to look behind them and beyond them if
+we would reach the genuine human heart. One of the reasons why he
+detested what he called stump oratory was because he believed it to be
+a great school of insincerity. Its end was not truth, but
+plausibility. It was the effort of interested men to throw opinions
+into such forms as might most captivate uninstructed men; to keep back
+every unpopular side; to magnify everything in them that was
+seductive. He once said to me that two great curses seemed to him
+eating away the heart and worth of the English people. One was drink.
+The other was stump oratory, which accustomed men to say without
+shame what they did not in their hearts believe to be true, and
+accustomed their hearers to accept such a proceeding as perfectly
+natural. And the same strong passion for veracity he carried into his
+judgment of other forms of work. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that
+the standard of conscientious work had been lowered in England through
+the feverish competition of modern times, and under the system of what
+he called 'cheap and nasty'; that English work had lost something of
+its old solidity and worth, and was now made rather to captivate than
+to wear. Carlyle saw in this much more than an industrial change. He
+maintained that the love and pride of thorough work had long been a
+pre-eminently English quality, that it was the very tap-root of the
+moral worth of the English character, and that anything that tended to
+weaken it was a grave moral evil.
+
+It is worth while trying to understand what truth underlay those parts
+of his teaching which seem most repulsive. The worship of force, which
+is so apparent in many of his writings, is a striking example. He was
+often accused of teaching that might is right. He always answered that
+he had not done so--that what he taught was that right is might; that
+by the providential constitution of the Universe truth in the long run
+is sure to be stronger than falsehood; that good will prevail over
+evil, and that right and might, though they differ widely in short
+periods of time, would in long spaces prove to be identical. Nothing,
+he was accustomed to say, seemed weaker than the Christian religion
+when the disciples assembled in the upper room; yet it was in truth
+the strongest thing in the world, and it accordingly prevailed. It was
+one of his favourite sayings 'that the soul of the Universe is just,'
+and he believed therefore that the ultimate fate of nations, whether
+it be good or bad, was very much what they deserved. It is curious to
+observe the analogy between this teaching and the doctrine of the
+survival of the fittest, which a very different teacher--Charles
+Darwin--has made so conspicuous.
+
+He scandalised--and I think with a good deal of reason--most of his
+contemporaries by the ridicule which he threw upon the career of
+Howard, and upon the great movement for prison reform which was so
+actively pursued in his time. Much of what he wrote on this subject
+is, to me at least, very repulsive; but you will generally find in the
+most extravagant utterances of Carlyle that there is some true meaning
+at bottom. He maintained that the passion for reforming and improving
+prisons and prison-life had been carried in England to such a point
+that the lot of a convicted criminal was often much better than that
+of an honest and struggling artisan. He believed that a just and wise
+distribution of compassion is a most important element of national
+well-being, and that the English people are very apt to be indifferent
+to great masses of unobtrusive, struggling, honourable, unsensational
+poverty at their very doors, while they fall into paroxysms of emotion
+about the actors in some sensational crime, about some seductive
+murderess, about the wrongs of some far-off and often half-savage
+race. 'In one of these Lancashire weavers dying with hunger there is
+more thought and heart, a greater arithmetical amount of misery and
+desperation, than in whole gangs of Quashees.' He maintained, too,
+that a strain of sentiment about criminals was very prevalent in his
+day, which tended seriously to obliterate or diminish the real
+difference between right and wrong. He hated with an intense hatred
+that whole system of philosophy which denied that there was a deep,
+essential, fundamental difference between right and wrong, and turned
+the whole matter into a mere calculation of interests. He was
+accustomed to say that one of the chief merits of Christianity was
+that it taught that right and wrong were as far apart as Heaven and
+Hell, and that no greater calamity can befall a nation than a
+weakening of the righteous hatred of evil.
+
+The parts of Carlyle's teaching on which I have dwelt to-day will be
+chiefly found in his 'Past and Present,' his 'Heroes and Hero
+Worship,' his 'Latter-day Pamphlets,' his 'Chartism,' and in the two
+admirable essays called 'Signs of the Times' and 'Characteristics.' In
+my own opinion, though Carlyle teaches much, his writings are most
+valuable as a moral force. Very few great writers have maintained more
+steadily that the moral element is the deepest and most important part
+of our being, deeper and stronger than all intellectual
+considerations. In his writings, amid much that has imperishable
+value, there is, I think, much that is exaggerated, much that is
+one-sided, much that is unwise. But no one can be imbued with his
+teaching without finding it a great moral tonic, and deriving from it
+a nobler, braver, and more unworldly conception of human life.
+
+
+
+
+ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS[8]
+
+
+Among the strange and unforeseen developments that have characterised
+the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, few are likely to be
+regarded by the future historian with a deeper or more melancholy
+interest than the anti-Semite movement, which has swept with such a
+portentous rapidity over a great part of Europe. It has produced in
+Russia by far the most serious religious persecution of the century.
+It has raged fiercely in Roumania, the other great centre of the
+Oriental Jews. In enlightened Germany it has become a considerable
+parliamentary force. In Austria it counts among its adherents men of
+the highest social station. Even France, which from the days of the
+Revolution has been specially distinguished for its liberality to the
+Jews, has not escaped the contagion. General Boulanger found the
+anti-Jewish sentiment sufficiently powerful to make an appeal to it
+one of the articles of his programme, and the extraordinary popularity
+of the writings of Drumont shows that Boulanger had not altogether
+miscalculated its force.
+
+It is this movement which has been the occasion of the very valuable
+work of M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu on 'Israel among the Nations.' The
+author, who is universally recognised as one of the greatest of living
+political writers, has special qualifications for his task. With an
+exceedingly wide knowledge of the literature relating to his subject
+he combines much personal knowledge of the Jews in Palestine and in
+many other countries, and especially in those countries where the
+persecution has most furiously raged.
+
+That persecution, he justly says, unites in different degrees three of
+the most powerful elements that can move mankind--the spirit of
+religious intolerance; the spirit of exclusive nationality; and the
+jealousy which springs from trade or mercantile competition. Of these
+elements M. Leroy-Beaulieu considers the first to be on the whole the
+weakest. In that hideous Russian Persecution which 'the New Exodus' of
+Frederic has made familiar to the English reader, the religious
+element certainly occupies a very leading place. Pobedonosteff, who
+shared with his master the chief guilt and infamy of this atrocious
+crime, belonged to the same type as the Torquemadas of the past, and
+the spirit that animated him has entered largely into the anti-Semite
+movement in other lands. The 'Gloria' of Galdos, perhaps the most
+powerful religious novel of our time, describes the conflict in modern
+Spain of the fanaticism of Catholicism with the fanaticism of Judaism.
+Even the old calumny that the Jews are accustomed at Easter to murder
+Christian children in order to mix their blood with the passover
+bread, is still living in many parts of Europe. M. Leroy-Beaulieu has
+collected much curious evidence on the subject. It is a calumny which
+appears first to have become popular about 1100 A.D. It is
+embodied in a well-known tale of Chaucer. It is the subject of one of
+the great frescoes that were painted around the Cathedral of Toledo to
+commemorate the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Two Popes of the
+thirteenth century, to their great honour, declared its falsehood,
+and by the order of Benedict XIV. Ganganelli wrote a full memoir
+examining and refuting it. But in spite of all condemnations, in spite
+of many exposures in the law courts, it is still a popular belief in
+Russia, Poland, Roumania, Hungary, and Bohemia, and even within the
+last ten years it has been the direct cause of many outrages against
+the Jews.
+
+Another element to which M. Leroy-Beaulieu attaches considerable
+importance is the Kultur Kampf in Germany. When the German Government
+was engaged in its fierce struggle with the Catholics, these
+endeavoured to effect a diversion and to avenge themselves on papers,
+which were largely in the hands of Jews, by raising a new cry. They
+declared that a Kultur Kampf was indeed needed, but that it should be
+directed against the alien people who were undermining the moral
+foundations of Christian societies; who were the implacable enemies of
+the Christian creed and of Christian ideals. The cry was soon taken up
+by a large body of Evangelical Protestants. The 'Germania' and the
+'Civiltà Cattolica,' which were the chief organs of Ultramontanism in
+Germany and Italy, and the 'Kreuz Zeitung,' which represented the
+strictest forms of German Protestantism, agreed in fomenting it.
+
+Still more powerful, in the opinion of our author, has been the spirit
+of intense and exclusive nationality which has in the present
+generation arisen in so many countries and which seeks to expel all
+alien or heterogeneous elements, and to mould the whole national being
+into a single definite type. The movement has been still further
+strengthened by the greater keenness of trade competition. In the
+midst of many idle, drunken, and ignorant populations the shrewd,
+thrifty, and sober Jew stands conspicuous as the most successful
+trader. His rare power of judging, influencing, and managing men, his
+fertility of resource, his indomitable perseverance and industry,
+continually force him into the foremost rank, and he is prominent in
+occupations which excite much animosity. The tax-gatherer, the agent,
+the middleman, and the moneylender are very commonly of Jewish race,
+and great Jewish capitalists largely control the money markets of
+Europe at a time when capital is the special object of socialistic
+attacks.
+
+The most valuable portion of this work is, I think, that examining the
+part which the Jewish race is now playing in the world, and tracing
+the action of historical causes on the formation of their character.
+On the old problem of the continued existence of the race through so
+many ages M. Leroy-Beaulieu has much to say. He reminds us that in the
+East the idea of nationality is habitually absorbed in the idea of
+religion, and that there are many examples of the long survival of
+peoples or tribes which have lost their political individuality. He
+instances the Copts of Egypt, the Maronites and Druses of Lebanon, the
+Parsees of India, the Armenians and Greeks of Asia as displaying,
+though in a less degree, the same phenomenon as the Jews. He
+attributes the long continuance of the Jews as a separate people
+mainly to two causes. One of them is Christian hatred, which compelled
+the Jews for many centuries to remain a separate people, unmixed with
+surrounding nations; living in a separate quarter; marrying among
+themselves; strengthened and disciplined in the struggle of life by
+enormous difficulties and by the constant elimination through
+persecution of the weaker elements. The other is the very elaborate
+Jewish ritual extending to all departments of life, which has stamped
+upon them an intensely distinctive character.
+
+The force of these causes is undoubted, but they are not, I think, the
+only elements to be considered. M. Leroy-Beaulieu appears to me to
+have somewhat underrated the physiological force and tenacity of the
+Jewish race-type. Following the line of reasoning of a remarkable
+essay of Renan, he shows very clearly that the modern Jews are far
+from being pure Semites. He proves from Josephus and from other
+sources that there was a considerable period, both before and after
+the Christian era, when great numbers of Greeks, Latins, and Egyptians
+adopted the Jewish faith; that much alien blood afterward poured into
+the race through conversions among the barbarians and through the
+circumcision of the slaves of Jewish masters, and that there is even
+reason to believe that, in some periods of history, marriages with
+Christians were not infrequent. It is probable, however, that most
+alien elements that were introduced into the race sooner or later
+mingled with the old stock, and no fact is more clearly shown than the
+extraordinary power of the Jewish type to survive and dominate in a
+mixed race. A single instance of a marriage with a Jewess will be
+sufficient to perpetuate it in a family for many generations. In this
+fact the Jews possess an element of stability which is wholly
+independent of all considerations of creed and ritual. Few things are
+more curious than the effect of persecution on the Jewish element in
+Spain and Portugal. Tens of thousands of Jews in those countries were
+burned at the stake or driven into exile, but great numbers also
+conformed. They mixed in a few generations with the old Christian
+population, and Spain and Portugal, M. Leroy-Beaulieu truly says, are
+now among the countries in which the Jewish blood is most evidently
+and most widely diffused.
+
+Another consideration, which M. Leroy-Beaulieu has omitted to mention,
+but which appears to me to have much weight, is the condemnation of
+lending money at interest by the Church. This condemnation, which
+lasted many centuries, had two important consequences. One of them was
+that the Jews became almost the only moneylenders in Europe. The trade
+was deemed sinful for a Christian, but it was found to be a very
+necessary one; and the Jews (as some Catholic theologians observed)
+being already damned, were allowed to practise it. The other
+consequence was that on account of the stigma which the Church
+attached to moneylending, the amount of money to be lent was greatly
+diminished, or in other words, the rate of interest was enormously and
+artificially raised. At a time, therefore, when Catholic intolerance
+made it impossible for the Jews to mingle with and be absorbed in
+surrounding nations they acquired one of the greatest elements of
+power and stability that a race can possess--a monopoly of the most
+lucrative trade in the world.
+
+The physical characteristics of the race are very remarkable and they
+are especially displayed among the Eastern Jews, who still maintain
+scrupulously amid poverty and persecution the religious observances of
+their ancestors. It is now clearly shown that the Levitical code was
+in a high degree hygienic, and even anticipates some of the
+discoveries of modern physiology. Prescriptions about forbidden kinds
+of food and about the mode of cooking food, which only excited the
+ridicule of Voltaire, have a real hygienic value in the eyes of Claude
+Bernard and of Pasteur. The Jews have never adopted the Catholic
+notions about the sanctity of celibacy and virginity, but they lay
+great stress on the purity of marriage. Although they live chiefly in
+towns, illegitimate births are proportionately rarer among them than
+among either Protestants or Catholics. They have been as a rule
+singularly free from the kinds of vice that do most to enfeeble and
+corrode a race. They are distinguished for their domestic virtues,
+especially for care of their children, and they are nearly everywhere
+less addicted than Christian nations to intoxicating drinks. These
+things help to explain the curious fact that in nearly all countries
+the average duration of life is considerably longer among Jews than
+among Christians. This superiority is general, but, as M.
+Leroy-Beaulieu observes, it tends to diminish in Western countries
+where Jews, being freed from disabilities, are more assimilated to the
+surrounding populations. They now usually marry later than Christians;
+they have on the whole fewer children, but a proportionately larger
+number of Jewish than of Christian infants attain adult age. M.
+Leroy-Beaulieu mentions two curious facts which are less easy to
+explain. Still-born births are very rare among Jews, and there is
+among them a wholly abnormal preponderance of male births over female
+ones.
+
+It might be supposed from these facts that the Jews were a robust
+race, but no one who has come much in contact with them will share
+this delusion. Nothing is more conspicuous among them than their
+unhealthy colouring, their frail, bent, and feeble bodies. They
+develop early, but they have very little of the spring and buoyancy of
+youth and they have everywhere a low average of physical strength.
+Malformations and deformities are common among them; their nervous
+organisation is extremely sensitive, and though they are as a race
+distinguished for their sound, clear, and practical judgment, they are
+very liable to insanity and to other nervous and brain disorders.
+Physical beauty as well as physical strength is much rarer among them
+than among Christians.
+
+The causes of this inferiority may be easily explained. Life pursued
+during many generations in the crowded Ghetto; the sordid habits that
+grow out of extreme poverty and out of the assumption of the
+appearance of poverty, which is natural in a persecuted and plundered
+race, go far to explain it; but there is another and, I think, a more
+important cause which M. Leroy-Beaulieu has rather strangely
+neglected. Physical strength and beauty can be maintained at a high
+level in crowded town populations only by a constant influx from the
+country. The pure air and the healthy labour of the fields are their
+main source. This great school of health the Jews have never known.
+For many centuries it would have been impossible for them to have
+lived in peace as farmers or agricultural labourers among a Christian
+peasantry, and if they ever possessed any aptitude or taste for
+agricultural pursuits they have long since wholly lost it.
+
+Their moral like their physical characteristics present strange
+contrasts. No natural want of moral elevation or tenderness or grace
+can be ascribed to the nation that has produced both the Old Testament
+and the Gospels, and has most largely shaped and inspired the moral
+life of the civilised world. In Christian times no race has maintained
+its faith with a more devoted courage, and it has encountered and
+survived persecutions before which the persecutions of other creeds
+dwindle almost into insignificance. M. Leroy-Beaulieu quotes the
+statement of the grand Rabbi Lehmann, that it is a clearly attested
+fact that in two months of the year 1096 twelve thousand Jews, whose
+names have been preserved, were massacred in the towns of the Rhine
+alone, because they refused to accept a Christian baptism. The Spanish
+Jews who perished by one of the most excruciating deaths rather than
+forswear their faith may be numbered by thousands, and those who
+preferred exile and spoliation to apostasy, by hundreds of thousands.
+Even in our own sceptical and materialising age the conduct of the
+Russian Jews under the recent savage persecution shows that the old
+spirit is not extinct. In the face of the long and splendid roll of
+Jewish heroism, it is idle to dwell on the fact that in each great
+persecution some Jews have yielded to the fear of death and consented
+to perform the rites of a faith which they inwardly abhorred, or on
+the fact that a few Rabbis have under such circumstances justified
+these feigned conversions.
+
+Prolonged persecution, however, has had a profound influence on their
+character, and its influence in some respects has been very
+pernicious. Hatred naturally provokes hatred, and violent oppression
+against which there is no redress is naturally encountered by
+subterfuge and fraud. A race who were for centuries playing their part
+in life against overwhelming obstacles learned to avail themselves of
+every advantage. Adulation, servility, falsehood, and deception became
+common among them. They became at once hard, wily, and rapacious, and
+ready instruments in ignoble and oppressive callings. Shut out from
+open paths and honourable ambitions they haunted the obscurer byways
+of industry; they were to be found in many occupations which sharpen
+the intellect but blunt the moral sense, and they threw themselves
+passionately into the acquisition of wealth and of secret power.
+Exposed for generations, even in lands where they were not more
+seriously persecuted, to constant insult and contempt, they often lost
+their self-respect and learned to acquiesce tamely in what another
+race would resent. Slavish conditions produced, as they always do,
+slavish characteristics, and, as is always the case, those
+characteristics did not at once disappear when the conditions that
+produced them had altered.
+
+M. Leroy-Beaulieu has dwelt with much force on this subject, and he
+ascribes considerable weight to the fact that the Jews have been
+wholly outside the system of feudalism and chivalry in which the
+modern conception of honour was chiefly formed. Perhaps the Jew might
+retort with some justice, that he has had at least the compensating
+moral advantage of having derived no part of his notions of right and
+wrong from a Church in which such an institution as the Spanish
+Inquisition was deemed a holy thing.
+
+Defects of another kind have contributed largely to his unpopularity.
+Great as is the power of assimilation which the Jewish race possesses,
+the charm and grace of manner seem to have been among the qualities
+they most slowly and most imperfectly acquire. It is natural that men
+who have been excluded from honours but not from wealth should value
+money and the ostentatious display of riches more than their
+neighbours. In the professions in which the Jews chiefly excel, men
+rise most rapidly from low origin and culture to conspicuous wealth.
+Direct money-making has some tendency to materialise and lower the
+character, and Jews have been for generations prominent in occupations
+which do much to impair those delicacies of feeling on which the charm
+of manner largely depends. Besides this, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu truly
+remarks, though the oldest of the cultured races they are a race of
+_parvenus_ in the good society of Europe. In nearly all countries they
+have till very recently been excluded from the kind of society and
+from the kind of education in which the best manners are formed. The
+exaggerations of bad taste; the love of the loud, the gaudy, the
+ostentatious, and the meretricious; the awkwardness of men who are ill
+at ease in an unaccustomed sphere, who have not yet mastered the happy
+mean between arrogance and obsequiousness and who are therefore
+somewhat prone to both extremes, still frequently characterise them.
+Few persons who know Germany will doubt that the tone of manners of
+the German Jews has contributed quite as much as any other cause to
+their unpopularity.
+
+It is probable that these defects will gradually diminish, and it
+would be a grave error to regard the Jewish race as wholly devoted to
+material ends. The multitude of their martyrs is a sufficient answer
+to the charge, and no people cherish more strongly the ideals of their
+past and have more of the pride both of race and of creed. They have
+at all times, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu observes, been distinguished for
+their reverence for learning, and it is an undoubted fact that Jewish
+families and families mixed with Jewish blood have produced an amount
+and variety of ability that far exceed the average of men. The ability
+goes rather with the race than with the religion. Spinosa, Heine,
+Ricardo, and Disraeli--to quote but a few of the most illustrious
+names--were not believers in the synagogue. Some of the forms in which
+the Jews have most excelled are such as might have been expected from
+their past. It is natural that the descendants of the most nomadic
+and cosmopolitan of races should have been great masters of language
+and in the foremost rank of philologists, and it is not surprising
+that the descendants of the chief moneylenders and calculators of the
+world should have produced great financiers, and have shown a very
+eminent aptitude for mathematics. Medicine more than most professions
+depends on individual ability, and has been exercised independently of
+the favour of Churches and Governments, and in medicine the Jews were
+for a long period pre-eminent. Their marked taste and turn for music
+may appear more surprising. It is universally recognised and is
+sufficiently evident to anyone who will look at the faces of the chief
+orchestras of Europe. Besides a crowd of lesser names they have
+produced among composers Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and Halévy, and among
+contemporary performers Rubinstein, Joachim, Hermann Levy, and Lucca.
+A Jewess is the most popular tragic actress on the contemporary stage,
+and another Jewess was probably the greatest tragic actress of the
+century. M. Leroy-Beaulieu notices that in painting and sculpture the
+Jews have been less conspicuous, and he attributes this to their
+horror of idolatry. I should rather ascribe it to the fact that
+European art in its best period was mainly devoted to depicting
+Christian subjects for Christian churches. At all events several
+considerable Jewish names may be cited in contemporary art, and the
+Dutch painter who bears the name of Israels is perhaps the greatest
+living master of the pathetic in painting. In Western Europe, wherever
+public life has been opened to them, Jews have thrown themselves into
+almost all the great movements of their time and have distinguished
+themselves in nearly all. Crémieux, who was a leading figure in the
+French Republic of 1848, was a Jew both by birth and by creed. David
+Manin and Léon Gambetta had Jewish blood in their veins. Lassalle and
+Marx, the chief names in German socialism, as well as great numbers of
+their followers belong to the same race, and more than one English
+example of political eminence will occur to the reader. In both German
+and Dutch literature Jewish names are frequent and they are nearly
+everywhere prominent in journalism. In the army they have been much
+less distinguished. Many Jews no doubt serve in the great continental
+armies with honour, but the Jew is naturally a pacific being, hating
+violence and recoiling with a peculiar horror from blood. The
+beneficence of the Jew was for a long time very naturally confined to
+his own race, but since the hand of persecution has been withdrawn,
+and wherever the Jews have been suffered to mingle freely with the
+Christian population, it has taken a wider range and Jewish names are
+conspicuous in some of the best forms of unsectarian philanthropy.
+
+It is the evident tendency of modern political life to split up into a
+number of distinct groups representing distinct interests or forms of
+thought. We find a Catholic party, a Nonconformist party, a Labour
+party, a Socialist party, a Temperance party, and many others. But in
+spite of the crusade that has arisen in so many countries against the
+Jews, we nowhere find a distinct and clearly defined Jewish party. The
+tendency of the race is rather to throw themselves ardently into
+existing movements, and their power of assimilation is one of their
+most remarkable gifts. As M. Leroy-Beaulieu shows by many
+illustrations, they are apt in most Western nations even to exaggerate
+the national characteristics, though they usually combine with them a
+certain flexibility of adaptation and a certain cosmopolitanism of
+view which is essentially their own.
+
+It was inevitable that with such tendencies the old rigidity of creed
+should be impaired and that the observances which completely severed
+the Jew from other people should be discarded. There can be little
+doubt that the dissolution of old beliefs which has been such a marked
+and ominous characteristic of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century has been even more common among the Western Jews than in
+Christian nations, and it appears to have spread quite as rapidly
+among the women as among the men. Many Jews have passed into complete
+religious indifference--into absolute and often very cynical negation.
+They have become, as Sheridan wittily said, like the blank page
+between the Old and the New Testament. Others have taken refuge in a
+kind of highly rationalised Judaism little different from pure Theism.
+Some of the most independent, scientific, and trenchant criticism of
+the Old Testament writings has proceeded from members of the race
+which was once distinguished for the most complete and superstitious
+worship of the letter of the law. Spinoza in his 'Tractatus
+Theologico-Politicus' led the way in this path, and in our own day I
+need only mention the writings of Salvador, Kalisch, and Darmesteter
+and the remarkable Hibbert Lectures of Mr. Montefiore.
+
+This movement, however, is chiefly confined to the Western Jews. The
+Oriental Jews have retained in a far greater measure their old creed
+and ritual, their old fanaticism and aspirations. To them Palestine is
+still the land of promise, and they still dream that it is destined to
+become once more a Jewish State. Few persons who consider the
+conditions of the East and the power of the Jewish race will
+pronounce the realisation of this dream to be impossible or even in a
+very high degree improbable. Perhaps the most formidable obstacle is
+the poverty of the land and the total absence among the Jews of
+agricultural tastes and aptitudes. One thing, however, may be safely
+predicted. If Palestine is ever again to become a Jewish land, this
+will be effected only through the wealth and energy of the Western
+Jews, and it is not those Jews who are likely to inhabit it.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Mr. Lecky had made various notes with the intention of bringing this
+essay up to date, but failing health prevented him from accomplishing
+it.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+MADAME DE STAËL
+
+
+Among the many important works which have lately been published on the
+Continent, reconstructing the history of France during the struggle of
+the Revolution and during the periods that immediately preceded and
+followed it, scarcely any have been so comprehensive, and not many
+have been so valuable, as 'The History of the Life and Times of Madame
+de Staël,' by Lady Blennerhassett. The author--a Bavarian lady who was
+an intimate friend and favourite pupil of Dr. Döllinger--has brought
+to her task a knowledge, which is scarcely rivalled in its
+completeness, of the French, German, English, and Italian literatures
+relating to the period; and she has produced a work of which it is in
+one sense the merit, but in another the defect, that it sweeps over a
+far wider field than might be expected from its title. It is seldom, I
+think, a judicious thing to confuse the provinces of history and
+biography by turning the life of an individual into an elaborate
+history of his time; and in the few cases in which this method has
+been successfully pursued, the biographer has selected as his subject
+some man like Cromwell, or Frederick the Great, or Napoleon, who was
+indisputably the chief mover of his age. When figures of less
+prominence are chosen, both the history and the biography are apt to
+suffer. The true perspective, or relative magnitude, of events is
+impaired, and the book is almost sure to lose something of its
+artistic charm and of its popularity. Mr. Masson, as it seems to me,
+committed a mistake of this kind in his 'Life of Milton,' when he
+grouped around the great Puritan poet--who, however illustrious, was
+certainly not the central figure of his time--a full and valuable
+history of the Commonwealth, and of large sections of the reigns of
+Charles I. and Charles II.
+
+In like manner, a great part of the work of Lady Blennerhassett is not
+biography, but history, and history of a very high order. Madame de
+Staël was so closely connected in her own person, and still more
+through her father, with the early events of the French Revolution,
+that we accept with gratitude the admirable sketch of that period
+which Lady Blennerhassett has given us; but we should scarcely expect
+to find in a work primarily devoted to Madame de Staël full and
+masterly accounts of the Ministry of Turgot, of the rise and teaching
+of the Economists, of the rival influence of the writings of
+Montesquieu and Rousseau on the French political character, of the
+effect of English influence and American example in preparing the
+Revolution, and of the part played by Germans and Swedes in French
+politics. At the same time, the pictures of the social and
+intellectual life prevailing in the different countries with which
+Madame de Staël was connected, and the full accounts given of a crowd
+of persons with whom she came into casual contact, though in
+themselves both interesting and valuable, often tend to divert the
+reader from the main subject of the book. In truth, Lady
+Blennerhassett has not been able to resist the temptation of a very
+full mind to pour out all its knowledge, and, while possessing many
+rare and brilliant literary gifts, she appears to me to want that
+restraining sense of literary perspective which gives biography its
+true proportion and symmetry. This defect has, I fear, diminished the
+popularity of a most valuable book. In the original German, and in an
+excellent French translation which was revised by the author and which
+I especially commend to my readers, the work consists of three very
+substantial volumes.[9] A hasty reader will readily conclude that, in
+this short and crowded life, such a space is far more than should be
+allotted to a long-vanished figure which, though interesting and
+brilliant, was not of the first magnitude. But if he has the courage
+to persevere, he will soon discover that few modern books have lighted
+up in so many directions the political, social, moral, and
+intellectual history of a momentous period, and have exhibited at once
+so many kinds of talent and so wide a range of sympathies and
+knowledge. The complete competence, the firm, sober, and--if I may use
+the expression--masculine judgment with which Lady Blennerhassett has
+grasped the great political problems of the period of the Revolution,
+is not less conspicuous than the truly feminine delicacy of
+observation and touch with which she has delineated social life in
+many different countries, and painted the finer shades of many widely
+dissimilar characters.
+
+Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born in Paris on April 22, 1766. Her
+father was at that time known only as a Swiss banker of high character
+and reputation, who had amassed a vast fortune and had come to Paris
+for his private affairs; but about two years after the birth of his
+daughter he was appointed to represent the interests of Geneva at
+Paris, and when she was ten years old he rose, for the first time, to
+a leading place in the Ministry of France. Her mother had been the
+Mademoiselle Curchod whose charms and accomplishments had captivated
+Gibbon when he was a young man at Lausanne. Every reader of his
+autobiography will remember the famous passage in which he describes
+his engagement, the opposition of his father, and the resignation with
+which he 'sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son.' M. d'Haussonville
+has published from the archives at Coppet some melancholy letters
+which show clearly that Gibbon exhibited more heartlessness and
+inflicted more suffering than might be gathered from his own stately
+narrative. But no lasting scar remained. After a few years of poverty
+and hardship, during which she was obliged to earn a livelihood as a
+schoolmistress, Mademoiselle Curchod found in Necker a husband who
+realised her fondest wishes; and when, soon after, she became the
+centre of a brilliant salon at Paris, her former lover, then in the
+zenith of his fame, was often among her guests. Madame Necker did not
+always abstain from slightly veiled allusions to the past, but it is
+pleasant to see that a warm and solid friendship seems to have grown
+up between Gibbon and both his host and hostess. A pretty anecdote is
+related of how, on one occasion, after he had left the house, they
+agreed in expressing the deep regret with which they looked forward to
+his approaching departure for England; when their little daughter, who
+was then just ten years old, gravely offered to prevent the
+catastrophe by marrying the illustrious, but by no means
+prepossessing, historian.
+
+It was a saying of Talleyrand that he who had not lived before 1789
+had never known the full charm of life. Germaine Necker grew up in the
+last bright flush of a society which had, perhaps, as many
+fascinations as any that the world has known. Her mother, however,
+though she occupied a prominent position in this brilliant world, was
+never altogether of it. She shared fully, indeed, its intellectual
+tastes, and had herself won some small place in literature. She threw
+herself ardently into its philanthropic movements, and especially into
+that for the reform of the hospitals. She formed a warm and true
+friendship with Buffon and Thomas. She corresponded with Voltaire, and
+attracted to her house most of the best writers of the age. But to the
+last she remained eminently and characteristically Swiss, and she
+never acquired the light touch, or the easy, pliant grace, of the true
+Parisian. She was a little cold, a little prim, a little pedantic, a
+little self-conscious. Neither her reserved manners nor her strong
+domestic tastes, nor the vein of Puritanism that ran through her
+opinions, harmonised with the lax and sceptical society around her,
+and it was no sacrifice to her to exchange the splendours and the
+gaieties of Paris for her peaceful retreat on the Lake of Geneva.
+
+In this, as in most respects, her daughter was very different. In her
+the Swiss element had altogether disappeared, and, as is often the
+case with the eminent child of eminent parents, her character shot out
+in directions wholly unlike both that of her father and that of her
+mother. She was not beautiful, though her dark and eminently lustrous
+eyes, beaming with intelligence, and her rich brown tint, gave some
+charm to her large and rather coarse features; while her massive
+shoulders, arms, and breast, her full lips and the firm grasp of her
+vigorous hand, indicated a strong, frank, ruling, and passionate
+nature, overflowing with life and with many forms of energy. Her
+education was somewhat fitfully conducted, but she threw herself
+eagerly into literary enthusiasms. At fifteen we find her annotating
+Montesquieu. Raynal and Richardson were among her idols, but, like
+most of the more ardent spirits of her generation, her ideas and
+character were moulded chiefly by the genius of Rousseau. Her first
+work of importance was an exposition of his doctrines, and his
+influence left deep traces on both 'Corinne' and 'Delphine.' Her
+strong sane judgment, however, her genuine humanity, and the
+moderating influence of her father, saved her from being swept away,
+like Madame Roland and most of the disciples of Rousseau, by the
+sanguinary torrent of revolutionary enthusiasm; and in times of wild
+passion and exaggeration she usually exhibited a singular soundness
+and sobriety of political judgment. She was sometimes mistaken, but on
+the whole it may well be doubted whether there is any other French
+writer or politician of the period of the Revolution whose
+contemporary judgments of men and events have been more frequently
+ratified by posterity.
+
+In this respect she was not of the school of Rousseau. In another and
+less admirable way she was curiously untouched by his spirit, for few
+superior intellects have been so openly, so utterly, insensible to the
+charms of nature. She once spoke of 'the infernal peace' of her Swiss
+home, and she candidly acknowledged that if it were not for respect
+for the opinions of others she would not open her window to look for
+the first time on the Bay of Naples, though she would gladly travel
+five hundred leagues to make the acquaintance of a man of talent. On
+the borders of the Lake of Geneva, with one of the fairest scenes on
+earth expanding before her, she was incessantly pining for 'le
+ruisseau de la Rue du Bac'--for the interest and the excitement of a
+society which had become the passion of her life.
+
+Her gifts of conversation were very wonderful, and she had a wide
+range of sympathies, keen insight into character, and great power of
+describing it by a few vivid words. She had, however, no reticence or
+reserve, she made many enemies by her unbounded frankness, and she
+often fatigued or overwhelmed by her exuberant animal spirits and by
+the torrent of her words. At the same time, unlike most great talkers,
+she possessed to a very eminent degree the gifts of learning from
+others, of grasping the characteristic features of their teaching, of
+awakening sympathies, of dispelling bashfulness, and of kindling
+latent intellect into a flame. Few women combined so remarkably a
+sound and moderate judgment with extreme vividness and impetuosity of
+emotion. She admired deeply, and she generally admired wisely; her
+first judgments and impulses were almost always generous; and,
+although she was subject to violent gusts of passion, she could be
+very patient with those she loved. Through her whole life she was the
+warmest and most self-sacrificing of friends, and her few antipathies
+were singularly devoid of rancour. One of those who knew her best
+pronounced her to be 'absolutely incapable of hatred.'
+
+She soon became the most attractive figure in the salon of Madame
+Necker, and as the health of her mother declined she became its
+central figure. Her rare accomplishments and her position as a great
+heiress naturally would have drawn many suitors around her, but in
+that age the determined Protestantism of her family was a formidable
+barrier. It appears from something that she wrote late in life to a
+German correspondent that, when a mere girl, she had come under the
+spell of Louis de Narbonne, who asked her hand, and with whom, in
+after years, she had relations which caused much scandal and which
+greatly coloured her political life. The story that her parents at one
+time contemplated a marriage between her and William Pitt, on the
+occasion of his visit to France in 1783, was discredited by Lord
+Stanhope; but M. d'Haussonville pronounces it to be quite true, though
+there is no clear evidence that Pitt was apprised of the wish of the
+Neckers. She was then only seventeen, and her vehement protest against
+an English marriage nipped the project in the bud. In 1786, however, a
+marriage was negotiated for her with the Swedish ambassador, the Baron
+de Staël, who was at that time a special favourite of Gustavus III. It
+was a marriage into which but little affection entered, and twelve
+years later it ended in a separation. There was afterward, it is true,
+a partial reconciliation, and she was present with her husband when he
+died, in 1802, on the way from Paris to Coppet.
+
+Her marriage gave her an independent position, and she mixed much in
+the politics of the early days of the Revolution. She corresponded
+regularly with the Swedish King, and formed intimate friendships with
+great numbers of the guiding politicians. The proudest moment of her
+life was in August 1788, when, amid a transport of transient
+enthusiasm and extravagant hopefulness, her father was for the second
+time called to the helm. Her devotion to him amounted almost to
+adoration, and she would never acknowledge, what the rest of the world
+soon perceived, that, though excellently adapted to be Minister in
+quiet, regular times, he had neither the daring nor the insight, nor
+the commanding power, that was needed to guide the bark of State
+through the fierce storms of the Revolution. She fully shared the
+enthusiasm with which the opening of the States General was received.
+She mentions that on that occasion she was watching the procession
+from a window with Madame de Montmorin, wife of the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs, and that as she expressed her delight, her companion
+said: 'You are wrong in rejoicing; great calamities will follow from
+this to France and to us.' The words were truly prophetic. Madame de
+Montmorin perished on the scaffold with one of her sons; the other was
+drowned. Her husband was murdered in prison during the massacre of the
+second of September. Her eldest daughter died in the prison hospital.
+Her youngest daughter withered away when not yet thirty,
+broken-hearted by the calamities of her family.
+
+Madame de Staël, too, soon discovered that no millennium was at hand.
+She was an eye-witness of the terrible scenes of the fifth and sixth
+of October, when Versailles was invaded by a half-famished mob, when
+the guards were cut down and beheaded, and when the royal family were
+brought captive to Paris. She clearly saw that all power was passing
+from the Government to the clubs, and that the mob violence which
+reigned was either instigated or deliberately connived at by the very
+men whose first duty was to repress it. 'These gentlemen,' she once
+said, 'are like the rainbow; they always appear when the storm is
+over.' Under her influence the Swedish Embassy became the chief centre
+in which the 'Constitutional Party' was organised. Narbonne and
+Talleyrand were then completely devoted to her. Ségur, Choiseul, the
+Prince de Broglie, and other members of the party were constantly at
+her house; and at what were called her 'coalition dinners' she brought
+them in contact with leading men of other groups. She had a
+conspicuous talent for inspiring, encouraging, conciliating, and
+organising a party; and for some months she exercised a very real
+political influence. Her aim was a constitutional monarchy of the
+English type; but she came gradually to believe that a republic, or at
+least a change of Sovereigns, had become inevitable. She never wavered
+in her devotion to liberty, order, and justice; but on minor questions
+she always exhibited a spirit of compromise which was very rare in her
+age and in her country. 'The true line of conduct in politics,' she
+once said, 'is always to be ready to rally to the least obnoxious
+party among your adversaries, even though it is far from representing
+exactly your own point of view.' At the end of 1791 she had a moment
+of delicious triumph, when her favourite Narbonne became Minister of
+War. Marie Antoinette, who disliked her, clearly recognised her hand.
+'Count Louis de Narbonne,' she wrote to Fersen, 'has been Minister of
+War since yesterday. What a glory for Madame de Staël and what a
+pleasure for her to have the whole army at her disposal!'
+
+The triumphs of Madame de Staël, however, were very fleeting. Her
+father had fallen irretrievably, and in September 1790 he passed
+almost unnoticed out of the country where, but little more than a year
+before, he had been welcomed with such enthusiasm. The Ministry of
+Narbonne, to which she had attached her most ardent hopes, ended in
+four months, and before its conclusion her husband, whose views on
+French politics had been for some time diverging from those of his
+Sovereign, was recalled. He was not, however, replaced, and Madame de
+Staël remained alone in Paris till September 1792. Her position there
+was an extremely dangerous one. She had long been an object of
+incessant abuse in the Royalist press, and now the red waves of
+Jacobinism were rising higher and higher, surging fiercely around
+those to whom she was most attached. Nothing in her life is so
+admirable as the courage with which, in this period of the Revolution,
+she devoted herself to saving the lives of the proscribed. Her purse
+was always open, and she often risked not only her fortune, but her
+life. The royal family had always disliked her; but she was filled
+with horror at the fate that was impending over them, and she herself
+organised a plan for their escape, in which, if it had been accepted,
+she would have borne a leading part, at the imminent risk of her head;
+and she afterward wrote an earnest and eloquent pamphlet in the hope
+of saving the life of the Queen. Sometimes by interceding with those
+in power, sometimes by concealing fugitives in the Swedish Embassy,
+very often by large and timely gifts of money, she saved many. Her own
+life, at the time of the September massacres, was in extreme danger,
+and she at last fled to Switzerland. Coppet then became a great centre
+of refugees, and many of them owed their lives to her help. Among
+others, Narbonne appears to have owed his escape, in part at least, to
+her assistance, and she chiefly managed the escape of his daughter.
+She was for a long time completely under his charm; but he is said to
+have been irritated by her often tactless impetuosity, and especially
+by the manner in which public opinion regarded him as her creature,
+and he seems to have treated her with much ingratitude. There was no
+violent breach, but there was a separation, and a wound which was long
+and bitterly felt. Many years later, Madame de Staël, when praising
+the Prince de Ligne, said of him: 'He had the manners of Monsieur de
+Narbonne--and a heart.'
+
+A short visit to England, in 1793, the death of her mother in May
+1794, and the publication of her first purely political work,
+'Reflections on Peace, addressed to Mr. Pitt and to the French,' were
+the chief events of her life during the next few months. In this work
+she dwelt with much force on the absurdity of supposing that any
+foreign intervention could restore what the Revolution had destroyed,
+and she predicted that the inevitable effect of the prolongation or
+extension of the war would be to strengthen that militant Jacobinism
+which was now the greatest danger to Europe. In this year, too, she
+first came in contact with Benjamin Constant, and her acquaintance
+soon developed into a connection which gave her a new and powerful
+instrument for acting on French politics, but which also brought with
+it much suffering, many reproaches, and long and lasting discredit. In
+May 1795 we find her again in Paris, with her husband, who had once
+more been sent on a mission to France; again eagerly engaged in French
+politics; again largely occupied in defending the interests of her
+proscribed friends. Among others, Talleyrand appears to have owed his
+recall to her influence. As usual, she excited many antipathies, she
+was denounced in the Convention by Legendre for her political
+intrigues and especially for her efforts in favour of the emigrants,
+and she was obliged to leave Paris for about eighteen months. Her pen
+was at this time very active, and to this period belong her 'Essay on
+Novels' and her 'Treatise on the Passions.'
+
+The star of Bonaparte was now rapidly rising, and it profoundly
+affected the last years of her life. The pages in her 'Considerations
+on the French Revolution' in which she describes her first interview
+with him, after the peace of Campo Formio, are among the most graphic
+she ever wrote, though something of the shadow of the picture was, no
+doubt, drawn from later experience and antipathy. She was at first
+dazzled; she was at all times profoundly impressed by his genius, but
+she soon came to perceive that his nature was wholly unlike that of
+other men. She had seen, she said, men worthy of all respect, and she
+had seen men noted for their ferocity; but the impression produced on
+her by Bonaparte was generically different from that produced by
+either of these classes. She found that such epithets as 'good,'
+'violent,' 'gentle,' and 'cruel' could not be applied to him in their
+ordinary senses. He was in truth a being who stood self-centred, and
+apart from the sympathies, passions, and enthusiasms of his kind,
+habitually regarding men, not as fellow-creatures, but as mere
+counters in a game; a will of colossal strength; an intellect of
+clear, cold, transcendent power, solely governed by the imperturbable
+calculation of the strictest egotism, and never drawn aside by love or
+hatred, by pity or religion, or by attachment to any cause. It was
+impossible, she found, to exaggerate his contempt for human nature and
+his disbelief in the reality of human virtue. A perfectly honest man
+was the only kind of man he never could understand. Such a man
+perplexed and baffled his calculations, acting on them as the sign of
+the cross acts on the machinations of a demon. The superiority which
+so clearly shone in his conversation was not that of a mind cultivated
+by study and by society; it was the supreme insight into the
+circumstances of life possessed by a mighty hunter of men. There was
+something in him, she said, like a cold and trenchant sword, which at
+the same moment could wound and chill.
+
+Such was the estimate she formed of the man who, nearly at the same
+time, was presented by Talleyrand to the Directory as 'the pacificator
+of Europe,' as a hero 'who despised luxury and pomp--the wretched
+ambition of common souls--and who loved the poems of Ossian,
+especially because they detach men from the earth'! That two such
+different natures should come into collision was very natural.
+Bonaparte always hated superior women, and especially women who
+meddled in politics. He well knew that the circle of Madame de Staël
+was the centre of ideas about freedom and constitutional government
+irreconcilably opposed to his ambition, and that the world of good
+society and good taste, of independent thought and independent
+characters, in which she played so great a part, remained unsubdued
+and undazzled by his power. Benjamin Constant had been placed in 'the
+Tribunate,' and in the beginning of 1800 he made a speech there,
+indicating a desire to establish in that body an opposition like the
+opposition in the English Parliament. Bonaparte was furious at his
+attitude, and at once ascribed it to the inspiration of Madame de
+Staël. A year later the last work of her father appeared, and it
+contained an earnest warning against growing despotism in France and a
+strong argument for the establishment of a republican constitution.
+The sayings of Madame de Staël that were repeated from lip to lip, and
+the atmosphere of thought that grew up around her, irritated and
+disquieted Bonaparte. 'She is moving the minds of men,' he said, 'in a
+direction that does not suit me.' 'They pretend that she does not
+speak of politics or of me, but somehow it always happens that those
+who have been with her become less attached to me.' Soon her salon was
+emptied by an emphatic intimation that those who entered it would
+incur the displeasure of the First Consul. Official scribes were
+busily employed in depreciating her, and these measures were speedily
+followed by the long exile which darkened the later years of her life.
+
+It is impossible for me in this article to relate, even in outline,
+the story of this exile, and of her travels in England, Italy,
+Austria, Russia, and, above all, in Germany. Madame de Staël has
+herself described this period of her life in her 'Ten Years of Exile,'
+and all the details have been collected by Lady Blennerhassett with an
+industry that leaves nothing to be desired. A woman of a more heroic
+type would have borne with less repining an exclusion from Paris life
+which was mitigated by wealth, and fame, and abundant occupation, and
+a family that adored her, and troops of admiring friends. A woman who
+was less essentially noble would have assuredly accepted the overtures
+that were more than once made to her, and would have purchased her
+peace with Napoleon by burning a few grains of literary incense on his
+altar. But though, in a life of more than common vicissitude and
+temptation, Madame de Staël was betrayed into great weaknesses and
+into some serious faults, she never lost her sense of the dignity and
+integrity of literature, and her works are singularly free from
+unworthy flattery as well as from unworthy resentments and jealousies.
+The homage which Napoleon desired was never received, and in her great
+work on Italy and her still greater one on Germany there was no trace
+of his victories, influence, or animosities. 'In France,' he once
+said, 'there is a small literature and a great literature; the small
+literature is on my side, but the great literature is not for me.'
+
+The disfavour which thrust Madame de Staël out of political
+influence, and then drove her into exile, proved a blessing in
+disguise, for it turned her mind decisively from political intrigues
+to those forms of literature in which she was most fitted to excel.
+Her treatise on 'Literature,' which was published in 1800, was
+conceived upon a scale too large for her own knowledge, and though she
+herself attributed to it the great and general favour that she enjoyed
+for a time in Paris society, it has not taken an enduring place in
+French literature. 'Delphine,' the most personal, and also the most
+censured, of her novels, had a still wider success, and made a deeper
+and more lasting impression. It appeared in 1802, and it was followed
+by a long interval, during which she appears to have published nothing
+except a short but admirable notice of her father, who died in the
+spring of 1804; but in 1807 'Corinne' burst upon the world, and at
+once obtained a European fame equalled by that of no French novel
+since 'La Nouvelle Héloise.' In this great work of imagination she
+embodied, in a highly poetic form, the impressions she had derived
+from her journeys in England and Italy, and its immense and
+instantaneous success placed her on the very pinnacle of fame. It is
+worthy of notice that a bitter attack upon 'Corinne' appeared in 'Le
+Moniteur,' based chiefly upon the fact that its hero was an
+Englishman; and there is good reason to believe that this attack was
+from the pen of Napoleon himself.
+
+A book of larger scope and of more serious influence soon followed.
+Germany at this time presented the singular spectacle of a people who
+had been reduced to the lowest depths of political depression, but
+who, at the same time, could boast of a contemporary literature that
+was the first in the world. In France a translation of 'Werther' had
+attained great popularity; some of the plays of Schiller, the idylls
+of Gessner, and a few other German works were well known; but scarcely
+any Frenchman had a conception of the magnitude and importance of the
+intellectual activity which was growing up beyond the Rhine, or of the
+vast place which Goethe, Schiller, and Kant were destined to take in
+European thought. It was one of the chief pleasures and occupations of
+Madame de Staël, during her exile, to explore this almost unknown
+field. It would scarcely have been thought that she was well fitted
+for the task. She learned the language late in life, and her
+characteristically French mind seemed very little in harmony with
+either the strength or the weakness of the Teutonic intellect. There
+was nothing very profound, or very subtle, or very poetical in her
+nature, and she had all that instinctive dislike to the vague, the
+disproportioned, the exaggerated, and the ambiguous, to fantastic and
+far-fetched conjecture, and to imposing edifices of speculation based
+upon scanty or shadowy materials, that pre-eminently distinguishes the
+best French thought. Very wisely, however, she placed herself in
+direct communication with the great writers of Germany, and a wholly
+new world of thought and sentiment gradually opened upon her mind. It
+is not too much to say that it was her pen that first revealed to the
+Latin world the intellectual greatness of Germany. In England,
+Coleridge had already laboured in the same field, and his admirable
+translation of 'Wallenstein' had appeared as early as 1800; but it had
+been completely still-born, and in England also it was reserved for
+the great Frenchwoman to give the first considerable impulse to the
+study of German literature. For the history, the merits, and the
+defects of her work on Germany, I cannot do better than to refer to
+the admirable pages which Lady Blennerhassett has devoted to the
+subject. With the doubtful exception of 'Le Génie du Christianisme,'
+it was by far the most important French work which appeared during the
+reign of Napoleon. It is a characteristic fact that the whole of the
+first edition was confiscated by order of his Government. Happily the
+manuscript was saved, and about three years later it was printed in
+England.
+
+After some discreditable scenes, on which a recently published
+correspondence has thrown a painful though somewhat doubtful light,
+the connection of Madame de Staël with Benjamin Constant was broken.
+The two continued occasionally to correspond, and as late as 1815 we
+find her lending him a large sum of money; but their relations were
+never again what they had been, and on the side of Constant there
+appears to have been a large amount of positive malevolence. 'O
+Benjamin,' she wrote to him in one of her later letters, 'you have
+destroyed my life! For ten years not a day has passed that my heart
+has not suffered for you--and yet I loved you so much!' A strong
+affection, such as she had not found in her marriage with the Baron de
+Staël, was an imperious necessity of her existence, and after her
+breach with Constant she soon found an object in a young officer from
+Geneva named Rocca, who had returned to his native town badly wounded
+after brilliant service in Spain. When they first met, in 1810, Madame
+de Staël was forty-four and Rocca about twenty-three; but a genuine
+and honourable affection seems to have grown up on both sides, and in
+the following year they were married. Madame de Staël, however, either
+clinging to her name or dreading the ridicule of such a strangely
+assorted marriage, insisted upon its concealment, and Rocca generally
+passed in society as her lover. A child was born in 1812, but it was
+only after the death of Madame de Staël that the legitimacy of the
+connection was established. It proved much more productive of
+happiness than might have been expected, and greatly brightened her
+closing years. Nearly at the same time an important change passed over
+her religious views, and the vague deism of her youth deepened into a
+positive, definite, and earnest Christianity, but without mysticism
+and without intolerance. Some beautiful lines that are cited by Lady
+Blennerhassett very faithfully express the spirit of her belief: 'Il
+faut avoir soin, si l'on peut, que le déclin de cette vie soit la
+jeunesse de l'autre. Se désintéresser de soi, sans cesser de
+s'intéresser aux autres, met quelque chose de divin dans l'âme.'
+
+She lived to see the downfall of perhaps the only man she really
+hated, his return from Elba, his final defeat at Waterloo, and the
+restoration of the Bourbons. But, though she detested Napoleon and his
+system, these things gave her no pleasure. The spectacle of an invaded
+and a dismembered France aroused her strongest feelings of patriotism,
+and she loved liberty too truly and too ardently to rejoice in the
+influences that triumphed in 1815. Her last years were chiefly spent
+in the composition of her 'Considerations on the French Revolution,'
+in which she sums up the convictions of her life. It is one of her
+most valuable and most lasting books. The disproportioned prominence
+which is naturally assigned in it to Necker, and the manifest personal
+element in her antipathy to Napoleon, impair its weight, indeed, as a
+history; but few writers have criticised with more justice the
+successive stages of the Revolution, and few books of its generation
+are so rich in political wisdom. The concluding chapters, in which, in
+a strain of noble eloquence, she pleads the cause of moderate and
+constitutional freedom, show how steadily and how strongly, in an age
+of many disenchantments, she clung to the belief of her youth.
+
+The 'Considerations on the French Revolution' had a vast and an
+immediate success, and in a few days sixty thousand copies were sold.
+Madame de Staël, however, did not live to witness her triumph. In
+February 1817 she was struck down by a paralytic illness, and on July
+14, after a long period of complete prostration, she passed away
+tranquilly in her sleep. It was a peaceful ending to an agitated and
+chequered career. She had enjoyed much and suffered much. She had
+committed grave faults, and had met with her full share of
+disappointment and ingratitude; but few women have left such an
+enduring monument behind them, or have touched human life on so many
+sides and with so many sympathies.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] There is also an English, and somewhat abridged, translation.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL
+
+
+There is probably no other English public man of the present century
+whose career has attracted in so large a measure the interest both of
+politicians and of men of letters as Sir Robert Peel. In addition to a
+crowd of industrious but not very distinguished compilers, it has been
+discussed with great skill by Guizot, by Lord Dalling, by Mr. Goldwin
+Smith, and by Mr. Spencer Walpole; and in that great literature of
+monographs which has grown up with such remarkable rapidity in England
+within the last decade, no less than three have been devoted to the
+life of Peel. The interest that attaches to him is, indeed, of a very
+peculiar character. He was almost wholly destitute of the power of
+imagination that is so conspicuous in the careers or speeches of
+Chatham and Burke, of Canning and Beaconsfield. Except during a few
+years that followed the Reform Bill of 1832, he never exhibited the
+spectacle of a leader struggling successfully against enormous odds.
+He was not one of those statesmen who see further than their
+contemporaries, and who, after years of failure and struggle, are
+proved by their ultimate triumph to have most truly read the
+tendencies of their age. Though he was three times Prime Minister of
+England, and though he was for a time deemed the most brilliant of
+party leaders, he left the great and powerful party which trusted him
+almost hopelessly shattered. Twice in his life he carried measures of
+transcendent importance which he had not only persistently opposed,
+but had been specially placed in power for the purpose of resisting.
+The most striking incidents in his career are incidents of failure
+rather than of success, and history has pronounced that, on the most
+important questions of his time, he was disastrously wrong. The long
+delay in the inevitable emancipation of the Catholics, which was
+largely due to him, and the circumstances under which he ultimately
+carried the measure, produced evils that are in full activity at the
+present hour. His persistent opposition to parliamentary reform
+contributed to bring England to the very verge of revolution; though
+when the Reform Bill had been carried he nobly retrieved his error by
+the frankness with which he accepted, and the skill with which he
+used, the new conditions of English politics. His abolition of the
+Corn Laws at the head of a Government which had been pledged to
+maintain them gave a great shock to public confidence, and for a long
+period most seriously dislocated the machinery of party government.
+But, in spite of all this, there are few statesmen who have carried so
+large a number of measures of great and acknowledged importance, who
+have impressed so deeply the sense of their superiority on the minds
+of their contemporaries, or who were followed to the grave by a more
+widespread and genuine regret.
+
+It is this contrast between the leading incidents of Peel's life and
+the impression which he made on the world that constitutes the great
+interest of his career. The explanation is not difficult to discover.
+It is the common story of extraordinary qualities balanced by
+striking defects. He was not a great statesman, but he was a
+supremely great administrator, a supremely great master of
+parliamentary management and of parliamentary legislation. He had
+little prescience; he often grossly misread the signs of the times, or
+only recognised them when it was too late; but when he was once
+convinced, he acted on his conviction with frankness and courage, and
+when a thing had to be done, no one could do it like him. As Disraeli
+said: 'In the course of time the method which was natural to Sir
+Robert Peel matured into a habit of such expertness that no one in the
+despatch of affairs ever adapted the means more fitly to the end.'[10]
+In the words of Sir Cornewall Lewis: 'For concocting, producing,
+explaining, and defending measures, he had no equal, or anything like
+an equal.'[11]
+
+In the interesting volumes which were published by Lord Mahon and Mr.
+Cardwell in 1856 we have Peel's own explanation of his conduct
+relating to the removal of the Catholic disabilities in 1829, and to
+the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846; but the publication of his
+confidential correspondence has been long delayed, and the volume
+before us only carries the work down to 1827. It has been edited by
+Mr. Parker with great care and accuracy, and with undeviating good
+sense and good taste, and it throws much curious light upon a corner
+of history which has been but little explored.
+
+Peel started in life with great advantages. The eldest son of a very
+wealthy manufacturer who had long occupied a respectable place in
+Parliament, and who was closely attached to the dominant party in the
+State, he was from his earliest youth destined by his father to be a
+statesman. Under such circumstances he was certain in the pre-Reform
+period to have not only all the advantages which the best school and
+university education could give, but also the still greater advantages
+of an early introduction into both parliamentary and official life;
+provided always that no aberration of character, or taste, or
+imagination, or opinion drew him aside from the plain path that lay
+before him. He grew up in an atmosphere of the best middle-class
+virtues. Decorum, good sense, industry, strict morality; a sober
+religious orthodoxy; much simplicity of life, preserved in the midst
+of great wealth; ideals which, if not very lofty, were at least
+eminently practical and perfectly honourable, prevailed around him,
+and their influence imbued his whole nature. He accepted cordially the
+destiny that was before him, and threw himself into it with untiring
+industry. His opinions changed during his life much more than his
+character, and the shy, sensitive, industrious, somewhat
+self-conscious, somewhat awkward Harrow boy, prefigured very
+faithfully the future statesman. He is described as wandering when a
+schoolboy by himself among the hedges, knocking down birds with
+stones, a practice in which he was very skilful, and which eventually
+developed into a strong passion for shooting. He was quiet,
+good-natured, studious, scarcely ever in scrapes, and it was not until
+the last year of his school life that he threw himself with any
+keenness into the amusements of his comrades. He had good natural
+abilities; but probably the one point in which he greatly exceeded the
+average of intelligent boys was his memory, which was of extraordinary
+retentiveness, and which he carefully cultivated. During a few months
+which elapsed between leaving Harrow and going to Oxford he constantly
+attended the House of Commons, under the Gallery; and he also
+attended some natural history lectures at the Royal Institution. His
+Oxford career was very successful. He is said to have worked before
+his degree examination for no less than eighteen hours, through the
+day and night. He gained a double-first, and in the first class of
+mathematics he stood alone. Such a success at once stamped him as a
+youth of extraordinary promise, and the impression it made was
+especially great because, the examination system having been very
+recently reorganised, he was the first Oxford man who had attained it.
+
+He was brought into Parliament in April 1809, almost immediately after
+he came of age, for the borough of Cashel. No special significance
+attaches to the fact of his having entered Parliament for an Irish
+constituency, for his father had simply bought the seat, and the young
+member appears to have never gone over to his constituents or held any
+communication with them.
+
+'When I sat for Cashel,' he afterwards wrote, 'and was not in office,
+having made those sacrifices which could then legally be made, but now
+cannot, I did not consider myself at all pledged to the support of
+Government.'[12] Perceval, who represented in its extreme form the
+Tory reaction that followed the Revolution, was then Prime Minister,
+and Peel at once took his place among his followers. He first spoke in
+seconding the Address in 1810, and in the partial judgment of his
+father his speech was considered, 'by men the best qualified to form a
+correct opinion of public speaking, the best first speech since that
+of Mr. Pitt.'[13]
+
+It was not, perhaps, an unmixed advantage to Peel that while he was
+still a mere boy his father had somewhat ostentatiously destined him
+to be one day a Tory statesman. Such an education could hardly fail to
+strengthen the self-consciousness which was never wanting in Peel's
+character, and to give a decided bias to his judgment. At the same
+time, the distinctive merits of his career would have probably never
+been fully developed without the early administrative training which
+his opinions made possible for him, and there is nothing in his early
+history to give the least countenance to the belief that his adherence
+to the extreme type of Tory politics imposed the slightest strain upon
+his judgment. His immediate interests and his sentiments appear at
+this time to have perfectly concurred. He came into Parliament with
+the party which was dominant, and with the section of the party which
+was most poor in able men. Had he adopted on the Catholic question the
+liberal opinions of Canning and Castlereagh, he must have held a
+position altogether subordinate to them; and the same causes that in
+the preceding Ministry had raised Perceval to be leader of the House
+of Commons over the heads of Castlereagh and Canning, marked out for
+Peel the future leadership of the party of resistance to concession.
+It has been said, on the authority of Sir Lawrence Peel, that his
+first appointment was that of private secretary to Lord Liverpool, but
+Mr. Parker has found no trace of this in the papers either of Peel or
+of Lord Liverpool. In 1810, however, when he was but just twenty-two,
+he entered administrative life as Under-Secretary of State for War and
+the Colonies, and he held that place till August 1812, when he
+obtained the far more important post of Chief Secretary for Ireland,
+and became for the next six years virtual governor of that country.
+
+It was a post requiring not only great administrative skill, but also
+great gifts of original statesmanship. During the last five years of
+the eighteenth century, and especially during the rebellion of 1798,
+religious passions in Ireland, which had for more than a generation
+been steadily subsiding, had been kindled into a flame, and the urgent
+necessity of settling the Catholic question had begun to press with
+irresistible force on the minds of the more intelligent statesmen.
+Pitt had intended to complete the Union by measures for admitting
+Catholics into Parliament, for commuting tithes, and for paying the
+Catholic clergy. Through the instrumentality of Lord Castlereagh
+assurances of the disposition of the Cabinet had been conveyed to the
+Catholic bishops and the leading Catholic laymen in 1799, which were
+sufficient to secure their active support for the Union and to prevent
+any serious opposition among the Catholic laity. The bishops met the
+wishes of the English Government by drawing up a series of
+resolutions, in which they declared their readiness to accept with
+gratitude an endowment for the priesthood, to confer upon the English
+Government a power of veto over the appointment of Catholic bishops
+which would prevent the introduction into that body of any disloyal
+men, and to certify to the Government the nomination of all Catholic
+parish priests, as well as the fact that they had taken the oath of
+allegiance. But the King had not been informed of the negotiations
+that had taken place, and it is well known how his uncompromising
+opposition produced the resignation of Pitt in 1801, how the agitation
+caused by the question threw the King into a temporary fit of
+insanity, and how Pitt at once promised that he would not move the
+question again during the reign. In the spring of 1804 Pitt resumed
+office, on the express understanding that he would not permit Catholic
+Emancipation; when the question was introduced in 1805 by Lord
+Grenville in the Lords, and by Fox in the Commons, it was defeated in
+both Houses by immense majorities, and Pitt declared that though he
+was still of opinion that there was no danger in the concession, yet,
+as long as the circumstances which prevented him from bringing it
+forward continued, he would be no party to agitating the question.
+
+In 1806 Pitt died, and Fox and Grenville were themselves in power, but
+the Catholics were again disappointed. The prejudice of the King, the
+feeling of the country, the recent vote of the House of Commons, the
+presence of Lord Sidmouth in the Ministry, proved insuperable
+obstacles, and Fox could only urge the Catholic leaders to postpone
+the question. Fox died in September 1806, and the Government presided
+over by Lord Grenville met a new Parliament in the following December.
+Grenville had been Pitt's colleague during the negotiations with the
+Catholics that preceded the Union; he had strongly urged upon Pitt the
+necessity of resigning in 1801, and he never forgave him for having so
+lightly abandoned the cause. Grenville did not attempt to carry
+emancipation, but he resolved to take at least one serious step in the
+direction of concession, by throwing open to the Catholics all the
+posts in the army and navy. An Irish Act of 1793 had enabled them to
+hold in Ireland commissions in the army, and to attain any rank except
+commander-in-chief, master-general of the ordnance, and general of the
+staff; but if the regiments in which they served were sent to England,
+they were disqualified by law from remaining in the service. The
+original Bill of Grenville's Government was intended to remove this
+anomaly, and assimilate the law in the two countries; but in the
+course of the discussions it was agreed that the Catholics should be
+freed from the exceptions to which they were subjected by the Irish
+Act, that all posts in the army and navy should be thrown open to men
+of all religious persuasions, subject only to the obligation of taking
+an oath which was prescribed, and that Catholic soldiers should be
+guaranteed by law the free exercise of their religion. The King had
+been informed of this, and was understood to have given a distinct,
+though a reluctant, assent; but a strong Protestant party, headed by
+Perceval, fiercely opposed it. The King withdrew his assent from the
+added clauses, and expressed his disapprobation of the whole measure.
+At last, after much discussion, the Ministers agreed for the present
+to withdraw their Bill, reserving to themselves by a Cabinet minute,
+which was submitted to the King, the right to renew it, or to propose
+any other measure on the subject which they desired. But the King was
+determined to push his victory to the end. He demanded from his
+Ministers a promise in writing that they would never again propose to
+him any measure connected with Catholic emancipation, and as the
+Ministers refused to give this unconstitutional pledge, the King
+dismissed them from office, and called the Duke of Portland to the
+head of affairs.
+
+It was the second time that the King had broken up a Ministry on the
+Catholic question, and his conduct was especially significant, as his
+refusal to grant military promotion to Catholics was announced in the
+midst of a great war, and at a time when thousands of Catholics were
+fighting in his armies. It at once appeared that there were two
+entirely distinct schools of Tories. Pitt, to the very close of his
+life, had declared that his opinions on the Catholic question were
+unchanged, though he would not force them against the inclination of
+the King; and his views were adopted by Canning, Castlereagh, and
+Wellesley. Perceval, on the other hand, emphatically declared that he
+'could not conceive a time or any change of circumstances which could
+render further concession to the Catholics consistent with the safety
+of the State.'[14] With the exception of Eldon, scarcely any man of
+real ability adopted this view until Peel entered Parliament as the
+follower of Perceval. It is sufficiently evident from this fact how
+little truth there is in the theory that attributes Peel's early
+Toryism to a blind admiration for Pitt.
+
+The party of the King triumphed. Parliament was dissolved on the 'No
+Popery' cry, and on the first great party division that followed the
+election the Ministers in the House of Commons had a majority of 195.
+Canning and Castlereagh, though they had no sympathy with that cry,
+availed themselves of the current that ran so strongly against the
+Whigs. In the Ministry of the Duke of Portland they held the seals for
+the Foreign and War Departments, but the leadership of the Commons and
+the virtual leadership of the Ministry was given to Perceval, who,
+though entirely without brilliant parts, exhibited unexpected talents,
+both as a practical debater and as a manager of men, and who had the
+advantage of representing fully the dominant party. Several
+circumstances, however, other than a conviction of the danger of the
+Catholic claims, contributed to the triumph of the anti-Catholic
+party. The Whigs, already broken by their policy towards France in the
+first stages of the Revolution and of the war, had become still more
+unpopular through their opposition to the seizure of the Danish fleet
+and to the Peninsular War. They were divided among themselves, for
+there was little sympathy between the more aristocratic Whigs, who
+were represented by Grenville and Lord Howick, and the more Radical
+party of Sir F. Burdett and Whitbread. A strong personal as well as
+political dislike already existed between Howick and Canning, and
+prevented their hearty co-operation on the one great question on which
+they were agreed. Above all, there was a general conviction among
+statesmen that the King's mind was trembling on the verge of insanity,
+and that a renewal of the Catholic complications of 1801 would produce
+a catastrophe.
+
+The question was debated in both the Lords and Commons in 1808. In the
+former it was lost by a majority of 87, and in the latter by a
+majority of 153. Grattan on this occasion introduced the Catholic
+petition in a speech of consummate power; but both Castlereagh and
+Canning opposed the reception of the petition, on the ground that the
+time was unsuited for the agitation of the question; and the spirit of
+the ruling part of the Ministry was sufficiently shown by the
+reduction of the Maynooth grant from 13,000_l._ to 9,250_l._ When the
+Portland Government was broken up in September 1809 by the quarrel,
+duel, and resignation of Canning and Castlereagh, Perceval became the
+head of the new Ministry, Lord Wellesley occupying the place of
+Canning, and Lord Hawkesbury that of Castlereagh; and an intensely
+anti-Catholic ministry continued to the death of Perceval. In 1809 the
+Catholic question was not introduced into Parliament. In the spring of
+1810 it was introduced into both Houses, but was defeated by
+majorities of 86 and 104; but in October 1810 an event occurred which
+profoundly changed the aspect of affairs. The King's insanity broke
+out anew in a form which gave little hope of recovery, and the Prince
+of Wales was appointed Regent. For a year the regency was subject to
+restrictions similar to those which had been adopted in 1788, but on
+February 1, 1812, these restrictions were to cease, and the Regent was
+to enter into full fruition of the royal power.
+
+The hopes of the Catholics were now raised to the highest point. With
+the confirmed insanity of George III. the most serious of all the
+obstacles to their claims was removed. During the year of the
+restricted regency, while there was still some chance of the recovery
+of the King, the Prince of Wales declined to remove the existing
+Ministry from office, though even this decision was not taken without
+some hesitation and some negotiations with the Whigs. The Catholics,
+however, fully expected that the royal influence would now be exerted
+in their favour, and that the Whig Ministry would speedily come. The
+Prince of Wales had long been in close connection with the Whigs. As
+early as 1797 he had expressed a desire to go over to Ireland as
+Lord-Lieutenant, carrying with him a policy of conciliation to the
+Catholics. In 1805, when Fox and Grenville had introduced the Catholic
+question into the Imperial Parliament, the Prince, while stating that
+considerations of obvious delicacy prevented him from taking an
+immediate and open part in its favour, had given the Whig leaders the
+fullest authority to assure the Catholics of Ireland that he would
+never forsake their interests, the 'most distinct and authentic
+pledge' of his wish to relieve them from the disabilities of which
+they complained, and to exert himself in their favour as soon as he
+was constitutionally able to do so. It is easy therefore to imagine
+the consternation and the indignation with which, in 1812, the
+Catholics found that the Prince Regent had changed his principles and
+his policy; that, after a short and perhaps insincere negotiation with
+the Whigs, he had resolved to maintain in power a Ministry which was
+constructed for the main purpose of maintaining the Catholic
+disabilities; and that his own opinions were rapidly verging towards
+this policy.
+
+The situation in Ireland was becoming very dangerous. For some years
+after the Union a great apathy prevailed, and there is no reasonable
+doubt that, if events in England had been favourable, Catholic
+emancipation would have met with no serious opposition in Ireland, and
+could have been carried with every reasonable limitation and
+safeguard. The most competent English officials calculated that at
+least sixty-four of the hundred Irish representatives would vote for
+it, and that a decided preponderance of Irish Protestant opinion was
+in its favour. On the other hand, the Catholic bishops and aristocracy
+had fully accepted the policy of an endowment for the priests and a
+veto on the appointment of bishops, and the most Conservative elements
+in the Catholic body still exercised an ascendancy over their
+co-religionists. The question of the veto had been mentioned in the
+Commons, by Sir J. Hippisley, in 1805, and in 1808 Grattan and
+Ponsonby formally announced, on the authority of the Catholic bishops,
+their readiness to accept it. A letter from Bishop Milner was read to
+the House, which very clearly stated their position:
+
+'The Catholic prelates of Ireland,' he wrote, 'are willing to give a
+direct negative power to his Majesty's Government with respect to the
+nomination of their titular bishoprics, in such manner that when they
+have among themselves resolved who is the fittest person for the
+vacant see, they will transmit his name to his Majesty's Ministers;
+and if the latter should object to that name, they will transmit
+another and another, until a name is presented to which no objection
+is made; and (which is never likely to be the case) should the Pope
+refuse to give those essentially necessary spiritual powers, of which
+he is the depository, to the person so presented by the Catholic
+bishops and so approved by the Government, they will continue to
+propose names till one occurs which is agreeable to both
+parties--namely, the Crown and Apostolic See.'
+
+The prelates also engaged to nominate no persons who had not
+previously taken the oath of allegiance.[15] But a democratic party
+had now arisen among the Catholics, which utterly repudiated the
+restrictions of the veto, which sought emancipation by violent and
+democratic agitation, and which was rapidly drawing the most dangerous
+elements in the country into its channel. The bishops, pushed on by
+the strong force that was behind them, speedily retraced their steps
+and passed resolutions against the restrictions they had accepted, and
+there were evident signs that the Catholic body was passing away from
+the guidance of Grattan and of the gentry. This was not surprising in
+a country where many elements of anarchy subsisted; and the democratic
+party had already found in O'Connell a leader of consummate skill, and
+of untiring industry, energy, and ambition. But the chief cause of the
+great change that was passing over the Irish Catholics was to be
+found in the disappointment of their hopes in 1801, in 1804, in 1806,
+and 1812; in the desertion of their cause by Pitt; in the proved
+impotence of the Whigs; in the failure of 'the securities' even to
+mitigate the hostility of Perceval and his followers; in the profound
+consternation and exasperation that were produced by the attitude of
+the Regent. The formation of the General Committee of Catholic
+Delegates was speedily followed by its suppression under the
+Convention Act. But the influence of O'Connell was rapidly growing;
+there were already ominous signs of a possible agitation for the
+repeal of the Union, and the indignation of the Catholics was
+significantly shown by the famous 'witchery resolutions,' which were
+unanimously carried by the aggregate meeting of the Catholics in the
+June of 1812, reflecting on the influence which Lady Hertford was
+believed to exercise over the Prince. After calling for the 'total and
+unqualified repeal of the penal laws which aggrieve the Catholics,'
+they proceeded to use the following language: 'That from authentic
+documents now before us we hear, with deep disappointment and anguish,
+how cruelly the promised boon of Catholic freedom has been interrupted
+by the fatal witchery of an unworthy secret influence.... To this
+impure source we trace but too distinctly our baffled hopes and
+protracted servitude.' Such language was not calculated to conciliate
+the Prince, and he was only confirmed in his hostility to the
+Catholics. As early as September 1813 the Duke of Richmond wrote to
+Peel: 'I was delighted to find H.R.H. as steady a Protestant as the
+Attorney-General.'
+
+The commencement, however, of what was virtually a new reign had given
+a new activity to the question. It was brought forward in different
+forms in the first months of 1812 by Lord Wellesley and Lord
+Donoughmore in one House, and by Lord Morpeth and Grattan in the
+other; and although it was still defeated, the diminished majorities,
+the evident signs of an increased Catholic party in the country, and
+the language of some of the most distinguished men in Parliament,
+clearly indicated the progress of the measure. Canning especially now
+strenuously urged that the time had come when the Catholic question
+must be fully dealt with. The assassination of Perceval on May 11,
+1812, again changed the situation and led to a long series of feeble
+and abortive negotiations. An attempt was made to continue the
+existing Ministry under the lead of Lord Liverpool, with the addition
+of Canning and Lord Wellesley; but these statesmen declined the offer,
+on the ground that the other Ministers refused to carry Catholic
+emancipation, and Lord Wellesley on the additional ground of their
+languor in prosecuting the Spanish war. The Regent then authorised
+Lord Wellesley to construct a Ministry, with the assistance of
+Canning, and an offer was made to Lords Grey and Grenville to join it,
+promising an immediate consideration of the Catholic claims with a
+view to a conciliatory settlement; while, on the other hand, attempts
+were made to retain the services of the leading members of Perceval's
+Ministry. But the Whig leaders refused to take part in a coalition
+Ministry, in which they would probably be outvoted, and the former
+Cabinet was reconstructed, under the leadership of Lord Liverpool, but
+on the principle of leaving the Catholic question an open one.
+Liverpool himself was opposed to concession, but his opposition was by
+no means of the unqualified kind which had been shown by Perceval; and
+a large proportion of his colleagues, including Castlereagh, who led
+the House of Commons, were in favour of Catholic emancipation. If
+Canning had consented to join the Ministry, Lord Wellesley would
+probably have been Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, and under these
+circumstances the Catholic side could scarcely have failed to acquire
+a decisive preponderance. If, on the other hand, Castlereagh had
+followed the example of Canning, and refused to take part in a
+Ministry which declined to settle the Catholic question, or if the
+Whigs had consented to co-operate with Canning, the settlement of this
+great question could scarcely have been deferred. Unfortunately, none
+of these things happened. Castlereagh remained the leader of the
+House. Canning refused to follow his leadership, and two years later
+accepted the embassy to Lisbon. The Whig leaders stood aloof from all
+Ministerial combinations. The Duke of Richmond, who was violently
+anti-Catholic, continued to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; the post of
+Chief Secretary was given to Peel, and Ireland was destined to undergo
+fifteen more years of demoralising and disorganising agitation before
+the Catholic question was settled.
+
+Canning, however, as an independent member, brought forward a
+resolution pledging the House to an early consideration of the laws
+affecting his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, with a view to their
+final conciliatory adjustment, and the conditions of the question had
+so profoundly changed that it was carried by a majority of 129; while
+a similar motion by Lord Wellesley in the House of Lords was met by
+the previous question, which was carried by a majority of only one.
+
+Peel, though he had come into Parliament as a special follower of
+Perceval, had not yet pledged himself decisively against the
+Catholics. He had voted silently against Canning's motion in June, and
+although he had spoken against a previous motion of Grattan, he had
+done so mainly on the ground that the time was not opportune, and had
+expressly guarded himself against giving any positive pledge. He was
+now, however, obliged to take a more prominent part, and for the next
+six years he was the chief support of the anti-Catholic party in
+Parliament. His part was a very difficult one, for he had to encounter
+Grattan, Plunket, Canning, and the Whig leaders, and he had scarcely
+any real supporters. Saurin, the Attorney-General, it is true, was
+strongly opposed to all concession. He was a lawyer of high character
+and attainments, of Huguenot descent and strong Huguenot principles,
+and he had borne a distinguished part in opposition to the Union; but
+Saurin refused to go to London. Bushe, who was Solicitor-General,
+leaned to the Catholic side; and, to the great indignation and
+consternation of the Government, Wellesley Pole, who had preceded Peel
+as Chief Secretary and who was the brother of Lord Wellesley, now
+pronounced himself strongly in Parliament in favour of the Catholics.
+This speech was entirely unexpected, for Pole had hitherto been
+regarded as a staunch adherent of the Protestant party, and as late as
+the last day of 1811 he had sent a memorandum on the Catholic question
+to the Secretary of State in England, which was intended to be laid
+before the Cabinet, and which maintained the impossibility of safely
+satisfying the Catholic claims, and the expediency of the Prince
+Regent's taking a decided part against them. A general election had
+taken place in September, and it is evident from the letters of Lord
+Liverpool and Peel that they at this time looked upon Canning and his
+followers with even more hostility than the regular Opposition.
+
+In the new Parliament the Catholic question at once assumed a great
+prominence. A motion for the immediate consideration of the laws
+affecting the Catholics was introduced by Grattan, supported by
+Castlereagh, opposed by Peel, and ultimately carried by a majority of
+40. A resolution of Grattan's for removing laws imposing civil and
+military disabilities on the Catholics, with such regulations and
+exceptions as might provide for the security of the Protestant
+succession and of the Established Church, was next introduced. Peel
+opposed it bitterly, but was beaten by a majority of 67.
+
+'We were terribly beaten,' he wrote to his Under-Secretary, 'but we
+are sad cowards, I am afraid; at least, we are shamefully used. Poor
+Duigenan could not get a hearing, and the general impression seemed
+against the Protestants. We will fight them out, however, to the last.
+I am sure it is better than to give way.' 'Your defence of the
+Protestant cause,' wrote Saurin, 'was not only by far the ablest and
+best, but the only one which did not seem to strengthen the cause of
+the adversary by some concession of principle. I really fear the
+Protestant cause is lost in the Commons. There can be no rally now but
+on the securities.'[16]
+
+Grattan at once brought in a Bill in accordance with the terms of the
+Resolution that had been carried; but the Protestant party now rallied
+around a motion of Sir John Hippisley, for a committee to inquire into
+the state and tenets of the Roman Catholics, and the laws affecting
+them. Canning pointed out with great force that a committee of inquiry
+was exactly what the Protestant party had for so many years
+strenuously resisted; but, as Peel wrote to the Duke of Richmond,
+there was no inconsistency in their conduct: 'When the question was
+whether we should consider the claims of the Catholics and the laws
+affecting them, or should resist their claims, we voted for resistance
+without inquiry; the question now is, whether we shall consider or
+concede, and we prefer inquiry to concession.'[17]
+
+The motion for delay, however, was defeated by 187 to 235, and the
+second reading of Grattan's Bill was carried by 245 to 203. But a
+sudden change now occurred in the prospects of the cause. Canning and
+Castlereagh, with the full assent of Grattan, introduced clauses for
+the securities which had been before intimated, giving the Crown a
+control over the nomination of the Catholic bishops. But the bishops
+unanimously condemned the proposal, and the large majority of the
+Catholic Board supported them. It became evident that the Bill before
+Parliament would fail to satisfy the Catholics, and after a long
+discussion the clause admitting Catholics to Parliament was rejected
+by 251 to 247.
+
+Peel had triumphed. The profound division which had broken out among
+the supporters of Catholic emancipation threw back for many years a
+cause which had been almost gained, though in 1817 an Act was passed
+without opposition throwing open to the Catholics the military and
+naval positions which Grenville had vainly attempted to open in 1807.
+Few things could have been eventually more disastrous both to Ireland
+and to the Empire than the defeat of the influence represented by
+Grattan and by the Catholic gentry, and the growing ascendancy of
+O'Connell and the democratic and sacerdotal party in Irish popular
+politics. Grattan had long predicted that, if concession was not
+speedily and wisely made, population in Ireland would drift away from
+the guiding and moderating influence of property; that seditious and
+anarchical men would gain an ascendancy which would make the whole
+problem of Irish Government incalculably difficult; that a priesthood
+unconnected with the English Government would lead to a 'Catholic
+laity discorporated from the people of England.' In the Irish
+Parliament the strong bias of Conservatism in his policy had been
+repeatedly displayed, and it was equally apparent in the Imperial
+Parliament. In 1807 he had supported the Insurrection Act, in
+opposition to many of his friends, on the ground that there was a real
+and dangerous French party in Ireland, which the common law was
+insufficient to suppress. In 1814 he expressed his full approval of
+the proclamation suppressing the Catholic Board. He steadily and
+earnestly maintained that, although it was vitally necessary that
+Catholic emancipation should be speedily carried, it should be
+accompanied by measures for securing, as far as possible, the loyalty
+of the higher Catholic clergy, and uniting them in interest and
+sentiment with the British Government. He looked with bitter hostility
+on the rise and policy of O'Connell. He accused him of 'setting afloat
+the bad passions of the people,' making grievances instruments of
+power without any honest wish to redress them, treating politics as a
+trade to serve a desperate and interested purpose.
+
+But the influence of Grattan was now manifestly declining, and Peel
+watched the decline with a short-sighted and not very generous
+pleasure. In Parliament, though numbers were against the Catholics,
+the overwhelming preponderance of ability was still in favour of the
+principle of emancipation, and it was in leading the anti-Catholic
+party that Peel chiefly acquired his almost unrivalled parliamentary
+skill. He had, indeed, all the qualities of a great debater: courage,
+fluency, self-possession, complete command of every subject he
+treated, unfailing lucidity both in statement and reasoning; admirable
+skill in marshalling and disentangling great masses of facts, in
+meeting, evading, or retorting arguments, and detecting the weak
+points of the case of an opponent, in veiling, by plausible language,
+extreme or unpalatable views, in extricating himself by subtle
+distinctions and qualifications from embarrassing situations. He can
+scarcely, it is true, be called a great orator. His style was formal,
+cumbrous, extremely verbose, without sparkle and without fire. He had
+little or no power of moving the passions, nothing of the flexibility
+that can adapt itself to very different audiences, nothing of the
+philosophic insight that can impart a perennial interest to transient
+discussions. But few men have ever understood the House of Commons
+like him, or have possessed in so high a degree the qualities that are
+most fitted to command and influence it. The great mass of
+anti-Catholic sentiment in the country rallied around him as its most
+powerful champion, and in 1817 he attained one of the chief objects of
+his ambition in being elected member for Oxford University. It is well
+known that his older and more brilliant rival had long aspired to this
+honour. It was mainly through the Catholic question that Canning
+missed and Peel won the prize.
+
+The nickname 'Orange Peel,' which was given to him in Ireland, was
+not wholly deserved. His letters abundantly show that he had no
+sympathy with the ribbons, the anniversaries, the party tunes, the
+insulting processions and insulting language of the Orangemen; and,
+although he believed that in Ireland anti-Catholicism and loyalty were
+very closely connected, he viewed with much dislike the growth of any
+political confederacies unconnected with the Government. Declamation
+and boastfulness and needless provocation were, indeed, wholly alien
+to his nature; and even when defending extreme causes he rarely or
+never used the language of a fanatic. He resisted Catholic concession
+mainly on the ground that the admission of the Catholics to political
+power would prove incompatible with the existence of the Established
+Church in Ireland, with the security of property in a country where
+property was mainly in Protestant hands, and ultimately with the
+connection between the two countries. His arguments were not based on
+religion, but on political expediency; but it was an expediency which
+he believed to be permanent.
+
+'I see,' he wrote to the Duke of Richmond, 'one of the papers reports
+me as having said that I was not an advocate for perpetual exclusion.
+It might be inferred that I objected only to the time of discussing
+the question. That is not the case.... There are certain anomalies in
+the system which I would wish to remove, but the main principles of it
+I would retain untouched.... At no time, and under no circumstances,
+so long as the Catholic admits the supremacy in spirituals of a
+foreign earthly potentate, and will not tell us what supremacy in
+spirituals means--so long as he will not give us voluntarily the
+security which every despotic Sovereign in Europe has by the
+concession of the Pope himself--will I consent to admit them.'[18]
+
+The letters before us show clearly that his political sympathy was
+with Saurin, with Duigenan, with Lord Eldon, and even with Lord
+Norbury. O'Connell early perceived in Peel his most dangerous
+opponent, and a strong personal enmity, which was as much due to
+profound differences of character as to differences of policy, grew up
+between them. A scurrilous attack of O'Connell on Peel in 1815 was
+followed by a challenge, and a duel was prevented only by the arrest
+of O'Connell. The antipathy between the two men was never mitigated.
+O'Connell said of Peel that 'his smile was like the silver plate on a
+coffin.' Peel, in his confidential letters, expressed the utmost
+dislike and contempt for the character of O'Connell, and when he was
+at length compelled by the Clare election to concede Catholic
+emancipation, his feeling towards him was significantly and
+characteristically shown. He enumerated in a brilliant passage the men
+to whom the triumph of Catholic emancipation was really due. He spoke
+of Fox and Grattan, of Plunket and of Canning, but he made no mention
+of O'Connell.
+
+The administrative side of Peel's Chief Secretaryship is much more
+creditable to him than the political side. The vivid picture which his
+letters present of the manner in which Ireland was governed more than
+fifteen years after the Union will probably strike the reader with
+some surprise, when he remembers that the Union had extinguished about
+seventy small boroughs, and had at the same time greatly diminished
+the importance of the Irish representatives, and therefore the
+necessities for corruption. Peel noticed that while 'the pension list
+of Great Britain was limited to 90,000_l._ per annum, the pension list
+of Ireland may amount to 80,000_l._ a year; and he found almost all
+Irish patronage still employed for political purposes, and almost
+every office honeycombed with abuses and peculations. A few extracts
+will give the reader some notion of the nature and extent of the evil,
+and of the efforts of Peel to reduce it:--
+
+'How is it possible,' he wrote, 'to propose that a shilling should be
+granted to a general officer on the staff in Ireland when sixpence is
+granted in England? This is called a modification in official phrase,
+but it ought to be called doubling the allowance. Set your face
+steadily against all increase of salary, all extra allowances, all
+plausible claims for additional emolument. Economy must be the order
+of the day--rigid economy.'[19] 'When English members hear that the
+sheriff appoints the grand jury, that the grand jury tax the county,
+that the sheriff has a considerable influence at elections, and that
+the sheriff is appointed openly on the recommendation of the member
+supporting the Government, they are startled not a little.... I know
+that this is a most convenient patronage to the Government, but I know
+also that I cannot hint in the House of Commons at such a source of
+patronage, and I confess I have great doubts on the legitimacy of
+it.... After Lord Redesdale's declaration ... that the mode of
+appointing sheriffs "poisons the sources of justice," and witnessing
+the general feeling among the English against making the nomination of
+a most important officer in the execution of justice dependent on the
+will of the county member, I thought it highly expedient to give a
+positive assurance that the Government would revert to the ancient
+and legal practice of appointing sheriffs in Ireland.... With a pure
+Bench--and time will, I hope, purify it--the change would be an
+essential change for the better.'[20] 'Foster says that the abuses
+discovered in the office [of Clerk of the Pleas] are enormous, that
+the amount of fees exacted from suitors is not less than 30,000_l._
+per annum, of which the principal clerk did not receive more than
+one-third. A Mr. Pollock, the first deputy, is in receipt of 8,000_l._
+or 9,000_l._ a year as his own share of the profits; other deputies
+and persons unnecessarily employed have profits amounting to 1,200_l._
+or 1,400_l._ a year each. Foster thinks that every possible difficulty
+will be thrown in the way of an early decision in the Irish Courts....
+In the meantime, the Chief Baron is receiving the enormous profits
+arising from these enormous abuses.'[21]
+
+The practice of buying and selling public offices, and the practice of
+dividing the salaries of a single office between a principal and
+deputies, still continued; but Peel did his utmost to eradicate them.
+If it were permitted in one case, he said, 'every officer in every
+department who purchased on corrupt terms and is now living may claim
+a right to sell the office so purchased.'
+
+'With respect to a payment out of the salary to R., I can have no
+scruple in giving you my opinion that it would not be right. I have
+never been, and cannot conscientiously be, a party to an arrangement
+of that kind, because I think this is quite clear, that if the salary
+of the office is disproportionate to the labour of it, and can bear to
+be taxed to the amount of 200_l._, the public should benefit, and the
+emoluments of the office be reduced.'[22]
+
+One of Peel's first tasks was to conduct a general election, and he
+had ample opportunities of judging how these things were managed in
+Ireland. A law known as Curwen's Act had been recently passed,
+condemning to a heavy fine in the event of failure, and to the loss of
+his seat in the event of success, any person giving, or promising to
+give, or consenting to give either money or office for a seat in
+Parliament. The law was not a little embarrassing to Peel, as his own
+seat of Cashel had been purchased, and he thought it safer to transfer
+himself to the English seat of Chippenham, where his return was
+managed by his father without any intervention on his own part. At the
+same time, the elections in Ireland went on much as if Curwen's Act
+had never passed.
+
+'I am placed in a delicate situation enough here,' he wrote to his
+friend Croker: 'bound to secure the Government interests, if possible,
+from dilapidation, but still more bound to faint with horror at the
+mention of money transactions, to threaten the unfortunate culprits
+with impeachment if they hint at an impure return, and yet to prevent
+those strongholds, Cashel, Mallow, and Tralee, from surrendering to
+the enemies who besiege them.'
+
+Croker himself furnished an admirable illustration of the manner in
+which these principles were carried out. 'I find the borough' [Down],
+he writes, 'extremely well disposed to me. Of the respectable and
+steady people I have a decided majority, not less than twenty; but
+there are sixty-two persons who are extremely doubtful.... I have the
+greatest repugnance to bribery, ... but my agent informs me that many
+voters will require money.... The return absolutely depends upon
+pounds sterling. The best computation which my agents can make is
+that a sum of 2,000_l._ will be necessary. The natural expenses will
+be 500_l._ These, I think, I am bound to make good. But with regard to
+the money for votes, that I expect from Government.'
+
+Peel replied that he could not answer for the Government in England,
+and that the Irish Government possessed no funds for this purpose; he
+would himself have been ready to send Croker '1,000_l._ as a private
+concern between ourselves with no reference whatever to Government';
+but he had it not. 'If you think proper,' he added, 'to take the
+chance whether it [the Government] will assist you, you can promise.'
+For about six years Peel was constantly receiving from Croker requests
+for places, in order to discharge 'debts of gratitude' incurred at
+this election; and in 1816 we find the Government very nearly beaten
+in the House of Commons in an attempt to raise Croker's own salary.
+
+'Could you tell me,' writes Lord Palmerston to Peel, 'whether you
+think there is any probability of a contest for the county of Sligo at
+the next election? I could at the present moment make from 280 to 290
+voters by giving leases to tenants who are now holding at will. If
+there is any chance of their being of use next year, I will do so
+forthwith, and register them in time. If not, I should perhaps
+postpone giving twenty-one years' leases till matters look a little
+more propitious to the payment of rents.'
+
+'Lord Lorton wrote yesterday to his agent to make all the freeholders
+he can on his small Queen's County property. He says he is sorry he
+can't make more than twenty, but that those shall go against Pole.'
+
+A few illustrations of the minor details of patronage may be added.
+One gentleman called upon Peel about an election in Clare, but 'said
+that he would make no promise of his interest unless he received a
+pledge from me that his two brothers should be provided for--one in
+the Church, and the other advanced in the profession of the law.'
+
+Lord C. 'wanted, long since, to make terms with me for his support in
+Cork, ... and wished to be one of a committee for superintending the
+patronage of the county.'
+
+'When G. wants a baronetcy, he is very rich; and when he wants a
+place, he is very poor. I think we may fairly turn the tables on him,
+and when he asks to be a baronet, make his poverty the objection, and
+his wealth when he asks for an office.'
+
+'Pole is constantly pressing K., of the Navigation Board, for
+promotion.... I am told he entirely neglects his duty. Pole readily
+admits his hopeless stupidity and unfitness for office.'
+
+'I do not think your son,' Peel wrote to his Under-Secretary, 'can
+make a more inefficient member of the Board of Stamps than Mr. T. has
+done. I am perfectly ready, therefore, to acquiesce in the exchange.'
+'I make a great sacrifice,' he wrote to Lord Whitworth, 'when I say
+that I doubt whether O.'s habits would qualify him for such practical
+duties as the Collector of Belfast at least ought to perform. Belfast
+is so flourishing a town, and contributes so much to the revenue, that
+I fear the Collectorship of it is too prominent a situation to place
+in it a young man ... we must admit to be a ruined man by gambling.
+Considering how careless he has been of his own money, perhaps some
+office not connected with the collection of the public money ... would
+be more suited to him.... What do you think of the following
+arrangement? Make J. collector for this very bad and very good reason,
+that he is the most inefficient Commissioner, and therefore the public
+service will suffer least from his appointment. Make Colonel H. a
+Commissioner. He will be about as inefficient as J. Make R.M. junior,
+the most inefficient of the three, Surveyor of Lands, _vice_ H., which
+(though he will lose 200_l._ a year) will greatly oblige his father,
+the member; and, lastly, fulfil your good intentions towards O. by
+making him a Commissioner of Accounts, _vice_ M.'
+
+Many other characteristic pictures pass before us. There were officers
+of the revenue who were recommended to 'the marked favour' of the
+Government because they had shown what Peel somewhat rashly called
+'the common honesty' of refusing bribes. There was an official who
+scandalously connived at an abuse of justice by which innocent women
+were condemned to transportation, though taking measures that the
+Government should indirectly hear of the transaction. There were
+shameful abuses in the sale of the office of gaoler, shameful frauds
+in the collection of taxes, in the Customs, in the barrack charges.
+
+'My most decided opinion,' Peel wrote about one of these culprits, 'is
+in favour of his dismissal. I am quite tired of, and disgusted with,
+the shameful corruptions which every Irish inquiry brings to
+light.'[23]
+
+Much trouble was given by newspapers which were subsidised by the
+Government, and at the same time conducted in a manner which no honest
+Government could approve of.[24] Another evil is disclosed in the
+following very creditable letter written by Peel to one of his
+successors:
+
+'I found in Ireland that every official man, not content with the
+favour of Government to himself, thought he had a right to quarter his
+family on the patronage of Government. I took the course that you have
+done in order to enable me to resist with effect such extravagant
+pretensions. I determined never to gratify any private wish of my own
+by the smallest Irish appointment. There is nothing half so disgusting
+as the personal monopoly of honours and offices by those to whom the
+distribution of them is entrusted.'[25]
+
+In the Irish Pension List there had been enormous abuses, but Peel
+took credit for having effectually stopped them. 'No member of
+Parliament,' he wrote, 'has benefited by it. No vote has been
+influenced by it.... I do not think there are any three years in the
+whole period of the Irish history during which so honest a use has
+been made of it.'[26]
+
+As might have been expected, blunders arising from extreme
+inefficiency were very numerous. In one case, by negligent drafting,
+the Insurrection Bill was made to extend to three instead of two
+years, while a simple mistake in one of the Revenue Bills was believed
+to have cost the Revenue not less than 40,000_l._[27]
+
+In all this dreary field the great administrative ability of Peel and
+the essential integrity of his character produced much real
+improvement, though it is very possible to exaggerate his merits. No
+one who has read the Hardwicke and Colchester papers will question
+that some of his predecessors, and especially the Chancellor, Lord
+Redesdale, had laboured with at least equal earnestness to purify
+Irish administration; and the energy with which Lord Redesdale,
+though out of office, still recurred to the subject, was extremely
+displeasing to Peel.[28] His own patronage, as we have already seen,
+was by no means ideal, and he was very anxious to stifle parliamentary
+inquiries.
+
+'I believe,' he wrote, 'an honest, despotic government would be by far
+the fittest government for Ireland'; but as this could not be attained
+he wished no essential alteration. 'I think the present system on
+which the government of Ireland is conducted is the best, but I am
+terribly afraid that Englishmen, who know nothing of Ireland, would
+not concur with me if they inquired into detail. It is very difficult
+to manage even the most limited inquiry. How could we prevent the
+introduction of tithes, magistracy, the Catholic question itself?'[29]
+
+Whatever might be the case in the future, he believed that in the
+present it was impossible for the Irish Government to receive adequate
+support unless it made up its mind to purchase it. 'It would be good
+policy,' he says in one of his letters, 'to direct the channel of
+patronage as plentifully as we can towards those who are adhering to
+us on these pressing questions of army establishments and property
+tax.' He refused in very lofty tones applications for peerages as
+rewards for political support; but the merit of this refusal belongs
+mainly to Lord Liverpool, who, at the beginning of the Chief
+Secretaryship, took on this subject a very firm and honourable line,
+both in England and Ireland, and maintained it at the sacrifice of
+many votes. For Irish honours unaccompanied by endowments there appear
+to have been few applicants. Peel disliked the bestowal of
+ecclesiastical dignities as rewards for political services; but if he
+did not practise it quite as much as his predecessors, this appears to
+have been much more due to nature than to policy.
+
+'There is nothing so extraordinary,' he wrote, 'in natural history as
+the longevity of all bishops, priests, and deacons in Ireland. During
+the last five years there has been literally no Church preferment to
+dispose of, to the infinite disappointment of many expectants.'
+
+In the higher legal appointments, however, while insisting that
+'attachment to the Government on principle' was very material, Peel
+cordially agreed with Saurin that it was vitally necessary to select
+men 'for character, and not for politics or connection'; and he added,
+that those were not likely to be the least fit for high office who
+were too proud to solicit it. 'It is a species of pride which
+occasions very little practical inconvenience in Ireland.'
+
+His letters show clearly the terrible evils of Irish life. He speaks
+of 'the enormous and overgrown population,' with no employment except
+agriculture; of a poverty so extreme that in many districts widespread
+starvation was averted only by prompt Government intervention; of
+'that infernal curse, the forty shilling freeholds'; of the evil
+system of employing the military in distraining for rent and in the
+collection of tithes; of juries, through fear or sympathy, acquitting
+prisoners in the face of the clearest evidence; of the gross perjury
+in the law courts; of the almost universal disaffection of the lower
+orders, fostered by a seditious press; of the growing spirit of
+animosity in the north of Ireland between the lower orders of
+Protestants and Catholics, which was breaking out in constant riots,
+and had already cost many lives. This last evil, it might be truly
+said, was very largely due to the policy of his own party, who had
+protracted through so many years the Catholic question, which ought
+to have been settled at the Union. There was extreme and chronic
+ignorance, poverty, and anarchy; the payment of tithes was constantly
+resisted; and a failure of the potato crop, and a sudden and terrible
+fall in the price of agricultural products after the peace, added
+enormously to the difficulties of the situation. It is remarkable,
+indeed, that there appears to have been in 1816 and 1817 less
+disturbance of the public peace in Ireland than in England; Peel found
+it even possible to reduce the military establishments, and in Dublin
+extreme distress was borne with remarkable patience; but in many parts
+of the country crimes of combination were frequent, and almost
+incredibly savage. Peel mentions one case of a family of eight persons
+who were deliberately burnt in their house by a party of armed men,
+because the owner of the house had prosecuted to conviction three men,
+on a capital charge, at the Louth assizes. In another case a farmer,
+who had shot two men who attacked his house, was himself shot dead on
+a Sunday morning, after Mass, at the chapel door, in the presence of
+hundreds of men, not one of whom attempted to arrest the culprit.
+
+These things filled Peel with a not unnatural horror, and his letters
+showed clearly his intense dislike both of the Irish character and of
+the Irish religion.[30] By far the most valuable contribution he made
+to the improvement of Ireland during his Chief Secretaryship was the
+formation, in 1814, of an efficient police force, which has ever since
+been popularly associated with his name, and which was the nucleus
+from which the present admirable constabulary force was developed in
+1822 and in 1835. 'We ought to be crucified,' he wrote, 'if we make
+the measure a job, and select our constables from the servants of our
+parliamentary friends.' He attempted also, though without much
+success, to institute a system of popular education on a perfectly
+unsectarian basis, and with Catholics among the commissioners.[31] He
+appears to have met with little encouragement, and at least one
+Catholic bishop lost no time in cursing 'these nefarious deistical
+schools'; but some schools were established, and Peel has the merit of
+being one of the earliest advocates of a general system of unsectarian
+national education for Ireland, which many years after was
+accomplished. His measures for the relief of distress appear to have
+been skilful and judicious, supporting and stimulating, but not
+superseding private benevolence.[32] For the rest, he relied chiefly
+on Insurrection Acts strengthening the Executive and giving a greater
+efficiency to the administration of justice, and on strong protective
+legislation encouraging the corn and the manufactures of Ireland.
+
+'I have always,' he wrote, 'been, and always shall be, as strong an
+advocate for giving that preference to the productions of Ireland,
+natural or artificial, which will best promote the industry of the
+people, as I am for instructing the lower orders.'[33]
+
+To the tithe system he would do nothing, and this is one of the fatal
+blots on his reputation as a statesman. There was no single source of
+crime, agitation, and disaffection in Ireland which was so prolific as
+this, and there was no subject on which the wisest statesmen had been
+more agreed than on the supreme importance of meeting this evil by a
+judicious system of commutation. Pitt had clearly expressed his
+opinion of the necessity of such a commutation to the Duke of Rutland
+as early as 1786, and it was one of the measures which he intended to
+have followed the Union. Grattan had brought schemes of commutation in
+three successive years before the Irish Parliament. Lord Loughborough,
+who was the chief cause of the failure of Catholic emancipation after
+the Union, had himself drawn up a Tithe Commutation Bill. Lord
+Redesdale, who represented the extreme Toryism of the ministry of
+Addington, strongly urged the absolute necessity of speedy legislation
+on the subject. The Duke of Bedford, in 1807, dwelt on the importance
+of commuting tithes into a land-tax, and ultimately into land. Parnell
+and Grattan had brought the subject before the Imperial Parliament in
+1810, and it was again and again insisted on by the Whig writers, and
+nowhere more strongly than in Sydney Smith's admirable letters to
+Peter Plymley and in some of the pages of the 'Edinburgh Review.' But
+nothing was done till the evil had become intolerable, and had brought
+the country to a state of anarchy and demoralisation that can scarcely
+be exaggerated. The connection of Peel with the question of Irish
+tithes is a very remarkable one. The Tithe Commutation Act, which was
+carried by a Whig Government in 1838, is one of the few instances of
+perfectly successful legislation in Irish history, and it is well
+known that the chief credit of this measure does not belong to the
+Ministers who carried it. It was the very measure which Sir Robert
+Peel had introduced in 1835, which the Whig party when in opposition
+defeated by connecting it with the Appropriation clause, and which the
+Whig party when in power were compelled to carry without that clause.
+But if the chief credit of the final settlement of this momentous
+question justly belongs to Peel, it must not be forgotten that in the
+eleven years during which, as Chief Secretary or as Home Secretary, he
+was directly responsible for the government of Ireland, he had allowed
+this monster curse to grow and strengthen without making any serious
+effort to mitigate it.
+
+Peel was Chief Secretary during the concluding part of the viceroyalty
+of the Duke of Richmond, during the whole of that of Lord Whitworth,
+and during part of that of Lord Talbot. He had grown very tired of his
+position, but agreed to postpone his departure till after a general
+election, and he at last left Ireland, as he says, with 'undiminished
+and unqualified satisfaction,' in August 1818. He remained out of
+office until January 1822; but the interval was not spent in idleness,
+and in 1819 he took the leading part in the great Act for resuming
+cash payments, which, as it has been truly said, attaches to his name
+'the same meed of praise which he had quoted as inscribed on the tomb
+of Queen Elizabeth: "Moneta in justum valorem redacta."' It is one of
+his greatest legislative achievements; it is also the first of that
+series of recantations which forms one of the most distinctive
+features of his career, for it was based upon the policy which Horner
+had advocated in 1811, and against which Peel had then voted. He still
+took, on the Catholic question, the leading part in opposition to
+emancipation, declaring his determination to offer 'a most sincere and
+uncompromising,' though he now feared unavailing, resistance to
+Catholic concession. The last time the question was brought forward,
+by Grattan, was in 1819, and he was defeated by a majority of only
+two. In 1821, after the death of Grattan, and in a new Parliament,
+Plunket carried a Bill for Catholic emancipation successfully through
+all its stages in the House of Commons, though it was afterwards
+rejected in the Lords. In the ensuing session a similar fate befel a
+Bill of Canning's to relieve Catholic peers of their disabilities.
+Some considerable change, however, was introduced into the spirit of
+the Irish Government by the appointment of Lord Wellesley, who was in
+favour of the Catholics, to the viceroyalty. One of its most important
+results was the removal of Saurin from the office of Attorney-General
+and the appointment of Plunket in his place. Lord Wellesley described
+this measure to Lady Blessington as the removal of 'an old Orangeman'
+who, though 'Attorney-General by title, had really been
+Lord-Lieutenant for fifteen years'; but it is evident from the letters
+of Peel that his warm sympathies, both personal and political, were
+with Saurin.
+
+The accession of George IV. to the throne in the beginning of 1820
+brought to a crisis the quarrel between the new King and his wife, and
+led to the resignation of Canning in the last days of the year, and
+Lord Liverpool then tried to induce Peel to enter the Cabinet in the
+vacant post of President of the Board of Control. Peel, however,
+refused the office, declaring that he differed from some of the
+proceedings of the Ministry about the Queen. In the summer of 1821 he
+again declined a similar offer, chiefly, as it appears, on the ground
+of uncertain health and of a dislike to official life which his recent
+marriage had produced. But when Lord Sidmouth resigned the Home
+Office, Peel proved less inflexible, and on January 17, 1822, he
+accepted the seals, which he held till 1827. In August Castlereagh,
+or, as he now was, Lord Londonderry, committed suicide. Lord
+Liverpool saw the necessity of recalling Canning to the Cabinet as
+Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Canning would accept the post only as
+leader of the House of Commons. The King hated Canning, and would
+gladly have excluded him altogether from the Ministry, and Eldon and
+the Duke of Newcastle greatly desired that the leadership of the House
+of Commons should be given to Peel. Canning, however, who had been
+sixteen years longer in Parliament than Peel, had both the right and
+the power to insist upon the leadership, and Peel acquiesced in his
+claim with honourable frankness. Except on the Catholic question they
+appear to have cordially agreed, and something of the success of
+Canning's brilliant foreign policy is due to the loyalty with which he
+was supported by Peel in the Cabinet and at Court.
+
+Space will not permit us to relate at length the history of Peel's
+conduct as home Minister. The Catholic question was rapidly advancing
+to a crisis, and the system of a divided Ministry in which it was an
+open question, and in which the leading Ministers took opposite sides,
+was becoming plainly impossible. Ireland was again in a state of
+anarchy bordering on civil war, and the foundation, in 1823, of the
+Catholic Association by O'Connell and Sheil gave a new impulse to the
+agitation. The Duke of Wellington, who knew the country well and was
+not liable to panic, predicted that the new association if it
+continued would lead to civil war, and declared that the organisation
+of the disaffected in Ireland was much more perfect than in 1798.[34]
+At the same time the long-protracted and increasing violence of the
+conflict had aroused fierce Orange passions both in the North and in
+Dublin, while in England the King was embarrassing even his
+'anti-Catholic' Ministers by the vehemence of his hostility to
+concession. He described Peel as 'the King's Protestant Minister' and
+Lord Wellesley as an 'enemy in the camp.' He assured Peel that,
+whether the Cabinet wished it or not, he would never consent to give
+letters of precedence to a Roman Catholic barrister, and he wrote Peel
+a formal letter in which he said, 'the sentiments of the King upon
+Catholic emancipation are those of his revered and excellent father;
+from those sentiments the King never can and never will deviate.'[35]
+
+Peel, while maintaining his unflinching hostility to important
+concessions, tried to moderate all parties. He implored the King to
+make no public declaration. He wrote to Ireland strongly discouraging
+the violence of the Orangemen and urging that 'in this age of liberal
+doctrine, when prescription is no longer even a presumption in favour
+of what is established, it will be a work of desperate difficulty to
+contend against "emancipation," as they call it, unless we can fight
+with the advantage on our side of great discretion, forbearance, and
+moderation on the part of the Irish Protestants.' He recurred to his
+old idea of establishing a system of unsectarian national education,
+and he readily abandoned the corrupt and proselytising charter
+schools. He supported a measure of Lord Nugent, which Lord Eldon
+succeeded in defeating in the Lords, for extending to the English
+Catholics such privileges as were already possessed by Catholics in
+Ireland, and he fully approved of a letter written on behalf of the
+Cabinet to the Lord-Lieutenant urging 'that a disposition should be
+manifested to admit the Roman Catholics of Ireland to a fair
+proportion of the emoluments and honours to which they are eligible by
+law,' but without issuing patents of precedence.[36]
+
+On matters unconnected with the Catholic question his administration
+was skilful and, on the whole, enlightened; and in 1823 he introduced
+the first of a series of important measures diminishing the enormous
+number of capital offences that disgraced the English criminal code,
+and, at the same time, doing much to simplify and consolidate that
+code. In this, as in most respects, there was little original in his
+legislation. He followed, at some distance, in the steps of Romilly
+and Mackintosh, and he left very much to be done, which was chiefly
+accomplished during the Whig ascendancy that followed the Reform Bill
+of 1832. It appears, from some remarkable letters in this volume,
+that, before Peel took up the question of criminal reform, George IV.
+was exceedingly sensible of the enormity of executing very young men
+for secondary offences, and that he was continually pressing on his
+Ministers a more merciful administration of the law. He sometimes
+found Peel by no means ready to yield. In one case Peel invoked the
+aid of the Cabinet to overrule the wish of the King, who desired to
+save two culprits from the gallows; and, in another case, he
+threatened to resign his office if the King persisted in commuting the
+sentence of a youth who had been found guilty of uttering forged
+notes.[37] But Peel had at least the merit of recognising an
+intolerable abuse, and his legislation on the subject was skilfully
+framed and still more skilfully introduced and carried. In his
+patronage in this, as in later periods of his life, he cared much more
+than most English Ministers for the interests of science, literature,
+and art. He was by no means indifferent to the opportunities his
+position gave him of advancing his own family and friends; but he
+never, in his English patronage, forgot the character of those whom he
+recommended for promotion, and he brought forward or assisted many men
+of ability and learning with whom he had no connection and no
+political sympathy. The letters in this volume between Peel and his
+very intimate Oxford friend Dr. Lloyd are especially interesting and
+characteristic. They are in general very honourable to Peel; but Mr.
+Parker is much too indulgent when he describes the intensely worldly
+letters in which Dr. Lloyd urged his own merits and his claims to the
+bishopric of Oxford as merely 'frank, and free from affectation of the
+traditional _nolo episcopari_.' Both Peel and Lord Liverpool appear to
+have had a much stronger sense than most of their predecessors of the
+responsibilities attaching to Church patronage and of the duty of
+administering it in the public interest, and in this respect they were
+broadly distinguished from Lord Eldon.
+
+'It is really a cruel thing,' Lord Liverpool wrote to Peel, 'that the
+patronage of the Crown as to Church matters should be divided between
+the Minister and the Chancellor, and that all the public claims should
+fall upon the former. The Chancellor has nine livings to the
+Minister's one. With respect to these he does occasionally attend to
+local claims, but he has besides four cathedrals, and to no one of
+these cathedrals has any man of distinguished learning or merit been
+promoted.'
+
+In the beginning of 1825 the Irish Government, having without
+consulting Peel undertaken a foolish prosecution of O'Connell for a
+not very dangerous speech, received a heavy rebuff, for the Grand
+Jury threw out the Bill, and the prosecution of an Orange leader was
+equally unsuccessful. A Bill was about the same time brought in and
+carried, suppressing the new association; but it could not suppress
+the spirit which it had aroused. O'Connell, however, was thoroughly
+alarmed at the state of the country, and as far as possible from
+desiring a rebellion, and he was at this time in a very conciliatory
+mood. He was perfectly ready to accept an endowment for the
+priesthood, which would attach them to the Government, and also a
+considerable raising of the Irish franchise. This was the last
+occasion on which his party and the Catholic gentry very cordially
+concurred, and it was the last occasion on which the Catholic question
+could have been settled on a basis that would have given real strength
+to the Empire. A Relief Bill passed through all its stages in the
+Commons by considerable majorities, and it was followed by a Bill for
+raising the qualifications of Irish electors, and by a resolution for
+endowing the priesthood. O'Connell fully believed that Catholic
+emancipation would definitely pass in this session,[38] and he
+appeared to have excellent reasons for his belief. In Ireland it
+generally prevailed, and it exercised an immediate pacifying
+influence. Lord Fingall and other Catholic noblemen, in presenting an
+address at this time to the King, were able to say 'the whole of
+Ireland reposes in profound tranquillity, and the law, without the aid
+of any extraordinary power, everywhere receives voluntary obedience.'
+It was afterwards stated by Lord George Bentinck that Peel had changed
+his opinions about Catholic emancipation in 1825, and had communicated
+this change to Lord Liverpool. The letters before us, however,
+conclusively prove that if Peel was shaken, it was not about the
+merits of emancipation, but about the practicability of resisting it.
+Having been four times defeated in the Commons on the Catholic
+question, he tendered his resignation, and Lord Liverpool at once
+declared that without his assistance he could not continue the
+struggle. Peel was the only Minister in the House of Commons opposed
+to the Catholic cause, differing on the question from all his
+colleagues in the House. If he had resigned, and if Lord Liverpool had
+followed his example, there is good reason to believe that a
+Government might have been formed which would have carried the measure
+safely and speedily with the securities that had been accepted. Most
+unfortunately for the Empire, the 'Protestant' party persuaded Peel to
+withdraw his resignation in order to avert this surrender. In the
+House of Lords the Duke of York, who was the heir-presumptive to the
+throne, stood up and declared his unalterable opposition to the
+Catholic claims, 'whatever might be his situation in life, so help him
+God,' and the Lords rejected the Bill by a majority of 48.
+
+The conscientious views of George III. obtained some measure of
+respect even from those who believed them to be most unfounded; but no
+halo of sanctity dignified the scruples of George IV. or of the Duke
+of York. The Irish Catholics, exasperated at the present
+disappointment of their hopes, and at the prospect of another hostile
+King, flung themselves into a furious agitation, and in a few months
+all the progress which had been made towards pacifying the country was
+undone, while in England Peel had to meet a terrible commercial
+crisis. Seventy county banks stopped in less than a week. In dealing
+with questions of commerce and currency Peel was always in his
+element, and his measures appear to have been wise and skilful. A
+general election took place, and he was again returned by the
+University of Oxford as the uncompromising opponent of Catholic
+emancipation. In England the anti-Catholic party gained some seats,
+and the increasing violence in Ireland had produced some reaction. In
+Ireland it was soon apparent that what Grattan had feared had come to
+pass, and that the tie which had hitherto attached the people to their
+landlords was completely broken. The priests everywhere appeared at
+the head of their people, and it was at once seen that a new and
+terrible power was dominating Irish politics. In Waterford, where the
+Beresfords had long been omnipotent, they were totally defeated, and
+Leslie Foster sent Peel a vivid description of his own defeat in the
+Louth election. At the outset of the contest, upwards of five-sixths
+of the votes were promised to him; but the whole priesthood turned
+themselves into electioneering agents against him. In every chapel
+there were political sermons; the priests menaced all who voted for
+him with eternal damnation; they were present at every polling-booth
+to overawe their parishioners; and their efforts were seconded by
+savage mobs who waylaid and beat all opponents, and forced multitudes
+of Protestants, by threats of assassination or of the burning of their
+houses, to vote against their promises and their convictions. 'In the
+county town the studied violence and intimidation were such that it
+was only by locking up my voters in enclosed yards that their lives
+were preserved.' By these means the election was won. What, asked
+Foster, will be the end of this? 'The landlords are exasperated to the
+utmost, the priests swaggering in their triumph, the tenantry sullen
+and insolent. Men who, a month ago, were all civility and submission
+now hardly suppress their curses when a gentleman passes by. The text
+of every village orator is, "Boys, you have put down three lords;
+stick to your priests, and you will carry all before you."'
+
+The letters of Goulburn, the Chief Secretary, show that the picture
+was not overcharged.
+
+'Never,' he wrote, 'were Roman Catholic and Protestant so decidedly
+opposed. Never did the former act with so general a concert, or place
+themselves so completely under the command of the priesthood.' 'The
+priests exercise on all matters a dominion perfectly uncontrolled and
+uncontrollable. In many parts of the country their sermons are purely
+political, and the altars in the several chapels are the rostra from
+which they declaim on the subject of Roman Catholic grievances, exhort
+to the collection of rent, or denounce their Protestant neighbours in
+a mode perfectly intelligible and effective, but not within the grasp
+of the law. In several towns no Roman Catholic will now deal with a
+Protestant shop-keeper, in consequence of the priest's interdiction,
+and this species of interference, stirring up enmity on one hand and
+feelings of resentment on the other, is mainly conducive to outrage
+and disorder.... The first vacancy on the Roman Catholic bench is to
+be supplied by Dr. England from America, a man of all others most
+decidedly hostile to British interests and the most active in
+fomenting the discord of this country.... With such leaders it is
+reasonable to anticipate the worst. It is impossible to detail in a
+letter the various modes in which the Roman Catholic priesthood now
+interfere in every transaction of every description, how they rule the
+mob, the gentry, and the magistracy, and how they impede the
+administration of justice.' Their power is greater than any other in
+the State, 'and they love to display it, and omit no opportunity of
+taunting their adversaries.' 'The state of society here is so
+disorganised, and the Government has so inferior an authority to other
+powers acting on the people, that the opinion formed to-day may be
+quite changed to-morrow.'[39]
+
+The election of 1826 virtually carried Catholic emancipation, for it
+reduced Ireland to a state in which it was impossible long to resist
+it. Clear-sighted men had no difficulty in perceiving that the policy
+of Peel had failed to avert it, though it had succeeded in making
+impossible the securities which Grattan and the wisest men of his
+generation had pronounced indispensable for its safe working, in
+kindling religious hatreds as intense as in the darkest period of the
+eighteenth century, in breaking down that healthy relation and
+subordination of classes on which beyond all other things the future
+well-being of Ireland depended. Peel was not wholly blind to what was
+happening. 'A darker cloud than ever,' he wrote, 'seems to me to
+impend over Ireland, that is if one of the remaining bonds of society,
+the friendly connection between landlord and tenant, is
+dissolved.'[40] He still persuaded himself, however, that the
+political power of the priests was transient, and that a reaction
+would set in that might destroy it. The defeat of the Catholic
+question in the new Parliament by a majority of four encouraged him in
+his resistance. In January 1827 the death of the Duke of York removed
+one serious obstacle to the Catholic cause, and six weeks later Lord
+Liverpool, who had so long held together the divided Ministry, was
+struck down by apoplexy. Peel would gladly have continued in his
+present position if a peer of real weight who held his opinions on the
+Catholic question was appointed to the vacant place. But there was no
+such peer, except Wellington, to be found, and under Wellington
+Canning refused to serve. Canning had, indeed, now fully resolved to
+be at the head of the Administration, and Peel refused to serve under
+him.
+
+With his opinions on the Catholic question it is impossible to blame
+him, and the letters which passed between the two statesmen are very
+honourable to both, and show clearly that in spite of great divergence
+of opinion, character, and interests, each could recognise the good
+faith of the other. In a letter written to one of his brothers Peel
+describes his position with complete frankness:
+
+'I am content with my position in the Government, and willing to
+retain it--willing to see Mr. Canning leader of the House of Commons,
+as he has been. But giving him credit for honesty and sincerity, if he
+is at the head of the Government, and has all the patronage of the
+Government, he must exert himself as an honest man to carry the
+Catholic question; and to the carrying of that question, to the
+preparation for its being carried, I never can be a party. Still less
+can I be a party to it for the sake of office.'
+
+These words were written little more than a year before Peel
+undertook, as Minister of the Crown, to introduce a measure of
+Catholic emancipation. But if they do little credit to his prescience,
+no one can mistake the accent of sincerity in what follows:
+
+'I do not choose to see new lights on the Catholic question precisely
+at that conjuncture when the Duke of York has been laid in his grave
+and Lord Liverpool struck dumb by the palsy. Would any man, woman, or
+child believe that after nineteen years' stubborn unbelief I was
+converted, at the very moment Mr. Canning was Prime Minister, out of
+pure conscience and the force of truth?'[41]
+
+With the resignation of Peel and the other anti-Catholic members of
+Lord Liverpool's Government, and the formation of the short Canning
+Ministry, this instalment of Peel's letters comes to an end.[42] We
+rejoice that the publication of this very interesting correspondence
+has been entrusted to an editor who is at once so competent and so
+judicious.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] _Life of Lord George Bentinck_, p. 304.
+
+[11] Lewis's _Letters_, p. 226.
+
+[12] _Private Correspondence of Sir R. Peel, 1788-1827_. Ed. by C.S.
+Parker, M.P., 1891, p. 24.
+
+[13] _Ibid._ p. 27.
+
+[14] _Hansard_, First Ser. xxi. 663.
+
+[15] Butler's _Hist. Memoirs_, ii. 177.
+
+[16] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 80.
+
+[17] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 83.
+
+[18] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 76.
+
+[19] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 217, 218.
+
+[20] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 222-224.
+
+[21] _Ibid._ p. 212.
+
+[22] _Ibid._ p. 284.
+
+[23] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 282.
+
+[24] _Ibid._ pp. 114-116, 211, 218.
+
+[25] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 60.
+
+[26] _Ibid._ p. 275.
+
+[27] _Ibid._ p. 96.
+
+[28] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 211.
+
+[29] _Ibid._ pp. 215, 219, 220.
+
+[30] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 207, 231, 235, 236.
+
+[31] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 87-92.
+
+[32] _Ibid._ pp. 244, 265.
+
+[33] _Ibid._ pp. 167, 233.
+
+[34] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 348.
+
+[35] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 349, 358, 359, 370-371.
+
+[36] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 358.
+
+[37] _Ibid._ pp. 315-317.
+
+[38] Fitzpatrick's _Correspondence of O'Connell_, i. p. 108.
+
+[39] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 416, 418, 419, 422.
+
+[40] _Ibid._ pp. 413, 420.
+
+[41] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 485.
+
+[42] Two more volumes have been published since this Essay was
+written.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD HENRY, FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY
+
+
+The time has not yet arrived for the publication of a full life of the
+late Lord Derby, but in submitting to the public a collection of his
+more important speeches outside Parliament, a short sketch of the
+chief features of his life and character may not be out of place.
+
+Edward Henry, fifteenth Earl of Derby, was born July 21, 1826, and was
+educated at Rugby, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a
+First Class in classics. In March 1848 he unsuccessfully contested
+Lancaster, and soon after started for a long and instructive journey
+in America and the West Indies. During his absence from England he was
+elected Member for Lynn Regis upon the death of Lord George Bentinck
+in September 1848, and he held this seat without interruption till his
+accession to the earldom in October 1869. His first speech in the
+House of Commons was delivered on May 31, 1850, on the sugar duties.
+The effect on the West Indies of the abolition of the preferential
+duty on sugar was a subject which he had specially studied during his
+journey, and he had published a pamphlet upon it. Sir Robert Peel
+greatly praised his maiden speech, and Greville describes the great
+impression which it made--an impression which a further knowledge of
+the speaker speedily confirmed.
+
+The appearance in Parliament of the eldest son of one of the most
+brilliant party leaders of the age could scarcely fail to be a
+considerable political event, and it was soon found that the new
+member was not only a man of rare ability, but was also in nearly all
+respects very unlike his illustrious father. Never was there a more
+striking instance of that strange freak of heredity by which an able
+son is sometimes much less the continuation than the complement of an
+able father, exhibiting in strongly contrasted lights both opposite
+qualities and opposite defects. The fourteenth Earl was a great
+orator. He was one of the greatest debaters who have ever lived. He
+was a party leader of extraordinary power, delighting in political
+conflict; throwing into it much of the fire and passion which he
+displayed in his sporting contests; little fitted to conciliate
+opponents, but eminently fitted to win the enthusiastic loyalty of his
+followers, to rally a dispirited minority, to lead a party attack. His
+keen and rapid judgment; his perfect command of pure and lucid
+English; his unfailing readiness in argument, invective, sarcasm, and
+repartee; his indomitable courage, and the somewhat imperious dignity
+of his manner, all marked him out for the position which he held. If
+there was some truth in the common taunt that he was more a party
+leader than a statesman, it must at least be remembered that he has
+identified his name with several important measures, and that during
+most of his career he was in a hopeless minority. His enemies accused
+him of rashness, arrogance, and some superficiality, both of thought
+and knowledge. They alleged that he carried too much of the sporting
+spirit into politics; that his naturally excellent judgment was often
+deflected by the passions of the fray; that he was accustomed to
+judge measures more by their party advantages than by their intrinsic
+merits, and to care more for an immediate triumph than for ultimate
+results.
+
+His son was made in a very different mould. Though like most able and
+clear-headed men he acquired by much practice a respectable facility
+in purely extemporaneous argument, he was never a great debater. His
+speeches were very carefully prepared, and they possessed conspicuous
+merits of form as well as of matter, but they were not the speeches of
+a brilliant orator. No one could reason more clearly, more powerfully,
+or more persuasively. He was a supreme master of terse, luminous,
+weighty, and accurate English. He had much skill in bringing into
+vivid relief the salient points of an obscure and complicated subject,
+condensing an argument into a phrase, and illustrating it by graphic
+felicities of language that clung to the memory. But he hated
+rhetoric. His enunciation was faulty and unimpressive. He appealed
+solely to the reason, and never to passion or to prejudice, and he had
+nothing of the fire and temperament of a party orator. Very few
+politicians mastered so thoroughly the subjects with which they dealt.
+No politician of his time retained so remarkably, amid party
+conflicts, the power of judging questions from all their sides; of
+balancing judicially opposing considerations; of looking beyond the
+passions and interests of the hour; of realising the points of view of
+those to whom he was opposed. Declamation, clap-trap, evasion,
+ambiguities of thought and expression, empty plausibilities, unfair,
+partial, and exaggerated statements, were all essentially repugnant to
+that clear and sceptical intellect, to that sound, cautious, practical
+judgment. His business talents were very great, and they were
+assiduously cultivated. His appetite for work was insatiable. No one
+knew better how to administer a great department or preside over a
+Parliamentary Committee, or arbitrate in a difficult controversy, or
+give wise and timely advice to an inexperienced organisation. It was
+in these fields that his influence was, perhaps, most deeply felt. His
+success in them did not depend merely on his unflagging industry and
+his excellent judgment, it was also largely due to his eminently
+conciliatory character. The uniform courtesy which he displayed to men
+of all ranks and opinions is happily no rare thing among his class,
+but everyone who was brought in contact with Lord Derby soon felt that
+he was in the presence of one who tried to understand his position, to
+estimate his arguments at their full worth, to find some common ground
+of agreement. If it were possible in a bitter controversy to arrive at
+reasonable compromise, Lord Derby was most likely to effect it. He had
+a curious talent of making speeches with which everyone must agree,
+and which at the same time were never commonplace. Their secret lay in
+the habit of mind that led him always to seek out the common grounds
+of principle or fact that underlie every controversy, and which in the
+heat of the conflict the disputants had often failed to recognise.
+
+It was not difficult to forecast the place which a statesman of this
+kind was likely to fill in English politics. He was plainly wanting in
+many of the qualities of a party leader, and in most of the qualities
+of a parliamentary gladiator, and he was not likely to succeed in all
+forms of statesmanship. He would certainly not prove
+
+    A daring pilot in extremity,
+    Pleased with the danger when the waves went high.
+
+
+
+His clear perception of the objections to any course, combined with a
+very deep sense of responsibility, not unfrequently enfeebled his will
+in moments when bold and decisive action was required, and there were
+times when the love of compromise which was so useful an element in
+his character seemed to his best friends too closely allied to
+weakness. But he probably saved every party with which he acted from
+many mistakes. He brought to every Government which he joined a very
+eminent administrative capacity. He defended every policy that he
+espoused with a persuasive reasoning that few men could equal. He was
+a supremely skilful detector of false weights and of false measures.
+Every fad, every new-born enthusiasm, every crude ill-digested theory,
+found in him the calmest and most penetrating of critics, and he
+inspired the great body of moderate men of all parties with a deep
+confidence in his patriotism and in his judgment.
+
+His political position was marked out by the fact that his father had
+recently broken away from the Whig connection which had hitherto been
+that of his family, and was now the leader of the Conservative party.
+The son naturally took his place under his father's banner, but I much
+question whether he would have done so if no family influence had
+interfered. It was not that he at any time changed considerably his
+views. As Macaulay has truly said--while the extremes of the two
+English parties are separated by a wide chasm, there is a frontier
+line where they almost blend; and Lord Derby when a Conservative
+always represented the Liberal, and when a Liberal the Conservative
+wing of his party. But his mind had much of the Whig character; his
+judgment was very independent; and on Church questions especially he
+was never fully in harmony with his party. He was appointed
+Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his father's first
+short Ministry in March 1852, at a time when he was travelling in
+India, and he left office with his father in December of the same
+year. In 1853 he made a remarkable speech on Indian affairs, in some
+degree foreshadowing the Indian policy which he was afterwards
+destined to take such a large part in carrying into effect. During the
+next few years he spoke frequently on Indian and Colonial questions,
+on questions connected with education, factories, and other
+working-class interests, and he supported--often in opposition to the
+majority of his party--a large number of reforms which have since been
+accomplished. He advocated the introduction of competitive
+examinations, first of all into the Diplomatic, and then into most
+branches of the Civil Service. He spoke against the system of purchase
+in the army, and served on a Royal Commission on the subject. He
+supported a motion for securing to married women their property and
+earnings. He took a decided part in opposition to Church rates. He
+voted for the emancipation of the Jews. He voted and spoke in favour
+of the Maynooth grant. He was an early advocate of the opening of
+museums on Sundays, and of a conscience clause to be enforced in all
+schools receiving State assistance. He supported the establishment of
+the Divorce Court, and clearly showed that preference for social as
+distinguished from political questions which he retained through his
+whole life. He delighted in placing himself in touch with working men.
+Mechanics' institutes, free libraries, almost every movement for the
+education and improvement of the working class, found in him a steady
+friend. He once wrote to Lord Shaftesbury: 'We are both public men
+deeply interested in the condition of the working class, and for my
+own part I would rather look back on services such as you have
+performed for that class than receive the highest honours in the
+employment of the State.' On working-class questions he was often
+accused of Radicalism, but it was Radicalism of the old school, which
+relied mainly for reform on spontaneous effort, on moral improvement,
+and extended education, and was very jealous of State interference,
+compulsion, and control. He had a great admiration for Mill's
+writings, and especially for his treatise on Liberty, which he
+described as 'one of the wisest books of our time.' Mill fully
+reciprocated the feeling. He once spoke of Lord Stanley as 'one of the
+very few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions
+ought to be founded on principles.'
+
+'Our party,' wrote Lord Malmesbury in 1853, 'are angry with Disraeli,
+which is constantly the case, and they are also displeased with Lord
+Stanley, suspecting him to be coquetting with the Manchester party.'
+Greville, nearly at the same time, expressed his belief that Lord
+Stanley was taking 'a wise and liberal line,' and that he was 'pretty
+sure to act a conspicuous part.' In November 1855 there was a critical
+moment in his career, when Lord Palmerston, on the death of Sir
+William Molesworth, offered Lord Stanley the post of Secretary of
+State for the Colonies. He at once went down to Knowsley to consult
+his father, who put a strong veto on the proposal, and the offer was
+refused, but in terms which showed that it had been far from
+unacceptable. It is probable that the refusal was a wise one, for
+although on many home questions Lord Stanley would have found himself
+more in harmony with moderate Liberals than with his own party, he
+would certainly have dissented from Lord Palmerston's foreign policy.
+During the Crimean war he seems to have sympathised with the views of
+Bright and Cobden. He took an active part in an able but now nearly
+forgotten Tory paper called 'The Press,' which was opposed to the war,
+and his extreme horror of war and of every policy which could possibly
+lead to war was one of his strongest characteristics. Responsibility
+in office never weighed lightly upon him, but responsibility for
+measures which led or might lead to bloodshed was more than he could
+bear.
+
+At the time when this offer of Lord Palmerston was made, Lord Stanley
+was little more than twenty-nine. Greville considered that he had
+acted wisely in refusing, and he has given us an interesting account
+of the light in which the young statesman then appeared to experienced
+political judges. 'His position and abilities,' he said, 'are certain
+before long to make him conspicuous, and to enable him to play a very
+considerable part. He is exceedingly ambitious, of an independent turn
+of mind, very industrious, and has acquired a vast amount of
+information. Not long ago Disraeli gave me an account of him and of
+his curious opinions--exceedingly curious in a man in his condition of
+life and with his prospects. Last night Lord Strangford (George
+Smythe) talked to me about him, expressed the highest opinion of his
+capacity and acquirements, and confirmed what Disraeli had told me of
+his notions and views even more, for he says that he is a real and
+sincere democrat, and that he would like if he could to prove his
+sincerity by divesting himself of his aristocratic character, and even
+of the wealth he is heir to. How far this may be true I know not....
+Nothing appears to me certain but that he will play a considerable
+part for good or for evil, but I cannot pretend to guess what it will
+be. At present he seems to be more allied with Bright than with any
+other public man, and as his disposition about the war and its
+continuance is very much that of Bright it would have been difficult
+for him to take office with Palmerston.'
+
+Lord Stanley had not long to wait for high office. His father formed
+his second Administration in February 1858, and Lord Stanley was made
+Colonial Secretary. He appears to have accepted the office with some
+reluctance, and only because Sir E. Bulwer, for whom it was at first
+intended, found that he could not secure his re-election. The
+Government was a very weak one, and it opened with the worst
+prospects. It was a Government in a minority. Its very existence
+depended on the dissensions between Lord Palmerston and Lord John
+Russell, and its first steps met with little favour either in the
+House or in the country. The Indian Mutiny was now nearly suppressed,
+and Lord Palmerston shortly before quitting office had pledged the
+House of Commons to the policy of withdrawing the Government of India
+from the East India Company and placing it directly under the Crown.
+To carry this policy into effect was the first task of the new
+Government. They introduced an Indian Bill which they were compelled
+to withdraw, and then substituted for it a new Bill founded on
+resolutions which were carried through the House of Commons. In May
+the Government almost fell on account of the indiscreet publication of
+a despatch of Lord Ellenborough, condemning a Proclamation of the
+Governor-General, Lord Canning. A vote of censure was moved and would
+certainly have been carried if Lord Ellenborough had not saved his
+colleagues by resigning. He was President of the Board of Control, the
+Office which then directed Indian affairs, and Lord Stanley took his
+place, piloted the Indian Bill successfully through the House of
+Commons, and when the measure became law, was the first Secretary of
+State for India, and undertook the very important and responsible task
+of beginning the new system of Indian Government.
+
+'The Times' noticed the singular good fortune of Lord Derby in being
+able at this very critical moment to place his eldest son in one of
+the most important Cabinet offices in his Ministry without incurring
+from any side the smallest imputation of nepotism, and the skill and
+success of the new administration of the India Office was speedily and
+generally recognised. Greville tells us that Lord Stanley 'gained
+golden opinions and great popularity at the India House'; and he gives
+a striking instance of the firmness with which he maintained the full
+authority of the new Council over Indian affairs. He adds: 'I was
+prepared to hear of his ability, his indefatigable industry, and his
+business qualities; but I was surprised to hear so much of his
+courtesy, affability, patience, and candour; that he is neither
+dictatorial nor conceited, always ready to listen to other people's
+opinions and advice, and never fancying that he knows better than
+anyone else. I afterwards told Jonathan Peel what I had heard and he
+confirmed the truth of this report and said he was the same in the
+Cabinet.' 'Lord Stanley,' Greville said, 'is so completely _the man_
+of the present day, and in all human probability is destined to play
+so important and conspicuous a part in political life, that the time
+may come when any details, however minute, of his early career will be
+deemed worthy of recollection.' It is a characteristic fact that Lord
+Stanley offered a seat on the Indian Council to John Stuart Mill,
+which, however, that great writer declined.
+
+The disturbance in European politics which culminated in the French
+declaration of war against Austria contributed to weaken still further
+the feeble Ministry of Lord Derby. The Reform Bill caused profound
+divisions in its ranks. Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley resigned, and the
+Government Bill was defeated in the spring of 1859. Lord Malmesbury
+mentions that in the Cabinet divisions on that question Lord Stanley
+supported the more democratic view, and that on one occasion he
+threatened to resign if the measure were not made more liberal. He
+defended the Bill in an elaborate speech, advocating such an
+introduction of the working class to the franchise as would give them
+a considerable but not a preponderating power. A general election
+followed, and the Government gained several seats, but not sufficient
+to give it a majority. The different fractions of the Opposition drew
+together; on June 11 a vote of want of confidence was carried by a
+majority of 13, and Lord Derby immediately resigned.
+
+In opposition Lord Stanley devoted himself chiefly to the class of
+questions that had occupied him before his accession to office. He
+served on the long Cambridge University Commission, and supported the
+admission of Nonconformists to Fellowships. He was also warmly in
+favour of the measure which made it possible for clergymen to free
+themselves from their Orders and to adopt other professions. He
+presided over the Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army
+and over the Commission on Patents. Like Disraeli, he displayed during
+the American Civil War a reticence and reserve which contrasted very
+favourably with the rash language of other leaders.
+
+In 1862 a curious episode occurred which showed at least the
+widespread reputation that he had acquired. Prince Alfred having
+refused the throne of Greece, the idea was for a short time
+entertained of offering it to Lord Stanley. 'If he accepts,' Disraeli
+wrote to his friend Mrs. Willyams, 'I shall lose a powerful friend and
+colleague. It is a dazzling adventure for the house of Stanley, but
+they are not an imaginative race, and I fancy they will prefer
+Knowsley to the Parthenon and Lancashire to the Attic Plains.' 'The
+Greeks really want to make my friend Lord Stanley their king. This
+beats any novel; but he will not. Had I his youth I would not
+hesitate, even with the earldom of Derby in the distance.'
+
+It does not appear that this proposal ever took a very serious form,
+and if it had been made there is little doubt that Disraeli formed a
+just forecast of what would have been the result. The death of Lord
+Palmerston on October 18, 1865, gave a new turn to the political
+kaleidoscope: Lord Russell became Prime Minister; the policy of reform
+was pushed into the forefront, and the Reform Bill of 1866 speedily
+produced a secession in the Liberal ranks and led to the downfall of
+the Ministry. The feature of the Bill which specially lent itself to
+attack was that it dealt solely with reduction of the franchise,
+leaving the question of the distribution of seats to subsequent
+legislation, and an amendment was moved by Lord Grosvenor to the
+effect that no Bill for the reduction of the franchise should be
+discussed till the whole scheme was before the House. This amendment
+was seconded by Lord Stanley in a speech which Lord Malmesbury
+pronounced to be 'the finest and most statesmanlike speech he ever
+made.' In June the Government were beaten by a small majority on an
+amendment of Lord Dunkellin substituting rating for rental; a few days
+later Lord Russell resigned and Lord Derby for the third time became
+Prime Minister.
+
+As on the two former occasions he was in a minority, though the
+temporary secession of a portion of the Liberal party gave him a
+precarious power. Once more, too, he took office amid the convulsions
+of a European war, for the war of Prussia and Italy with Austria had
+just begun. In the new Ministry Lord Stanley was Secretary for Foreign
+Affairs. In his election address he gave the keynote of his policy by
+insisting in the strongest terms that England should observe a strict
+neutrality in European controversies. Her vast Indian and Colonial
+Empire, he said, made her a world apart and threw upon her duties and
+responsibilities that taxed all her energies. She had duties also to
+her poorer classes at home, whose condition was not what we could
+desire; and by simply existing as a free, prosperous, and
+self-governed nation, we should do more for the real freedom of Europe
+than by any policy of meddling or war.
+
+As far as his own department was concerned Lord Stanley's
+administration during this short Ministry was both eminently
+consistent and eminently successful. It is true that this pacific
+Minister made the Abyssinian war for the release of some imprisoned
+British subjects, but he only did this after every peaceful effort to
+procure their release had proved abortive, and it was almost
+universally recognised that there was no honourable alternative open
+to him. During his ministry the Luxemburg question brought France and
+Prussia to the very verge of war. It fell to the task of Lord Stanley
+to mediate between them, and he did so with a success which certainly
+adjourned, though it could not ultimately avert, the great catastrophe
+that burst upon Europe in 1870. No success could have been more
+gratifying to him, and he was fond of repeating the saying of Canning
+that 'If a war must come sooner or later, for my part I prefer that it
+should come later than sooner.' Lord Russell bore an ungrudging
+testimony to the 'tact and discretion' Lord Stanley displayed in this
+negotiation. In the same spirit he refused to take part in a
+conference of European Powers which the French Emperor desired to
+convene to settle the Roman question, declaring that this question was
+one with which England should in no way meddle, and that a conference
+would be useless and dangerous unless a basis were laid down before.
+He refused to interfere in any way with the Cretan rebellion, and with
+the impending disputes between Turkey and Greece. His abstention on
+this question was blamed by some, but it met with the full approbation
+of his great opponent, Lord Russell, who declared that 'he had acted
+with much prudence and discretion.' He laid the foundation also of the
+settlement of the long outstanding difficulty with America by
+proposing to refer the Alabama question to arbitration, and he
+negotiated a treaty on the subject, which, however, the Senate refused
+to ratify.
+
+In all this he was very consistent. The same consistency cannot be
+claimed for his support of a Reform Bill far more Radical than that
+which his party had so recently rejected. In my own judgment it is
+impossible to defend with success the conduct of the Derby Ministry on
+this question, and although Lord Stanley took only a subsidiary part
+in it, he cannot escape his share of the responsibility. The
+difficulty of the position of the eldest son of the Prime Minister who
+was taking this 'leap in the dark' was very great, and it must be
+remembered that he had long been identified with the more democratic
+wing of his party. After the great agitation that followed the
+downfall of the Russell Ministry, he probably regarded a democratic
+measure as inevitable, and it was the character of his mind to be very
+ready to accept what he considered the inevitable, and to endeavour by
+timely compromise to mitigate its effects. Lord Derby's health was now
+completely broken, and on February 24, 1868, he resigned office, and
+Disraeli became Prime Minister.
+
+Mr. Gladstone soon re-united the sundered sections of the Opposition
+by raising the question of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church.
+The resolutions asserting the expediency of this policy were
+introduced into the House of Commons in April. Lord Stanley was put
+forward as the principal opponent. His amendment expressed no opinion
+about the merits of the proposed policy, but simply affirmed that it
+was a question which ought to be reserved for a new Parliament which
+was soon to be elected under an altered franchise. In his speech he
+disclaimed any wish to maintain that the Irish Church Establishment
+was what it ought to be, but urged that in the condition of Ireland a
+merely destructive measure would do nothing but harm, that it would
+serve no good purpose to attack the Establishment without laying down
+the lines of a definite, constructive ecclesiastical policy, and that
+it was absurd to launch such a question in the last session of an
+expiring Parliament. The more ardent spirits of the Tory party
+strongly censured the ambiguity of this defence, and the Government
+were beaten by majorities of 56 and 60. The House of Commons was
+dissolved in the autumn and a large Liberal majority returned.
+Disraeli at once resigned without waiting for the assembling of
+Parliament.
+
+In October 1869 the death of Lord Derby terminated the career of his
+son in the House of Commons, and the following year added very greatly
+to the happiness of his life by his marriage with the Dowager
+Marchioness of Salisbury. His attitude in opposition is clearly shown
+in his published speeches. He had no wish to see the Conservative
+party again in office till they possessed an assured and homogeneous
+majority, and he maintained that it should be their main object to
+strengthen the influence of the more moderate section in the
+Government. He believed that by habitually pursuing this policy they
+would best prevent revolutionary changes, mitigate by wise compromises
+measures which they did not wholly approve, secure the continuance of
+the harmony of classes, on which more than on any other condition the
+prosperity of England depends, and gradually strengthen their own hold
+on the confidence of the country. It was also his earnest desire that
+English politics should be turned as much as possible from a policy of
+organic change to a policy of administrative reform. He considered it
+a great evil that public men had acquired the habit of continually
+tampering with the existing legislative machinery instead of wisely
+using it for the benefit of the whole nation. The party system, as he
+always thought, had falsified the perspective of English politics,
+bringing into the foreground comparatively unimportant questions which
+were well suited to rally parties and win majorities; thrusting into
+the background others which were immeasurably more important, but
+which were less available for party purposes. What Carlyle called 'The
+Condition of England Question' was always in his thoughts. No one
+would accuse him of under-rating the evils of war, but he questioned
+whether the most sanguinary battle which had ever been fought carried
+off nearly as many human beings as die in England every year from
+purely preventible causes. He threw the whole force of his clear and
+penetrating intellect into such questions as sanitary reform, the
+regulation of mines, the promotion of education and especially
+technical education, the organisation of charities, the treatment of
+juvenile offenders, the diffusion of wise methods of encouraging
+saving among the poor. The overcrowding of the great cities, and the
+vast masses of insanitary dwellings, seemed to him one of the most
+pressing dangers of the time, and he was a prominent member of nearly
+every important company and association in England for improving the
+houses of artisans. He had no puritanism in his nature and was very
+anxious, by the establishment of free libraries and people's parks,
+and Sunday opening of museums, to extend the range of innocent
+pleasure. 'Men die,' he once said, 'for want of cheerfulness, as
+plants die for want of light.' He did not believe in the repression of
+drunkenness by coercive legislation like the Local Veto Bill, but he
+believed that its true root lay in overcrowding, ignorance, insanitary
+conditions of life, the want of innocent means of enjoyment, excessive
+hours of labour. 'When you have to deal with men in masses,' he said,
+'the connection between vice and disease is very close. With a low
+average of popular health you will have a low average of national
+morality and probably also of national intellect. Drunkenness and
+vice of other kinds will flourish on such a soil, and you cannot get
+healthy brains to grow on unhealthy bodies. Cleanliness and
+self-respect grow together, and it is no paradox to affirm that you
+tend to purify men's thoughts and feelings when you purify the air
+they breathe.' He supported liberally the movement for establishing
+coffee-houses, and he looked with great hope to the co-operative
+movement as averting or mitigating industrial conflicts. 'The subject
+of co-operation,' he said, 'is in my judgment more important as
+regards the future of England than nine-tenths of those which are
+discussed in Parliament, and around which political controversies
+gather.' As the possessor of one of the largest properties in England
+he was excellently informed on all agricultural questions, and he
+exercised a great influence upon them. Among other services he
+dispelled many misrepresentations by obtaining an accurate return of
+the numbers of owners of land in the United Kingdom, and of the
+quantity of land which they owned.
+
+With the single exception of Lord Shaftesbury, I believe no
+conspicuous English public man devoted so much time and labour as Lord
+Derby to the class of questions I have described. He brought to their
+discussion an almost unrivalled fulness of knowledge. His purse was
+liberally opened in such causes, and the speeches in which he examined
+what Government can do and what it cannot do for the material
+well-being of the poor, are in my judgment among the most valuable
+contributions to political thought that have been furnished by any
+English statesman during the present century.
+
+The election of 1874, bringing the Conservative party again into
+power, called him to other fields, and he became for the second time
+Foreign Secretary under Disraeli, and was soon involved in that
+Eastern Question which led to his severance from the Conservative
+party. It would answer no good purpose in a short sketch like the
+present to rake up the still smouldering ashes of that controversy.
+The time will come when it will be reviewed in the calm light of
+history, and with the assistance of materials that are not now before
+the public. I shall here content myself with a mere sketch. In the
+earlier stages of their foreign policy the Government appear to have
+been perfectly agreed. Lord Derby fully concurred in the purchase of
+the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal, which was one of the most
+successful strokes of policy of the Government, though he defended it
+on somewhat more prosaic grounds than some of its supporters, and was
+careful to explain that it was essentially a measure of self-defence,
+and not connected with any project for the dismemberment of Turkey or
+the establishment of an English protectorate in Egypt. When the
+insurrection broke out in 1875 in Herzegovina and Bosnia, neither Lord
+Derby nor any of his colleagues believed it to be more than a mere
+passing disturbance. But the feebleness manifested by the Turkish army
+in suppressing the insurrection, and the partial bankruptcy of the
+Government at Constantinople, contributed with many elements of race
+and religious dissension, with foreign intrigue and local
+misgovernment, to aggravate the sore, and the movement soon acquired
+the dimensions of a great European danger. In sending an English
+Consul in conjunction with the Consuls of the other Powers to the
+scene of insurrection, in order, if possible, to arrive at a
+mediation; in the acceptance of the Andrassy Note, by which the three
+Imperial Powers laid down the reforms which they considered urgently
+necessary; in the rejection of the Berlin Memorandum, on the ground
+that the Porte could not or would not carry out its demands, and that
+it would almost certainly lead to an armed intervention; and finally,
+in sending the British fleet to Besika Bay for the purpose of
+protecting English and Christian interests at Constantinople, at a
+time when that city was in a state of almost complete anarchy, the
+Government were fully agreed, and they carried with them an immense
+majority in Parliament and in the country. For some time, also, the
+country seemed to approve of the policy which Lord Derby uniformly
+avowed and steadily observed, of maintaining a strict neutrality in
+the contest that was raging; doing all that could be done by advice,
+remonstrance, mediation, and moral influence to induce the Porte to
+carry out internal reforms; warning the Turkish Government in clear
+terms that under the circumstances of the case they must not look for
+any military assistance from England, but at the same time
+discouraging as much as possible the active interference of other
+Powers in the affairs of Turkey, and abstaining rigidly from any step
+that would involve the use of force or the chance of war unless some
+serious English interest was affected. He believed that the integrity
+of the Turkish Empire was a vital English interest, and that any
+attempt to substitute a Slavonic for a Turkish Empire would bring upon
+Europe calamities the extent of which it was impossible to exaggerate
+or to foresee. Russia and Austria would at once come into collision;
+England would almost certainly be drawn into the war, and all the
+fierce elements of race hatred and religious fanaticism would be let
+loose.
+
+For a time most English politicians seem to have agreed with him, and
+his one great object was to bring about an armistice, a mediation, and
+a peace. But the popular agitation which arose in England on the
+subject of the Bulgarian atrocities in the summer and autumn of 1876
+added enormously to his difficulties, and the danger was the greater
+because some skilful party management was blended with much genuine
+philanthropy. The speeches addressed by Lord Derby to the successive
+deputations that came to him, give the best explanation and defence of
+his position during this critical period, and the interruptions to
+which he had to reply give a vivid picture of the state of feeling
+that had arisen. The Crimean war was now deplored as a calamity, if
+not a crime. The Turks were described on high political authority as
+'the one great anti-human specimen of humanity.' The Ministers were
+accused of complicity in the Bulgarian massacres; they were urged to
+cast neutrality to the wind; to adopt a policy of armed coercion in
+Turkey; even to assist Russia in driving the Turks out of
+Constantinople. It had become, as Lord Derby sarcastically said, a
+very unpopular thing for an English Minister to talk of English
+interests in connection with the Eastern Question--almost dangerous
+for any man at a public meeting to express in plain terms his doubt of
+the disinterested philanthropy of Russia.
+
+Lord Derby had at this time to encounter much unpopularity. He was
+accused of an undue leaning towards the Turkish Government, and an
+inadequate sympathy with the Christian populations, and it was alleged
+that if he had acted in firm concert with the other Powers in coercing
+the Porte--if he had not proclaimed so loudly and constantly his
+determination to abstain from all active interference and
+compulsion--his remonstrances would have had more effect, and he might
+have averted or restricted the calamities that had occurred. But a
+great change soon took place. The first object of the Government was
+to prevent the Turkish disturbance from leading to a European war, and
+in this object they failed. On April 24, 1877, Russia, in spite of
+English remonstrances, declared war against Turkey. On the same day a
+Russian army crossed the Pruth, and the Eastern Question entered into
+a new and dangerous phase.
+
+To a statesman like Lord Derby, who maintained that war, unless it is
+a necessity, is a crime; that the maintenance of peace is beyond all
+comparison the greatest of British interests, the months that followed
+were extremely trying. His first object was to limit the war, and to
+safeguard English interests, and for this purpose he drew up on May 6,
+1877, a Note defining the English interests that were vital in the
+East. He warned the Russian Government that an attempt by Russia to
+blockade the Suez Canal, an attack on Egypt, a Russian occupation of
+Constantinople, or an alteration of the existing arrangements for the
+navigation of the Bosphorus or the Dardanelles might compel England to
+abandon her neutrality. Russia accepted these conditions, and for some
+time there appeared every prospect of limiting the war. But in the
+beginning of 1878 a period of extreme danger undoubtedly arrived.
+Plevna had fallen. The Turkish resistance had collapsed. A Russian
+army, flushed with victory, had advanced to near Constantinople. The
+treaty of San Stephano was signed; which in the opinion of most
+European statesmen placed Turkey at the feet of Russia, and Russia at
+first refused to submit its terms to a conference of European Powers.
+Public feeling in England now ran strongly in a direction almost
+opposite to that in which it had been running eighteen months before,
+and the nation was extremely alarmed at the danger of Constantinople
+becoming speedily and irremediably a Russian port. On the other hand,
+the national and military pride of the conquering Power was aroused,
+and it was felt that a single false step, a single imprudent menace,
+might lead to war.
+
+It was one of those moments in which men's judgments are largely
+affected by their temperaments, and it soon became evident that the
+Cabinet was seriously divided. Disraeli had now become Lord
+Beaconsfield, and sat with his Foreign Secretary in the House of
+Lords. With his character it was inevitable that he should meet the
+danger by a bold, decisive, and even aggressive, policy. It was no
+less natural that Lord Derby should have persistently leaned towards
+the side of caution and shrunk from any measure that could cut short
+negotiation and diminish the chances of peace. The order given that
+the British Fleet should enter the Dardanelles, first produced the
+inevitable schism, and Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon resigned. The
+order was countermanded, and Lord Derby, for a short time, resumed his
+post. He acquiesced, but with great reluctance, in the vote of credit
+for six millions which was at once brought before the House of
+Commons, but he was soon convinced that measures he did not approve of
+were impending, and when orders were given for calling out the
+reserves he definitely resigned.
+
+He announced his resignation on March 28, 1878, in terms of much
+dignity and moderation. He believed, he said, that his colleagues
+desired peace as truly as himself, and he did not maintain that their
+later measures led inevitably to war, but he considered that they were
+neither necessary nor 'prudent in the interests of European peace.'
+He agreed that the terms of the treaty should be submitted to a
+European Congress, in which England should take part. On minor matters
+he thought it his duty to waive his own opinion, but he could not do
+so on a question involving the momentous issue of peace or war. The
+threat involved in the last act of the Government, he said, in a later
+speech, would make it more difficult for Russia to modify her policy,
+and he believed that without a threat such a modification of the
+treaty of San Stephano could be obtained as would make it acceptable.
+He had been accused of indecision and even of cowardice. For his own
+part he thought it needed more courage to stand up in his place to
+express views which he knew to be unpopular among the great body of
+his friends, than to sit at a desk in Downing Street and issue orders
+which would bring no danger or unpopularity to himself, but might
+bring about a European war.
+
+The short speech in which Lord Beaconsfield accepted the resignation,
+and dwelt on the long friendship, personal as well as political, that
+bound him to Lord Derby, seems to me a perfect model of good feeling
+and good taste. Unfortunately the example of the Prime Minister was
+not followed, and words used in a later debate went far to make the
+breach irrevocable.
+
+Lord Derby for a short time maintained a neutral position, but the
+foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield was in the highest degree
+distasteful to him. A wave of Chauvinism was passing over England,
+which was utterly opposed to his views, and he believed that a section
+of the Conservative party encouraged it in order to divert the
+thoughts of men from internal reforms. He objected to the acquisition
+of Cyprus, to some of the responsibilities assumed by England under
+the treaty of Berlin, and very strongly to the Afghan war; and in the
+beginning of 1880 he formally attached himself to the Liberal party,
+on the ground of his objections to the foreign policy of the
+Government. His speeches in his new capacity differed very little from
+those which he had formerly delivered, but he said that he had learnt
+to see more clearly the uselessness of attempting to resist popular
+ideas, and to think 'more highly of the moderation, the fairness, and
+the general justice with which masses of men, including all conditions
+of life, are disposed to use their power.' He thought that England
+should mix herself as little as possible with 'the sanguinary muddle'
+of European diplomacy; that she should avoid increasing her
+responsibilities; that she should take stringent measures to reduce
+her debt; that she should pay much more attention than she was
+accustomed to do to the condition of her own poorer population; and
+that it should be the object of her statesmen to meet every great
+popular demand by wise and equitable compromise. One of the greatest
+dangers, he said, that could befall the country, would be 'a state of
+things in which the comparatively harmless antagonism of parties would
+be replaced by the far more serious and dangerous war of classes. From
+that danger more than from any other it is the business of a
+well-considered Liberalism to protect us.'
+
+In 1882 he accepted the Colonial Office from Mr. Gladstone, and held
+it until the fall of the Government in the summer of 1885. His
+ministry was not a very eventful one, and it was marked by that steady
+adherence to a middle line which had always characterised him. He
+congratulated the country that the indifference to our colonies which
+had prevailed during his youth had passed away, but he was by no means
+favourable to extensions of the Empire. 'We have quite black men
+enough,' he was accustomed to say; and he believed that any increase
+of our responsibilities was likely to endanger the Empire, and to
+divert the energies of politicians from pressing home questions. He
+did not condemn the policy which led to the occupation of Egypt by
+England, but he declared that even if it was inevitable it was a
+misfortune, and that we ought to 'see that we do not on any pretext,
+however plausible, get that Egyptian millstone tied permanently round
+our necks.' He was very sceptical about Imperial Federation, and
+entirely incredulous about the possibility of an Imperial Zollverein.
+He deplored the protectionism of the colonies, but was himself a
+strict free-trader of the school of Cobden, and utterly opposed to any
+attempt to negotiate treaties with the colonies on a basis of
+preferential tariffs. On the other hand, he showed himself quite ready
+to favour Confederation in Australia, and he accepted gratefully
+Australian help in the Soudan, but he was much alarmed by tendencies
+in some colonies which might lead to complications with foreign
+Powers, and he incurred considerable unpopularity in Australia by
+refusing to consent to the annexation by Queensland of New Guinea.
+
+There is, however, one incident in the colonial administration of Lord
+Derby on which it is necessary to dwell at somewhat greater length,
+for subsequent events have given it an unfortunate prominence and it
+has thrown some discredit on his statesmanship. I allude, of course,
+to the convention with the Transvaal in 1884. In the preceding
+convention, which had been signed in August 1881, complete
+self-government had been granted by England to the Transvaal 'subject
+to the suzerainty of her Majesty' and her successors, and also to a
+large number of carefully specified reservations and limitations. They
+comprised the complete control of the external relations of the
+Transvaal, including the conclusion of treaties and the conduct of
+diplomatic intercourse with foreign Powers, which could only be
+carried on through her Majesty's officers; the right of moving British
+troops in case of necessity through the Transvaal; a power of veto
+over all legislation affecting the interests of the native population.
+A number of articles prohibited slavery in the new State; protected
+with much detail the interests of the native population; secured
+complete religious liberty; established the right of all persons other
+than natives who conformed themselves to the laws of the State, to
+enter, travel, and reside in any part of the Transvaal, to acquire
+property and to carry on their business without being subject to any
+other taxation than that which was imposed on the citizens of the
+Transvaal; and placed British imports and exports on the same plane as
+those of the most-favoured nations. The limits of the new State were
+carefully defined and a British Resident was established in the
+Transvaal to superintend the carrying out of these provisions. There
+was no express provision in the convention for the political
+privileges of the English residents in the Transvaal, but the
+Government appear to have relied on a not very explicit verbal
+assurance given to the British Commissioners by President Kruger in
+May 1881. Asked about the rights of British subjects to complete free
+trade throughout the Transvaal, President Kruger answered that before
+the annexation 'they were on the same footing as the burghers'; that
+'there was not the slightest difference in accordance with the Sand
+River convention'; that this state of things would be continued and
+that 'there would be equal protection for everybody.' Sir Evelyn Wood
+then added, 'and equal privileges?' 'We make no difference,' answered
+President Kruger, 'so far as burgher rights are concerned. There may
+perhaps be some slight difference in the case of a young person who
+has just come into the country.' It was subsequently explained that
+the words 'young person' did not refer to age, but to the time of
+residence in the Republic--according to the old Transvaal
+Constitution, a year's residence in the Republic was necessary for
+naturalisation. With this assurance the Government of 1881 appears to
+have been content. They believed in words expressly sanctioned by Mr.
+Gladstone, that the concession of limited independence to the
+Transvaal by the convention of 1881 would 'provide for the full
+liberty and equal treatment of the entire white population, guard the
+interests of the natives, and promote harmony and good-will among the
+various races in South Africa.'[43] As a matter of fact, the only
+change in the political position of the English residents in the
+Transvaal was that the period of naturalisation was extended from one
+to five years--a change which appears to have produced little or no
+commotion in the Republic.
+
+The convention of 1881 was, however, extremely unpopular among a large
+section of the Boer population. Complete independence was their avowed
+object, and in order to attain it their first task was to abolish the
+suzerainty of Great Britain. Almost immediately after the convention
+was signed, the limitations of the Transvaal established by the
+convention were flagrantly disregarded by Transvaal filibusters, who
+proceeded with the tacit and even with the avowed countenance of their
+Government to place new sections of native territory under the
+exclusive protectorate of the Transvaal Government;[44] and a
+deputation, headed by President Kruger, came to England in 1883 for
+the purpose of negotiating with the Colonial Office for the abolition
+of the chief articles of the convention of 1881. They avowed with
+complete frankness that absolute independence would alone satisfy
+them, and that their desire was to revert to the Sand River convention
+of 1852, by which this independence had been recognised. This demand
+was absolutely rejected by the Imperial Government, but Lord Derby
+attempted to meet the objections of the Transvaal leaders by
+substituting for the articles of the convention of 1881 new articles
+in several respects more favourable to the pretensions of the Boers.
+
+He, in the first place, made a sentimental concession to which it is
+probable he attached little importance, but which was regarded by the
+Boer population as a considerable step towards the achievement of
+their independence. The term 'Transvaal State,' which was accepted in
+the convention of 1881 as the designation of the new State, was
+dropped and the old title of 'South African Republic' was revived and
+recognised. The question of suzerainty was dealt with in a somewhat
+ambiguous fashion. The new convention purported only to substitute new
+articles in the place of those of the preceding convention; and it was
+afterwards argued that the old preamble, which asserted at once the
+internal independence of the Transvaal and the suzerainty of Great
+Britain, remained in force. In fact, however, this preamble was
+neither reprinted nor replaced in the new convention, and the term
+'suzerainty,' which occurred in the original draft of the document,
+was deliberately expunged--it is said by Lord Derby himself. He
+considered the term wholly wanting in the precision which is desirable
+in a treaty arrangement, that it was capable of many different degrees
+of extension, and that the fact of the paramountcy of Great Britain
+over the new State might be sufficiently established without the use
+of an ambiguous word which excited the most bitter hostility in the
+Transvaal. His own words in defending his conduct in the House of
+Lords are perfectly clear. 'The word suzerainty,' he said, 'is a very
+vague word, and I do not think it is capable of any precise legal
+definition. Whatever we may understand by it, I think it is not very
+easy to define. But I apprehend whether you call it a protectorate, or
+a suzerainty, or the recognition of England as a paramount Power, the
+fact is that a certain controlling power is retained when the State
+which exercises this suzerainty has a right to veto any negotiation
+into which the dependent State may enter with foreign Powers. Whatever
+suzerainty meant in the convention of Pretoria (1881), the condition
+of things which it implies still remains; although the word is not
+actually employed, we have kept the substance. We have abstained from
+using the word because it was not capable of legal definition, and
+because it seemed to be a word which was likely to lead to
+misconception and misunderstanding.'
+
+The articles of the previous convention relating to slavery, to native
+rights, to free trade, to religious liberty, to the rights of
+residence of foreigners in the Transvaal, reappear in the new
+convention, and the limits of the State were somewhat more fully
+defined, but the controlling power of Great Britain over the foreign
+policy of the Transvaal, though clearly reasserted, was somewhat
+limited in its scope. It was provided that the South African Republic
+should conclude no treaty or engagement with any State or nation other
+than the Orange Free State, or with any native tribe to the eastward
+or westward of the Republic, until the same had been approved by the
+Queen; that every such treaty should be at once submitted to her
+Majesty's Government for her consent, but that this consent should be
+presumed to have been granted if no notification to the contrary was
+received within six months. The desire of the Transvaal authorities to
+be recognised as representing an independent sovereign power was thus
+distinctly rejected, and the English Government positively refused a
+proposal to admit foreign arbitration in cases of dispute between
+England and the Transvaal.
+
+This convention has been severely censured by later writers on the
+ground of the insufficiency and ambiguity of its assertion of the
+paramount authority of Great Britain over the Transvaal, and of its
+failure to do anything to supply the great deficiency in the preceding
+convention by an article securing political equality for the British
+population within it. A few years later, when an immense English
+immigration had taken place, not only with the consent but at the
+express invitation of the Transvaal Government; when the English
+element formed a large majority of the inhabitants of the State; when
+they paid an enormous preponderance of its taxation, and were the
+chief agents in developing its wealth and raising it from the position
+of a very poor pastoral community into that of a great and wealthy
+State, the Transvaal Government proceeded to impose upon the new
+emigrants disqualifications and disabilities which were utterly
+unknown when England conceded self-government to 'the inhabitants of
+the Transvaal.' They completely deprived the vast majority of
+political power or local self-government, and surrounded them at every
+turn with the most irritating disabilities. The Transvaal became the
+one part of South Africa where one white race was held in a position
+of inferiority to another. At a time when perfect equality was enjoyed
+by the Dutch population in our own colonies, the political
+disqualification of the English race was made the very corner-stone of
+the policy of the Transvaal Government. An annual revenue greatly in
+excess of what was required for its internal government was raised
+almost entirely from the taxation of an unrepresented class, to whom
+the prosperity of the State was mainly due, and it was employed in
+accumulating a great armament which could only be intended for use
+against England and for maintaining the subjection of an English
+population.
+
+This was the position to which the paramount Power in South Africa,
+the Power which of its own free will had conceded a limited
+independence to the Transvaal, found itself reduced. And yet it was
+possible for the Boer Government to maintain that there was nothing in
+all this legislation which was inconsistent with the terms of the
+convention of 1884.
+
+I do not think that the justice of this criticism can be wholly
+denied. The Transvaal authorities had already given clear intimation
+of their desire to emancipate themselves from all British control, and
+especially of their determination to disregard the limitations which
+had been imposed on the expansion of their State. There is, however,
+one very material fact to be remembered in judging the policy of Lord
+Derby. At the time of the convention of 1884 the English population in
+the Transvaal was a small, scattered, and powerless minority, and as
+their numbers were far too scanty to make them a danger to the State,
+there was not much reason to believe that the Transvaal authorities
+would repudiate their own assurances and subject them to oppressive
+disabilities. It was not until two years after the convention that the
+vast gold-mines of the Transvaal were discovered and all the
+conditions of the South African problem fundamentally changed. The
+gigantic immigration that ensued reversed the proportion between the
+two races. The revenue and the expenditure of the State multiplied
+more than fifteen fold in little more than ten years.[45] The
+Transvaal became the most powerful and wealthy State in South Africa,
+and the great preponderance of the Outlander element in numbers,
+wealth, energy, and industry rendered a conflict of races almost
+inevitable. No statesman could have foreseen this change, and a
+convention that might have allayed discontent if the gold-mines had
+never been discovered, proved wholly inefficient to meet it.
+
+Though in a politician of the stamp of Lord Derby the change from a very
+liberal conservatism to a very conservative liberalism involved little
+real modification of opinion, it necessarily involved some change of
+attitude, and on some questions he spoke with a freedom which would have
+been impossible as a member of the Conservative party. On Church
+questions, for example, while strongly maintaining that the country was
+not ripe for the disestablishment of the Church in England, he declared
+that in his opinion the exclusive alliance of one religious denomination
+among many with the State could not be permanently maintained side by
+side with a democratic representation--that disestablishment and at
+least partial disendowment must ultimately come; that if the
+representatives of Scotland desired the disestablishment of their
+Church, it was not for Englishmen to oppose them; and that Wales had a
+strong claim to be separately dealt with. 'The Welsh people constitute
+in many respects a distinct nationality, and I do not see why we should
+refuse to Welsh loyalty what we have granted to Irish sedition.' On the
+subject of endowments indeed as early as 1875 his view was that of most
+moderate Liberals. 'To my mind, so far as right is concerned, the
+Legislature may do what it chooses in regard to any endowment, without
+injustice, provided only that the rights of living individuals are
+respected. How far it is politic to use that power is another matter....
+Respect the founder's object, but use your own discretion as to the
+means. If you don't do the first, you will have no new endowments. If
+you neglect the last, those which you have will be of no use.'[46] He
+maintained that the question of local government had in England become
+one of pressing importance, and that the administration of county
+affairs must be put into the hands of elective bodies. He would give
+those local parliaments very large power--but he most urgently insisted
+on the importance of one restriction. The new bodies must not be given
+an unlimited power of mortgaging the future. The gradual reduction of
+the National Debt had been for some years one of the chief aims of
+enlightened politicians, but all that had been done in this direction
+would be undone if, side by side with the National Debt, there grew up a
+municipal debt of perhaps equal amount. In this tendency to municipal
+extravagance he saw one of the gravest menaces to property. 'The growth
+of Socialism throughout Europe has followed very closely on the gigantic
+increase of national indebtedness during the present century, and men
+who begin to feel the pressure intolerable are apt to raise questions,
+more easily stated than solved, as to the right of any State to impose
+burdens in perpetuity for the benefit of one generation.' He urged that
+every local body which contracted a debt should be under a statutory
+obligation to provide for its repayment in fifty or sixty years at
+latest.
+
+The growth of municipal indebtedness; the excessive tendency to
+increase the functions of the State; the disaffection of Ireland and
+the contingency of an isolated and disloyal body of some eighty Irish
+representatives offering their services to any party which would
+consent to carry out their designs, appeared to Lord Derby the chief
+dangers of English domestic politics. The last danger was very
+speedily realised, and the sudden conversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home
+Rule produced one more change in the attitude of Lord Derby. On this
+question he had never flinched or wavered, and he at once took his
+place in the front rank of the Liberal Unionists, whom for some time
+he led in the House of Lords. I do not know that the Unionist case has
+ever been more powerfully put forward than in his speeches on the
+subject, and the eminently judicial character of his mind, and his
+entire freedom from all mere party bias, gave a special weight to his
+advocacy. With this exception he took little part in party politics
+during the last years of his life, but he devoted himself largely to
+social questions, and among other things served with great assiduity
+and ability on the Labour Commission. His last speech was delivered at
+Manchester on the unveiling of the statue of Mr. Bright in October
+1891. His last public work was that of presiding over the Labour
+Commission in May 1892. In the preceding year an attack of influenza,
+followed by a relapse, had shattered a health which had hitherto been
+robust. Other complications ensued, and he passed away at Knowsley on
+April 21, 1893, in his sixty-seventh year.
+
+The foregoing sketch will, I hope, have given a sufficient idea of his
+public character. Few men have made a greater sacrifice of ambition to
+a conscientious conviction than he did, when, rather than support a
+measure which might lead to war, he abandoned the Conservative
+Ministry in 1878. He was then the fully recognised successor of Lord
+Beaconsfield, and if he had adopted a different course he would in a
+short time have been, beyond all doubt, Prime Minister of England. On
+the whole, however, the severance from old friends cost him, I
+believe, far more than the sacrifice of his political prospects.
+Whatever he may have been in his youth, he was certainly not in mature
+life an ambitious man. With the great position he held in England the
+world had little to offer him, and the self-knowledge which was not
+the least of his many remarkable gifts showed him that party conflict
+was not the sphere in which Nature intended him to move. With many of
+the qualities of the highest statesmanship he wanted some necessary
+ingredients of a great statesman. He wanted the power of appealing to
+the imagination and moving the passions. He wanted more decision of
+character, more power of initiative, more capacity of bearing lightly
+the weight of a great responsibility. His belief that the House of
+Lords must always ultimately yield to the House of Commons aggravated
+a weakness of resolution which was deeply rooted in his nature. There
+were moments when his inveterate moderation tended to exasperate, and
+he was accused, not altogether without reason, of sometimes making
+admirable speeches, pointing out in the clearest terms all the evils
+and dangers of a measure, and then concluding by exhorting the House
+of Lords to vote for it, introducing mitigating amendments in
+Committee. The measures he treated in this way usually, as he had
+predicted, became law, but this was not the attitude of a great
+leader. During a considerable part of his career, like a very large
+proportion of moderate men in England, he was in the embarrassing
+position of agreeing substantially with the home policy of one party
+and with the foreign policy of the other. After the death of Lord
+Palmerston an element of passion was infused into public life which
+was very uncongenial to his temperament, and English politics passed
+into phases in which caution, character, judgment, and knowledge were
+less prized than brilliant strokes that appealed to the popular
+imagination, clever coalitions, a skilful barter of principles for
+votes. In spheres governed by such methods Lord Derby was very useful,
+but he was not likely to play a foremost part.
+
+To few men who have taken a conspicuous part in active politics was
+the excitement of such an existence so little necessary. Happy in his
+domestic life and in a companionship and sympathy which were
+all-sufficient to him, he was not less happy in the wide range of his
+interests and duties. The administration of his vast estate would have
+been more than sufficient to tax the energies of most men, and it
+was, I believe, universally acknowledged that it was admirably
+administered. In the everyday affairs of practical life he had no
+indecision, and he judged swiftly with the clearest of judgments.
+Nothing about him was more remarkable than the apparent ease and the
+absence of all hurry and confusion with which he could deal with many
+different forms of work. His study in its perfect neatness was more
+like a lady's boudoir than the workshop of a very busy man. _Ohne
+Hast, ohne Rast_, might have been his motto. He had much belief in the
+future of English land, and was not, I think, at all exempt from the
+great English landlord's foible of adding field to field. In the long
+period of agricultural depression it was easy for a rich man to do so.
+'In my experience,' he used to say, 'in nine cases out of ten it is
+Naboth who comes to Ahab and begs him to buy his vineyard.' Certainly
+no one had reason to complain, for there were few better or more
+popular landlords than Lord Derby. In many long walks with him through
+his property I was always struck with the evident pleasure with which
+he was welcomed by his people, the fulness of knowledge and the
+kindness of interest with which he inquired into the circumstances of
+every tenant. It is characteristic of him that only two days before
+his death he was giving instructions for building a hospital for the
+sick poor of Knowsley. I have known few men in whom the desire to make
+everyone about them happy was so strongly and so clearly marked. He
+was fond of looking minutely into the circumstances of men of
+different classes, and comparing their wants with their means, often
+with somewhat whimsical results. There was a tradesman who made
+regularly 5_l._ a week; who was accustomed every week to devote 2_l._
+to his household expenses, to lay by 2_l._, and to employ the
+remainder in getting drunk. He was, Lord Derby thought, the only man
+he had ever known who satisfied all his wants with 40 per cent. of his
+income, who always laid by 40 per cent., and who expended 20 per cent.
+on his pleasures.
+
+Outside his property Lord Derby had strong county interests. With
+perhaps the exception of Birmingham there is no part of England where
+a distinctive local patriotism is so intensely developed as in
+Lancashire, and Lord Derby in tastes and character was pre-eminently a
+Lancashire man, very proud of the greatness, and deeply concerned in
+the interests, of his county. In all the vicissitudes of his career,
+Liverpool, I believe, never wavered in its attachment to him. He
+contributed to the many charitable and philanthropic works with which
+he was concerned not only much money, but also--what in so rich a man
+was far more meritorious--an extraordinary amount of time and patient
+supervision. Among the many offices he accepted, was president of the
+Literary Fund for dispensing charity to needy authors, and on the
+committee of that charity I had, during many years, ample opportunity
+of observing how far he was from treating a presidential position as a
+sinecure. The regularity of his attendance, the constant attention he
+paid to every detail of the charity; the infinite pains which he would
+bestow upon obscure cases of distress, marked him out as a model
+president, and many of those whom our rules did not allow us to help
+were assisted by his bounty. He contributed with a large but
+discriminating generosity to many causes that were conspicuous in the
+eyes of the world, but his special bias was towards unostentatious
+and unobserved benevolence, and crowds of obscure men in obscure
+positions were assisted by him.
+
+Those who did not know him, and those who had come in merely casual
+contact with him, sometimes formed a false impression of his
+character. He had a great deal of natural shyness. He had very little
+of the gift of small talk. On occasions of mere show and in
+uncongenial atmospheres he was apt to be awkward and embarrassed, and
+when walking by himself he was extremely absent and quite capable of
+brushing against his oldest friend with a complete unconsciousness of
+his presence. These traits sometimes gave rise to natural
+misinterpretations, which a fuller knowledge always dispelled. No one
+who knew Lord Derby could fail to feel that his nature was one of the
+most genuine and transparent simplicity, singularly free from all
+tinge of arrogance, superciliousness, and acrimony. His personal
+tastes were exceedingly simple, and there was not a particle of
+ostentation in his character. He delighted in a quiet country life and
+had a strong sense of natural beauty. In his youth he had been an
+ardent mountaineer, and in later life he had few greater pleasures
+than to watch the growth of his plantations. He calculated that he had
+planted in his lifetime about two million of trees.
+
+He was among the best-read men I have ever known. His private library
+was one of the finest in England, and he took a keen interest in it. A
+love of sumptuous, large-paper editions was indeed one of the very few
+luxuries in which from mere personal taste he greatly indulged. Like
+all men of literary tastes he had his limitations. German was a closed
+book to him. Theology and metaphysics were conspicuous by their
+absence. He was certainly not drawn to the mystical, the
+unintelligible, or the morbid, either in imaginative or speculative
+literature, and although he was a great lover and great buyer of
+water-colour pictures, I do not think he had much real sense or
+knowledge of art. But he had read very extensively and with great
+profit and discrimination in many widely different fields, and his
+memory was unusually retentive. He was an excellent literary critic,
+and if clear thought and accurate knowledge were what he most valued,
+it would be a complete mistake to suppose that he was insensible to
+the poetic and imaginative side of literature. He could repeat long
+passages from 'Childe Harold,' and I can well remember the delight
+which he took in the picturesque narrative of Mr. Froude, and in the
+fiery verses of Sir Alfred Lyall.
+
+He was one of the kindest and most gracious of hosts, and his genuine
+unforced good nature and good humour drew to him many whose tastes and
+sympathies were widely different from his own. Nature certainly never
+intended him for a sportsman, but he preserved game extensively and
+until the last years of his life usually went out with his guests. 'I
+rather like shooting,' he once said to me, 'it prevents the necessity
+of general conversation.' Among kindred spirits, however, his own
+conversation was eminently attractive. His wide knowledge both of
+books and men, his vast range of political anecdote, his experience of
+so many statesmen and offices and departments of life, made it
+singularly instructive. He was a very shrewd, and at the same time a
+very kind, judge of character; and he had a power, which is certainly
+not common, of fully appreciating merits that are allied with great
+and manifest defects. He had much quaint, dry humour, and a great
+happiness of expression; and one always felt that his opinions were
+genuinely thought out--that they were voices and not echoes. His
+private conversation had the quality that I have noticed in his
+public speeches, of grasping at once the essential elements of a
+question and disencumbering it from accessories and details. It is one
+of the qualities that add most to the charm of conversation, and, with
+the exception of Lord Russell, I do not think I have met with anyone
+who possessed it to a greater degree than Lord Derby. He delighted in
+long walks with one or two friends, and he might be seen to great
+advantage in some small dining-clubs which play a larger part than is
+generally recognised in the best English social life of our time. He
+had been a member of Grillion's for thirty-seven years, but the
+society to which he was most attached was, I think, 'The Club' which
+was founded by Johnson and Reynolds. During the nineteen years of
+which I can speak from personal experience, he was an almost constant
+attendant, and certainly no other member enjoyed a greater popularity
+in it, or contributed more largely to its charm.
+
+He hated cant of all kinds, and had a great distrust of ostentatious
+professions of lofty motives. He disliked, I think greatly, the habit
+of dragging sacred names into party speeches, and attributing every
+party manoeuvre to a solemn sense of duty. Language of this kind
+will never be found in his speeches, but I have known few men who were
+governed through life more steadily though more unobtrusively by a
+sense of duty. He always tried to look facts in the face, and to
+promote in the many spheres which he could influence the real
+happiness of men. There have been statesmen among his contemporaries
+of greater power and of more brilliant achievement. There has been, I
+believe, no statesman of sounder judgment and more disinterested
+patriotism; there have been very few whose departure has left a void
+in so many spheres.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[43] See, on this subject, Cook's _Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal
+War_, pp. 260-265.
+
+[44] See Westlake's _L'Angleterre et les Républiques Boers_, pp. 30-31.
+
+[45] See the table of revenue and expenditure in Fitzpatrick's
+_Transvaal from Within_, p. 71.
+
+[46] Inaugural address at Edinburgh University.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY REEVE, C.B., F.S.A., D.C.L.
+
+
+Although it has never been the custom of the 'Edinburgh Review' to
+withdraw the veil of anonymity from its writers and its
+administration, it would be mere affectation to suffer it to appear
+before the public without some allusion to the great editor whom we
+have just lost,[47] and who for forty years has watched with
+indefatigable care over its pages.
+
+The career of Mr. Henry Reeve is perhaps the most striking
+illustration in our time of how little in English life influence is
+measured by notoriety. To the outer world his name was but little
+known. He is remembered as the translator of Tocqueville, as the
+editor of the 'Greville Memoirs,' as the author of a not quite
+forgotten book on Royal and Republican France, showing much knowledge
+of French literature and politics; as the holder during fifty years of
+the respectable, but not very prominent, post of Registrar of the
+Privy Council. To those who have a more intimate knowledge of the
+political and literary life of England, it is well known that during
+nearly the whole of his long life he was a powerful and living force
+in English literature; that few men of his time have filled a larger
+place in some of the most select circles of English social life; and
+that he exercised during many years a political influence such as
+rarely falls to the lot of any Englishman outside Parliament, or even
+outside the Cabinet.
+
+He was born at Norwich in 1813, and brought up in a highly cultivated,
+and even brilliant, literary circle. His father, Dr. Reeve, was one of
+the earliest contributors to the 'Edinburgh Review.' The Austins, the
+Opies, the Taylors, and the Aldersons were closely related to him, and
+he is said to have been indebted to his gifted aunt, Sarah Austin, for
+his appointment in the Privy Council. The family income was not large,
+and a great part of Mr. Reeve's education took place on the Continent,
+chiefly at Geneva and Munich. He went with excellent introductions,
+and the years he spent abroad were abundantly fruitful. He learned
+German so well that he was at one time a contributor to a German
+periodical. He was one of the rare Englishmen who spoke French almost
+like a Frenchman, and at a very early age he formed friendships with
+several eminent French writers. His translation of the 'Democracy in
+America,' by Tocqueville, which appeared in 1835, strengthened his
+hold on French society. Two years later he obtained the appointment in
+the Privy Council, which he held until 1887. It was in this office
+that he became the colleague and fast friend of Charles Greville, who
+on his death-bed entrusted him with the publication of his 'Memoirs.'
+
+Mr. Reeve had now obtained an assured income and a steady occupation,
+but it was far from satisfying his desire for work. He became a
+contributor, and very soon a leading contributor, to the 'Times,'
+while his close and confidential intercourse with Mr. Delane gave him
+a considerable voice in its management. The penny newspaper was still
+unborn, and the 'Times' at this period was the undisputed monarch of
+the Press, and exercised an influence over public opinion, both in
+England and on the Continent, such as no existing paper can be said
+to possess. It is, we believe, no exaggeration to say that for the
+space of fifteen years nearly every article that appeared in its
+columns on foreign politics was written by Mr. Reeve, and the period
+during which he wrote for it included the year 1848, when foreign
+politics had the most transcendent importance.
+
+The great political influence which he at this time exercised
+naturally drew him into close connection with many of the chief
+statesmen of his time. With Lord Clarendon especially his friendship
+was close and confidential, and he received from that statesman almost
+weekly letters during his viceroyalty in Ireland and during others of
+the more critical periods of his career. In France, Mr. Reeve's
+connections were scarcely less numerous than in England. Guizot,
+Thiers, Cousin, Tocqueville, Villemain, Circourt--in fact, nearly all
+the leading figures in French literature and politics during the reign
+of Louis Philippe were among his friends or correspondents. He was at
+all times singularly international in his sympathies and friendships,
+and he appears to have been more than once made the channel of
+confidential communications between English and French statesmen.
+
+It was a task for which he was eminently suited. The qualities which
+most impressed all who came into close communication with him were the
+strength, swiftness, and soundness of his judgment, and his unfailing
+tact and discretion in dealing with delicate questions. He was
+eminently a man of the world, and had quite as much knowledge of men
+as of books. Probably few men of his time have been so frequently and
+so variously consulted. He always spoke with confidence and authority,
+and his clear, keen-cut, decisive sentences, a certain stateliness of
+manner which did not so much claim as assume ascendancy, and a
+somewhat elaborate formality of courtesy which was very efficacious in
+repelling intruders, sometimes concealed from strangers the softer
+side of his character. But those who knew him well soon learnt to
+recognise the genuine kindliness of his nature, his remarkable skill
+in avoiding friction, and the rare steadiness of his friendships.
+
+One great source of his influence was the just belief in his complete
+independence and disinterestedness. For a very able man his ambition
+was singularly moderate. As he once said, he had made it his object
+throughout life only to aim at things which were well within his
+power. He had very little respect for the judgment of the multitude,
+and he cared nothing for notoriety and not much for dignities. A
+moderate competence, congenial work, a sphere of wide and genuine
+influence, a close and intimate friendship with a large proportion of
+the guiding spirits of his time, were the things he really valued, and
+all these he fully attained. He had great conversational powers, which
+never degenerated into monologue, a singularly equable, happy, and
+sanguine temperament, and a keen delight in cultivated society. These
+characteristics showed conspicuously in two small and very select
+dining-clubs which have included most of the distinguished English
+statesmen and men of letters of the century. He became a member of the
+Literary Society in 1857 and of Dr. Johnson's Club in 1861, and it is
+a remarkable evidence of the appreciation of his social tact that both
+bodies speedily selected him as their treasurer. He held that position
+in 'The Club' from 1868 till within a year of his death, when failing
+health and absence from London obliged him to relinquish it. The
+French Institute elected him 'Correspondant' in 1863 and Associated
+Member in 1888, in which latter dignity he succeeded Sir Henry Maine.
+In 1869 the University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree
+of D.C.L.
+
+It was in 1855, on the death of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, that he
+assumed the editorship of the 'Edinburgh Review' which he retained
+till the day of his death. Both on the political and the literary side
+he was in full harmony with its traditions. His rare and minute
+knowledge of recent English and foreign political history; his vast
+fund of political anecdote; his personal acquaintance with so many of
+the chief actors on the political scene, both in England and France,
+gave a great weight and authority to his judgments, and his mind was
+essentially of the Whig cast. He was a genuine Liberal of the school
+of Russell, Palmerston, Clarendon, and Cornewall Lewis. It was a sober
+and tolerant Liberalism, rooted in the traditions of the past, and
+deeply attached to the historical elements in the Constitution. The
+dislike and distrust with which he had always viewed the progress of
+democracy deepened with age, and it was his firm conviction that it
+could never become the permanent basis of good government. Like most
+men of his type of thought and character, he was strongly repelled by
+the later career of Mr. Gladstone, and the Home Rule policy at last
+severed him definitely from the bulk of the Liberal party. From this
+time the present Duke of Devonshire was the leader of his party.
+
+His literary judgments had much analogy to his political ones. His
+leanings were all towards the old standards of thought and style. He
+had been formed in the school of Macaulay and Milman, and of the great
+French writers under Louis Philippe. Sober thought, clear reasoning,
+solid scholarship, a transparent, vivid, and restrained style were the
+literary qualities he most appreciated. He was a great purist,
+inexorably hostile to a new word. In philosophy he was a devoted
+disciple of Kant, and his decided orthodoxy in religious belief
+affected many of his judgments. He could not appreciate Carlyle; he
+looked with much distrust on Darwinism and the philosophy of Herbert
+Spencer and he had very little patience with some of the moral and
+intellectual extravagances of modern literature. But, according to his
+own standards and in the wide range of his own subjects, his literary
+judgment was eminently sound, and he was quick and generous in
+recognising rising eminence. In at least one case the first
+considerable recognition of a prominent historian was an article in
+the 'Edinburgh Review' from his pen.
+
+He had a strong sense of the responsibility of an editor, and
+especially of the editor of a Review of unsigned articles. No article
+appeared which he did not carefully consider. His powerful
+individuality was deeply stamped upon the Review, and he carefully
+maintained its unity and consistency of sentiments. It was one of the
+chief occupations and pleasures of his closing days, and the very last
+letter he dictated referred to it.
+
+Time, as might be expected, had greatly thinned the circle of his
+friends. Of the France which he knew so well scarcely anything
+remained, but his old friend and senior Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire
+visited him at Christ Church, and he kept up to the end a warm
+friendship with the Duc d'Aumale. He spent his eightieth birthday at
+Chantilly, and until the very last year of his life he was never
+absent when the Duke dined at 'The Club.' In Lord Derby he lost the
+statesman with whom in his later years he was most closely connected
+by private friendship and political sympathy, while the death of Lady
+Stanley of Alderley deprived him of an attached and lifelong friend.
+
+Growing infirmities prevented him in his latter days from mixing much
+in general society in London, but his life was brightened by all that
+loving companionship could give; his mental powers were unfaded, and
+he could still enjoy the society of younger friends. He looked forward
+to the end with a perfect and a most characteristic calm, without fear
+and without regret. It was the placid close of a long, dignified, and
+useful life.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[47] Mr. Reeve died October 21, 1895.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D., DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S.
+
+
+The great prominence which the High Church movement has assumed in the
+ecclesiastical history of England during the second and third quarters
+of the nineteenth century, and the extraordinary success with which it
+has permeated the Established Church by its influence, have led some
+writers to exaggerate not a little the place which it occupied in the
+general intellectual development of the time. In the universities, it
+is true, it long exercised an extraordinary influence, and Mr.
+Gladstone, who was by far the most remarkable layman whom it
+profoundly influenced, was accustomed to say that for at least a
+generation almost the whole of the best intellect of Oxford was
+controlled by it. It possessed in Newman a writer of most striking and
+undoubted genius. In an age remarkable for brilliancy of style he was
+one of the greatest masters of English prose. His power of drawing
+subtle distinctions and pursuing long trains of subtle reasoning made
+him one of the most skilful of controversialists, and he had a great
+insight into spiritual cravings and an admirable gift of interpreting
+and appealing to many forms of religious emotion. But though he was a
+man of rare, delicate, and most seductive genius, we have sometimes
+doubted whether any of his books are destined to take a permanent and
+considerable place in English literature. He was not a great scholar,
+or an original and independent thinker. Dealing with questions
+inseparably connected with historical evidence, he had neither the
+judicial spirit nor the firm grasp of a real historian, and he had
+very little skill in measuring probabilities and degrees of evidence.
+He had a manifest incapacity, which was quite as much moral as
+intellectual, for looking facts in the face and pursuing trains of
+thought to unwelcome conclusions. He often took refuge from them in
+clouds of casuistry. The scepticism which was a marked feature of his
+intellect allied itself closely with credulity, for it was directed
+against reason itself; and though he has expressed in admirable
+language many true and beautiful thoughts, the glamour of his style
+too often concealed much weakness and uncertainty of judgment and much
+sophistry in argument.
+
+Many of those who co-operated with him were men of great learning and
+distinguished ability. No one will question the patristic knowledge of
+Pusey, the metaphysical acumen of Ward, the genuine vein of religious
+poetry in Keble and Faber, the wide accomplishments and scholarly
+criticism of Church. But on the whole the broad stream of English
+thought has gone in other directions. In politics the Oxford movement
+had brilliant representatives in Gladstone and Selborne, but the ideal
+of the relations of Church and State and the ideal of education to
+which the Oxford school aspired, have been absolutely discarded. The
+universities have been secularised. The Irish Established Church,
+which it was one of the first objects of the party to defend, has been
+abolished by Gladstone himself, and although the English Established
+Church retains its hold on the affections of the nation, it is
+defended by its most skilful supporters on very different grounds and
+by very different arguments from those which were put forward by the
+Oxford divines. Among the foremost names in lay literature during the
+fifty years we are considering, it is curious to observe how few were
+even touched by the movement. Froude is an exception, but he speedily
+repudiated it. The mediæval sympathies that were sometimes shown by
+Ruskin sprang from a wholly different source. Macaulay, Carlyle,
+Hallam, Grote, Mill, Buckle, Tennyson, Browning, and the great
+novelists, from Dickens to George Eliot, all wrote very much as they
+might have written if the movement had never existed. An unusual
+proportion of the best intellect of England passed into the fields of
+physical science, and the methods of reasoning and habits of thought
+which they inculcated were wholly out of harmony with the school of
+Newman, while both geology and Darwinism have made serious incursions
+into long-cherished beliefs. Even in the Church itself, though the
+High Church movement was stronger than any other, great deductions
+have to be made. The school of independent Biblical criticism, which
+in various degrees has come to be generally accepted, certainly owed
+nothing to it, and several of the most illustrious Churchmen of this
+period were wholly alien to it. Thirlwall and Merivale were
+conspicuous examples, but they devoted themselves chiefly to great
+works of secular history. Arnold--who was one of the strongest
+personal influences of his age, and whose influence was both
+perpetuated and widened by Dean Stanley--and Whately, who was one of
+the most independent and original thinkers of the nineteenth century,
+were strongly antagonistic. In the field of ecclesiastical history it
+might have been expected that a school which was at once so scholarly
+and so wedded to tradition would have been pre-eminent, but no
+ecclesiastical histories which England has produced can, on the whole,
+be placed on as high a level as those which were written by the great
+Broad Church divine whose name stands at the head of this article.
+
+Milman was, indeed, a man well deserving of commemoration on account
+of the works which he produced, yet it is perhaps not too much to say
+that to those among whom he lived the man seemed even greater than his
+works. For many years he was a central and most popular figure in the
+best English literary society, and he reckoned most of the leading
+intellects of his day among his friends. He was in an extraordinary
+degree many-sided, both in his knowledge and his sympathies. He was an
+admirable critic, and the eminent sanity of his judgment, as well as
+the eminent kindness of his nature, combined with a great charm both
+of manner and of conversation. Few men of his time had more friends,
+and were more admired, consulted, and loved.
+
+Mr. Arthur Milman has sketched his father's life in one short
+volume,[48] written in excellent English and with uniformly good
+taste. We have read it with much interest, yet in laying it down it is
+impossible not to be sensible how much of the personal charm which was
+so conspicuous in its subject has passed beyond recovery. More than
+thirty years have gone by since the old Dean was laid in his grave,
+and but few of those who knew him intimately survive. He appears to
+have kept no journal. He wrote nothing autobiographical, and he had a
+strong sense of the chasm that should separate private from public
+life. It was wholly contrary to his unegotistical nature to make the
+great public the confidant of his domestic affairs or of his inner
+feelings, and he was deeply sensible of the injustice which is so
+often done by biographers in printing unguarded, unqualified opinions
+and judgments, expressed in the freedom of private correspondence. He
+acted sternly on this view. Many of the foremost men in England were
+among his correspondents, but he deliberately burnt their letters. 'I
+could never bear,' we have heard him say, 'that what was written to me
+by dear friends in the most unreserved and absolute confidence should,
+through my fault, be one day dragged before the public.' This
+reticence and this strong feeling of the sanctity of friendship and
+private correspondence, which is now becoming very rare, was one of
+his most characteristic traits, but it has necessarily deprived his
+biography of many elements of interest.
+
+He was the youngest son of Sir Francis Milman, the well-known
+physician of George III. He was born in 1791, and educated at Eton and
+Oxford, where he soon distinguished himself as one of the most
+brilliant of students. He won the Newdigate in 1812, the Chancellor's
+prize for Latin verse in 1813, the prize for English and Latin essays
+in 1816. He obtained a first class in classics, and in 1815 he was
+elected a Fellow of his college. He was ordained in the following
+year, and a year later Lord Eldon, who was then Chancellor of the
+university, nominated him to the vicarage of St. Mary at Reading,
+where he spent eighteen happy and fruitful years. Like most young and
+brilliant men, he first turned to verse, and for several years he
+poured out in rapid succession a number of dramas and poems which have
+been collected in three substantial volumes. The tragedy of 'Fazio'
+was written when he was still at Oxford, and it was speedily followed
+by a long and ambitious epic poem called 'Samor, Lord of the Bright
+City'; by three elaborate sacred dramas, the 'Fall of Jerusalem,' the
+'Martyr of Antioch,' and 'Belshazzar'; and by an historical tragedy on
+'Anne Boleyn,' as well as by a few minor poems.
+
+Some of these works had considerable popularity. 'Fazio' for many
+years held its place on the stage. Byron, in one of his letters to
+Rogers, speaks of its 'great and deserved success' when it was brought
+out at Covent Garden. Its heroine was a favourite part of Miss O'Neil
+and of Fanny Kemble. It was translated into Italian by Del Ongaro for
+Ristori, who acted it with admirable power, and there was also a
+French translation or adaptation in which Mademoiselle Mars took part.
+The 'Fall of Jerusalem' was never intended for the stage, but it had a
+great literary success. Murray, who had given only a hundred and fifty
+guineas for 'Fazio,' gave five hundred for the 'Fall of Jerusalem,'
+and he gave the same sum both for the 'Martyr of Antioch' and for
+'Belshazzar,' which succeeded it. Neither of these, however, proved as
+popular as the 'Fall of Jerusalem,' but the 'Martyr of Antioch'
+contains that noble funeral ode beginning 'Brother, thou art gone
+before us, and thy saintly soul is flown,' which is familiar to
+numbers who are probably not aware of its authorship. It is worthy of
+notice that as recently as 1880 Sir Arthur Sullivan set the 'Martyr of
+Antioch' to music and brought it out at the Leeds Festival, where it
+achieved an immediate and brilliant success, and was frequently
+performed.[49] On the other hand, 'Samor' and 'Anne Boleyn' were
+almost absolute failures, and, on the whole, the longer poems of
+Milman have not retained their popularity, and probably now rarely
+find a reader.
+
+Those who turn to them will certainly be struck by the command of
+language and metre they display. It was shown both in rhyme and in
+blank verse. Many fine odes are scattered through them, and in the
+octo-syllabic verse Milman always appears to us peculiarly happy. But
+his poetry, like most of the poetry that was written under the Byronic
+influence, was rather the poetry of rhetoric than of imagination, and
+it wanted both the intensity and the concentration of the great
+master. Stately, sonorous, fluent, unfailingly lucid, it was too
+lengthy and too artificial, and Lockhart was not wholly wrong in
+pronouncing that it showed 'fine talents, but no genius,' and in
+urging that prose rather than poetry was the vehicle in which its
+author was destined to succeed. In addition, however, to the funeral
+ode to which we have referred, Milman has written many hymns, and some
+of these are of singular beauty. They appeared originally in the
+collection of that other great hymn-writer, Bishop Heber, who was one
+of his dearest friends, and one of the men to whose memory he looked
+back with the fondest affection. The Good Friday hymn, 'Bound upon th'
+accursèd tree,' the Palm Sunday hymn, 'Ride on, ride on in majesty,'
+and perhaps still more that exquisitely pathetic hymn (so often
+misprinted in modern hymn-books) beginning
+
+    When our heads are bowed with woe,
+    When our bitter tears o'erflow,
+
+have long since taken their permanent place in devotional literature.
+
+In another and very different field of poetry also he greatly
+excelled. He was an admirable example of that highly finished and
+fastidious classical scholarship which is, or was, the pride of our
+great public schools, and he took great pleasure in translations from
+the classics. He translated into verse the 'Agamemnon' of Æschylus,
+and the 'Bacchanals' of Euripides, and also a great number of small
+and much less known poems. He held the professorship of poetry at
+Oxford from 1821 to 1831, and as his lectures, according to the custom
+which then prevailed, were delivered in Latin, he had the happy
+thought of diversifying them by English metrical translations of the
+different poems he treated. They range over a wide field of obscure
+Greek poets, as well as of epitaphs, votive inscriptions, and
+inscriptions relating to the fine arts, and in addition to these there
+are translations from Sanscrit poetry--a branch of knowledge which was
+then very little cultivated, and to which Milman was greatly
+attracted. These poems the author published in 1865, but the lectures
+in which they were produced he committed to the flames. They had, in
+his opinion, lost their value through the subsequent publication of
+the works on the history of Greek literature by Bode, Ulrici, Otfried
+Müller, and Mure.
+
+In prose his pen was exceedingly active. In 1820 he began his long
+connection with the 'Quarterly Review,' which continued, with
+occasional intervals, through more than forty years. His articles
+extended over a great variety of subjects, but most of them were
+essentially reviews and essentially critical. The fact that he was
+both a poet and an accomplished critic of verse caused some persons to
+ascribe to him the authorship of two articles which had an unhappy
+reputation--the criticism which was falsely supposed to have hastened
+the death of Keats, and the attack upon the 'Alastor' of Shelley, a
+poet for whom Milman had a special admiration. It is now well known
+that neither of these articles was by him, but it is characteristic of
+his loyalty to his colleagues that he never disclaimed the authorship.
+This loyalty was indeed not less conspicuous in his nature than the
+singular kindness of disposition with which he ever shrank from giving
+pain. After his death a few of his many essays in the 'Quarterly' were
+collected in one volume. Among them there is an admirable account of
+Erasmus, with whom in mental characteristics he had considerable
+affinity.
+
+In 1829 appeared his first historical work, the 'History of the Jews,'
+a work which excited a violent storm of theological indignation. The
+crime of Milman was that he applied to Jewish history the usual canons
+of historical criticism--sifting evidence, discriminating between
+documents, pointing out the parallelisms between Jewish conditions and
+those of other Oriental nations, and attempting to separate in the
+sacred writings the parts which were essential and revealed from those
+which were merely human and fallible. In a remarkable preface to a
+revised and enlarged edition of this work, which was published thirty
+years later, he laid down very clearly the principles that had guided
+him. The Jewish writers, in his opinion, were 'men of their age and
+country who, as they spoke the language, so they thought the thoughts
+of their nation and their time.... They had no special knowledge on
+any subject but moral and religious truth to distinguish them from
+other men, and were as fallible as others on all questions of science,
+and even of history, extraneous to their religious teaching.... Their
+one paramount object being instruction and enlightenment in religion,
+they left their hearers uninstructed and unenlightened as before in
+other things.... In all other respects society, civilisation,
+developed itself according to its usual laws. The Hebrew in the
+wilderness, excepting as far as the law modified his manners and
+habits, was an Arab of the desert. Abraham, except in his worship and
+intercourse with the one true God, was a nomad Sheik.... The moral and
+religious truth, and this alone, I apprehend, is "the word of God"
+contained in the sacred writings.'
+
+It must also, he contended, be always remembered that the Semitic
+records are of an 'essentially Oriental, figurative, poetical cast,'
+and that it is therefore wholly erroneous to suppose that every word
+can be construed with the precision of an Act of Parliament or of a
+simple modern historical narrative.
+
+His attitude towards the miraculous was carefully defined. He observed
+the absolute impossibility of evading the conclusion that the Jewish
+writers, whether eye-witnesses or not, implicitly believed in 'the
+supernaturalism, the divine or miraculous agency almost throughout the
+older history of the Jews,' and that it is 'an integral, inseparable
+part of the narrative.' Sometimes it is possible 'with more or less
+probability to detect the naked fact which may lie beneath the
+imaginative or marvellous language in which it is recorded; but even
+in these cases the solution can be hardly more than conjectural.' In
+other cases 'the supernatural so entirely predominates and is so of
+the intimate essence of the transaction that the facts and the
+interpretation must be accepted together or rejected together.' In
+such cases it is the duty of the historian simply 'to relate the facts
+as recorded, to adduce his authorities, and to abstain from all
+explanation for which he has no ground.'
+
+The distinction between the providential and the strictly miraculous
+appears to him impossible to draw. 'Belief in Divine Providence, in
+the agency of God as the Prime Mover in the Natural world as in the
+mind of Man, is an inseparable part of religion. There can be no
+religion without it.' But in numerous cases, to distinguish between
+the simply providential and the strictly miraculous implies a
+knowledge of the working of natural causes greater than we possess;
+and in certain stages of civilisation, and very eminently in the
+Jewish mind, there is a marked tendency to suppress secondary causes,
+and to attribute not only the more extraordinary but also the common
+events of life to direct divine agency. The possibility and the
+reality of the miraculous he emphatically asserts.
+
+'The palmary miracle of all, the Resurrection, stands entirely by
+itself. Every attempt to resolve it into a natural event, a delusion
+or hallucination in the minds of the disciples, the eye-witnesses and
+death-defying witnesses to its truth, or to treat it as an allegory or
+figure of speech, is to me a signal failure. It must be accepted as
+the keystone--for such it is--and seal to the great Christian doctrine
+of a future life, as a historical fact, or rejected as a baseless
+fable.'
+
+But great numbers of what were deemed miracles may be explained by
+natural causes, by figurative modes of expression which were common in
+Oriental nations, by the tendency of the human mind to embellish or
+exaggerate surprising facts, or invent supernatural causes for what it
+is unable to explain, by the retrospective imagination which seeks to
+dignify the distant past with a supernatural halo. The early annals of
+all nations are strewn with pretended miracles which no one will now
+maintain, and Milman shows in a powerful passage how the idea of the
+miraculous has been steadily contracting and receding; how dangerous
+it is to base the defence of Christianity on the evidence of miracles
+rather than on appeals to the conscience, the moral sense, the innate
+religiousness, the deep spiritual cravings of human nature.
+
+Such views, though now sufficiently commonplace, seemed very novel in
+England when Milman wrote. Dean Stanley described his work as 'the
+first decisive inroad of German theology into England; the first
+palpable indication that the Bible could be studied like another book;
+that the characters and events of sacred history could be treated at
+once critically and reverently.' But though Milman was very well
+acquainted with German theology, he resented the notion that he was
+its interpreter or representative. He contended that in restricting
+the province of inspiration to the direct inculcation of religious
+truth he was following a sound Anglican tradition. He quoted the
+authority of Paley and Warburton, of Tillotson and Secker. In such
+principles of interpretation he said he had found 'a safeguard during
+a long and not unreflective life against the difficulties arising out
+of the philosophical and historical researches of his time.' They had
+enabled him 'to follow out all the marvellous discoveries of science,
+and all those hardly less marvellous, if less certain, conclusions of
+historical, ethnological, linguistic criticism, in the serene
+confidence that they are utterly irrelevant to the truth of
+Christianity.' 'If on such subjects,' he concluded, 'some solid ground
+be not found on which highly educated, reflective, reading, reasoning
+men may find firm footing, I can foresee nothing but a wide, a
+widening--I fear, an irreparable--breach between the thought and the
+religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing, truly Catholic
+Christianity which knows what is essential to religion, what is
+temporary and extraneous to it, may defy the world.'
+
+These words are taken from the later preface to which we have
+referred. In the same preface, and also in his 'History of
+Christianity,' may be found some interesting remarks on the German
+school of Biblical criticism, the greater portion of which has arisen
+since the original publication of the 'History of the Jews.' In many
+of its conclusions he had anticipated it, and he was quite as sensible
+as the German writers of the hopelessness of seeking scientific
+revelations in the Biblical narrative; of the worthlessness of most of
+the common schemes for reconciling science and theology; of the
+untrustworthy character of Jewish chronology and Jewish figures; of
+the grave doubts that hang over the authorship and the date of some of
+the books; of the necessity of making full allowance, when reading
+them, for human fallibility and inaccuracy. At the same time, his
+admiration for the German critics was by no means unqualified. While
+fully admitting their extraordinary learning, industry, and ingenuity,
+he complained that their too common infirmity was 'a passion for
+making history without historical materials,' basing the most dogmatic
+and positive statements upon faint indications, or upon ingenious
+conjectures that could not legitimately go beyond a very low degree of
+probability. The assurance with which these writers undertook by
+internal evidence to decompose ancient documents, assigning each
+paragraph to an independent source; the decisive weight they were
+accustomed to give to slight improbabilities or coincidences, and to
+small variations of style and phraseology; the confidence with which
+they put forward solutions or conjectures which, however ingenious or
+plausible, were based on no external evidence as if they were proved
+facts, appeared to him profoundly unhistorical.
+
+It must have been somewhat irritating to one who clung so closely to
+University life, and who had been justly regarded as one of the most
+brilliant of Oxford scholars, to find that his own University was
+prominent in the condemnation of the 'History of the Jews.' Only two
+years before he had preached with general approbation the Bampton
+Lectures in defence of Christianity. His new work was again and again
+condemned from the University pulpits, and among others by the
+Margaret Professor of Divinity and by the Hulsean lecturer for 1832.
+The clamour was naturally taken up in many other quarters, and
+especially by the religious newspapers. It was noticed that 'Milman's
+History' appeared in the window of Carlisle, the infidel bookseller.
+
+'I only wish,' wrote Milman, when the fact was brought to his notice,
+'all Carlisle's customers would read it. A noble lord once wrote to
+the bishop of a certain diocese to complain that a baronet who lived
+in the same parish brought his mistress to church, which sorely
+shocked his regular family. The bishop gravely assured him that he was
+very glad to hear that Sir ---- brought his naughty lady to church,
+and hoped that she would profit by what she heard there and amend her
+ways. So say I of Carlisle's customers.'[50]
+
+The opinions expressed in this, as in his later works, no doubt in
+some degree obstructed the promotion of Milman in the Church, but he
+had no reason to regret it. Of all men, he once said, he thought he
+owed most to Bishop Blomfield, for there was once a question of
+offering him a bishopric, and it was a remonstrance of the Bishop of
+London that prevented it. 'I am _afraid_,' he said, 'that if it had
+been offered me I should have accepted it, and I should then never
+have written my "Latin Christianity."' But, though he escaped the fate
+which has cut short the best work of more than one distinguished
+historian, his conspicuous position among the scholars and writers in
+the Church was widely recognised, and he was soon transferred from a
+provincial town to a central position in the Metropolis. In 1835 Sir
+Robert Peel made him Rector of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and
+Prebendary in the Abbey. Though continuing without intermission his
+historical work, he appears to have discharged with exemplary vigour
+the duties of a large and poor parish until 1849, when Lord John
+Russell appointed him Dean of St. Paul's. The position was exactly
+suited to him. It was one of much dignity, but also of much leisure,
+and it gave him ample opportunities of pursuing the studies which were
+the true work of his life.
+
+The great subject of the history of Christianity was, indeed,
+continually before him. Among other things, he studied minutely both
+the text and the authorities of Gibbon, for whom he had a deep and
+growing admiration. An excellent edition of Gibbon was one of the
+first results. Milman's notes have been included in Smith's later
+edition, and, though a large proportion of them were naturally
+somewhat controversial, being devoted to refuting some of the
+conclusions of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, it is impossible
+to read them without recognising the candour as well as the learning
+and the acumen of the critic. Few things that Milman has written are
+finer than the preface in which, in ten or twelve masterly pages, he
+sums up his estimate of his great predecessor.
+
+The three volumes of the 'History of Christianity,' dealing with its
+early history up to the period of the abolition of Paganism in the
+Roman Empire, appeared in 1840, and they were followed by the six
+large volumes of the 'History of Latin Christianity,' carrying the
+history of the Western Church to the end of the Pontificate of
+Nicholas V. in 1455. This great work was published in two
+instalments--the first three volumes in 1854, and the remaining three
+in the following year--and it gave its author indisputably the first
+place among the ecclesiastical historians of England and a high place
+among the historians of the nineteenth century. He possessed, indeed,
+in an eminent degree some of the qualities that are most rare, and at
+the same time most valuable, in ecclesiastical history. A large
+proportion of the most learned ecclesiastical historians have been men
+who have devoted their whole lives to this single department of
+knowledge, who derived from it all their measures of probability and
+canons of criticism, and who, treating it as an isolated and mainly
+supernatural thing, have taken very little account of the intellectual
+and political secular influences that have largely shaped its course.
+Most of them also have been men who undertook their task with
+convictions and habits of thought that were absolutely incompatible
+with real independence and impartiality of judgment in estimating
+either the events or the characters they described. Milman was wholly
+free from these defects. His wide knowledge, his cool, critical,
+admirably trained judgment, were never better shown than in the many
+pages in which he has pointed out the analogies or resemblances
+between Jewish and other Oriental beliefs; the manner in which
+national characteristics or secular intellectual tendencies affected
+theological types; the countless modifications in belief or practice
+which grew up, as the Church accommodated itself to the conditions of
+successive ages and entered into alliance or conflict with different
+political systems; the many indirect, subtle, far-reaching ways in
+which the world and the Church interacted upon each other in all the
+great departments of speculation, art, industry, social and political
+life. A certain aloofness and coldness of judgment in dealing with
+sacred subjects was the reproach which was most frequently brought
+against him. As he himself said, he wrote rather as an historian than
+a religious instructor, and he dealt with his subject chiefly in its
+temporal, social, and political aspects. Justice and impartiality of
+judgment to friend and foe he deemed one of the first moral duties of
+an historian, and Dean Church was not wrong in ascribing to him a
+quite 'unusual combination of the strongest feeling about right and
+wrong with the largest equity.' 'What a delightful book, so tolerant
+of the intolerant!' was his characteristic eulogy of the work of
+another writer, and it truly reflects the turn of his own mind.
+Provost Hawtrey, who was no mean judge of men, said, after an intimacy
+of nearly fifty years, that he had never known a man who possessed in
+a greater degree than Milman the virtue of Christian charity in its
+highest and rarest form. It was a gift which stood him in good stead
+in dealing with the very blended characters, the tangled politics, the
+often misguided enthusiasms of ecclesiastical history. While he was
+constitutionally extremely averse to the moral casuistry which
+confuses the boundaries of right and wrong, he had too sound a grasp
+of the evolution of history to fall into the common error of judging
+the acts of one age by the moral standards of another. His history was
+eminently a history of large lines and broad tendencies. The growth,
+influence, and decline of the Papacy--the distinctive characteristics
+of Latin and Teutonic Christianity; the effect of Christianity on
+jurisprudence; the monastic system in its various phases; the rise and
+conquests of Mohammedanism; the severance of Greek from Latin
+Christianity; Charlemagne, Hildebrand, the Crusades, the Templars, the
+Great Councils; the decay of Latin and the rise of modern languages;
+the influence of the Church on literature, painting, sculpture, and
+architecture--are but a few of the great subjects he has treated,
+always with knowledge and intelligence, often with conspicuous
+brilliancy.
+
+In so vast a field there were, no doubt, many subjects which have been
+treated with a greater fulness and completeness by other writers.
+There are some in which subsequent research has gone far to supersede
+what Milman has written, and inaccuracies of detail not unfrequently
+crept into his work; but in the truthfulness of its broad lines, in
+the sagacity of its estimates both of men and events, it holds a high
+place among the histories of the world. Very few historians have
+combined in a larger measure the three great requisites of knowledge,
+soundness of judgment, and inexorable love of truth. The growth and
+modifications of doctrines and the minutiæ of religious controversies
+were, however, subjects in which he took little interest, and though
+they could not be excluded from an ecclesiastical history, they are
+dealt with only in a slight and cursory manner. Those who desire to
+study in detail this side of ecclesiastical history will find other
+histories much more useful. It has been said that his work is
+imperfect as a book of reference, for while the great events and
+personages are discussed with a fulness that leaves little to be
+desired, many of the more insignificant transactions or more obscure
+periods are passed over or barely noticed. Critics of different
+religious schools have also complained that his mind was essentially
+secular; that he had a low sense of the certainty and the importance
+of dogma; that there were some classes of ecclesiastical writers who
+have been deeply revered in the Church with whom he had no real
+sympathy; that the spirit of criticism was stronger in his book than
+the spirit of reverence; that he did not do full justice to the
+spiritual and inner side of the religion he described. He looked upon
+it, they said, too externally. He valued it as a moral revolution, the
+introduction of new principles of virtue and new rules for individual
+and social happiness. Much of this criticism would probably have been
+accepted with but little qualification by Milman himself. He would
+have said that what these writers complained of was in the main
+inseparable from an historical as distinguished from a devotional
+treatment of his subject. He would have added that no form of human
+history reveals so clearly as ecclesiastical history the fallibility,
+the credulity, the intolerance of the human mind, or requires more
+imperatively the constant exercise of independent judgment and of
+fearless and unsparing criticism, and that, if the history of the
+Church is ever to be written with profit, it must be written in such a
+spirit. Of his own deeper convictions he seldom spoke; but in the
+concluding page of his 'Latin Christianity' there is a passage of
+profound interest. Leaving it, as he says, to the future historian of
+religion to say what part of the ancient dogmatic system may be
+allowed to fall silently into disuse, and what transformations the
+interpretation of the Sacred Writings may still undergo, he adds these
+significant words:
+
+'As it is my own confident belief that the words of Christ, and his
+words alone (the primal indefeasible truths of Christianity), shall
+not pass away, so I cannot presume to say that men may not attain to a
+clearer, at the same time more full, comprehensive, and balanced sense
+of those words, than has as yet been generally received in the
+Christian world. As all else is transient and mutable, these only
+eternal and universal, assuredly whatever light may be thrown on the
+mental constitution of man, even on the constitution of nature and the
+laws which govern the world, will be concentered so as to give a more
+penetrating vision of those undying truths.... Christianity may yet
+have to exercise a far wider, even if more silent and untraceable
+influence, through its primary, all-pervading principles, on the
+civilisation of mankind.'
+
+Macaulay, speaking of the 'History of Latin Christianity' in his
+Journal, says, 'I was more impressed than ever by the contrast between
+the substance and the style: the substance is excellent; the style
+very much otherwise.' Looking at it from a purely literary point of
+view it had undoubtedly great merits. Milman had an admirable sense of
+proportion--a rare quality in history. He was invariably lucid, and it
+is easy to cull from his history many characters excellently drawn,
+many pages of vivid narrative, or terse and weighty criticism. Still,
+on the whole his historic style is on a lower level than that of
+Macaulay, Buckle, and Froude, though it will compare, I think, not
+unfavourably with that of Hallam and Grote. The points of controversy
+are usually relegated to his notes, which contain a great mass of
+curious learning and excellent criticism. The reader who turns to them
+from works of the German school will be struck by his strong English
+common-sense and grasp of facts, and his dislike of subtle far-fetched
+ingenuities of explanation. He has the crowning merit of being always
+readable, and his strong sane moral sense never left him. He was
+probably at his best in the later volumes, when he could treat his
+subject like secular history and was free from the embarrassing
+theological difficulties of the earlier portion, and he is especially
+admirable in those chapters which give scope to his wide literary and
+artistic sympathies. He was an excellent Italian scholar and keenly
+sensible of the beauties of Italian literature, and his love of the
+ancient classics never left him. There was something at once
+characteristic and amusing in the delight which he again and again
+expressed, after the termination of his History, at being able to
+return to them after spending so many years in reading bad Latin and
+Greek. In taste and character he was indeed pre-eminently a man of
+letters, and as such he ranks in the first line among his
+contemporaries.
+
+The outburst of indignation that in some quarters had greeted the
+first appearance of the 'History of the Jews' was not repeated when
+that work was republished in an enlarged form. Nor does it appear to
+have arisen on the appearance of the two later histories. Newman
+reviewed the 'History of Early Christianity' at great length, speaking
+with much personal respect of the writer, though he was naturally
+extremely hostile to its spirit. The difference between the High
+Church sentiment and the mind of Milman was indeed organic. Milman's
+own type of thought was formed before the Tractarian movement had
+begun; the sacerdotal spirit was thoroughly alien to him, and his
+profound study of ecclesiastical history had certainly not tended to
+attract him to it. He fully recognised both the abilities and the
+piety of Newman, and he described his secession as perhaps the
+greatest loss the Church of England had experienced since the
+Reformation; but he disliked his opinions, he profoundly distrusted
+the whole character of his mind and reasonings, and he early foresaw
+that he could never find a permanent resting-place in the English
+Church. In the posthumous volume of Essays there will be found a full
+and most searching examination of Newman's 'Essay on Development,' in
+which these points of difference are clearly shown. For Keble, Milman
+entertained warmer feelings. They were contemporaries, and at one time
+most intimate friends. In the field of sacred poetry they had been
+fellow-labourers. Keble had succeeded Milman as professor of poetry,
+and Milman had been one of the few persons who had read the 'Christian
+Year' in manuscript. When, after Keble's death, a committee was
+appointed to erect a memorial to his memory, Milman was much hurt at
+finding that it was determined to give it a distinctly Tractarian
+character, and that his own name was deliberately excluded. In
+Milman's last years the Oxford movement had begun to assume its
+ritualistic form, and questions of vestments and ceremonies and
+candles came to the forefront. With all this Milman had no sympathy.
+'After the drama,' he said of it, 'the melodrama!'
+
+It was a remarkable coincidence that for some years the two deaneries
+of London were both held by brilliant men of letters and by men with
+the strongest theological sympathy. A feeling of warm personal
+affection united Milman and Stanley, and there was something
+peculiarly touching in the almost filial attitude which Stanley
+assumed towards his older colleague. In one point, however, they
+differed greatly. Stanley was a keen fighter. He threw himself into
+the forefront of ecclesiastical controversies, and was never seen to
+greater advantage than when leading a small minority, defying
+inveterate prejudice, defending an unpopular cause. Milman could
+seldom be tempted to follow his example. He pleaded old age and
+declining strength, but, in truth, though he never flinched from the
+avowal of his own opinions, he had a deep and increasing distaste for
+religious controversies and Church politics. He was rarely seen in
+Convocation, and he always regarded its revival as a misfortune. He
+proposed, however, in it a petition for the discontinuance of the use
+of the State services commemorating the martyrdom of Charles I., the
+restoration of Charles II., the discovery of the gunpowder plot, and
+the Revolution of 1688; and Parliament soon after adopted his view. He
+also sat on the Royal Commission in 1864 for considering the subject
+of clerical subscription. He took on this occasion a characteristic
+line, advocating a complete abolition of the subscription of the
+Articles, and desiring that the sole test of membership of the Church
+should be the acceptance of the Liturgy and the Creeds. In 1865 he
+received an invitation, which greatly gratified him, to preach before
+the University of Oxford the annual sermon on Hebrew prophecy. The
+sermon was delivered in the pulpit of St. Mary's, where many years
+before he had been so vehemently condemned for views on the same
+subject, no one of which, as he truly said, he had either recanted or
+modified. His sermon was afterwards printed, and would form a worthy
+chapter of his 'History of the Jews.' In the Colenso controversy he
+had no great sympathy with either side. Many of Bishop Colenso's
+arguments appeared to him crude or exaggerated, and he dissented from
+many of his conclusions, but he considered that he had been treated
+with gross injustice and intolerance, and he accordingly subscribed to
+his defence fund. For the rest, he confined his ecclesiastical life as
+much as possible to his own cathedral, where he presided over the
+State funeral of the Duke of Wellington, and where he introduced the
+custom of throwing open the nave to evening services. His last and
+unfinished work was his 'Annals of St. Paul's,' investigating its
+history and portraying with his old learning and with much of his old
+felicity the lives of his predecessors.
+
+It was however in secular literary society that he was most fitted to
+shine, and there he passed many of his happiest hours. The usual
+honours of a distinguished man of letters clustered thickly around
+him. He was a trustee of the British Museum; an honorary member of the
+Royal Academy; a correspondent of the French Institute. He was also a
+member of 'The Club'--the small dining-club which was founded in 1764
+by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Johnson, and which since then has
+included in its fortnightly dinners the great majority of those
+Englishmen who in many walks of life have been most distinguished by
+their genius or their accomplishments. He was elected to it in 1836,
+three years before Macaulay, and he became one of its most constant
+attendants. In 1841 'The Club' made him its treasurer, and he held
+that position for twenty-three years, and presided over the centenary
+dinner in 1864. He was also an original member of the Philobiblion
+Society, which has brought together many curious and hitherto unknown
+documents, and he wrote for it a short paper on Michael Scott the
+Wizard, who, as he showed, had been once offered the Archbishopric of
+Cashel. He was never a keen politician, but he was intimate with a
+long succession of leading statesmen, and he contributed to Sir
+Cornewall Lewis's 'Administrations of Great Britain' a full and
+valuable letter on the relations of Pitt and Addington, which was
+largely based on his own recollections of the latter statesman.
+
+London society in the middle of the nineteenth century was much
+smaller and less mixed than at present, and there was then a
+distinctively literary or at least intellectual society which can now
+hardly be said to exist. The most eminent men of letters came more
+frequently together. Criticism was in fewer and perhaps stronger
+hands, and was to a larger extent representative of the opinions
+expressed in such social gatherings. In this kind of society Milman
+was long a foremost figure. He had all the gifts that fit men for
+it--not only brilliancy, knowledge, and versatility, but also
+unfailing tact, a rare charm of courtesy, a singularly wide tolerance.
+He was quick and generous in recognising rising talent, and he had
+that sympathetic touch which seldom failed to elicit what was best in
+those with whom he came in contact. Few men possessed more eminently
+the genius of friendship--the power of attaching others--the power of
+attaching himself to others. In the long list of his intimate friends
+Macaulay, Sir Charles Lyell, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis were
+conspicuous. Like most men of this type, he found the multiplying
+gaps around him the chief trial of old age. Not long before he died
+there was an exhibition of contemporary portraits, but though Milman
+went to it he could not go through it. 'When I found myself,' he said,
+'surrounded by the likenesses--often the miserable likenesses--of so
+many I had known and loved, it was more than I could bear.'
+
+An admirable portrait by Watts which is now in the National Portrait
+Gallery will recall to those who knew him his appearance in old
+age--his strong masculine features beaming with intelligence, his
+grand shaggy brows, his bright and penetrating eyes. An illness
+affecting the spine had bowed him nearly double, and there are still
+those who will remember how his bent figure seemed projected, almost
+like a bird in its flight, across the dinner-table, while his eager
+brilliant talk delighted and fascinated his hearers. In his last years
+increasing deafness obliged him to narrow the circle of his social
+life, but he retained to the end all the vividness of his mind and
+sympathies, and when at length death came in his seventy-eighth year,
+it found him in the midst of unfinished work. His life was not of a
+kind to win wide popularity and to give him a conspicuous place among
+the great masses of his nation, but few English clergymen of his
+generation made so deep an impression on those who came in contact
+with them or have left works of such enduring value behind them.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48] _Henry Hart Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's._ A Biographical
+Sketch by his son, Arthur Milman, M.A., LL.D.
+
+[49] Laurence's _Life of Sir A. Sullivan_, p. 310.
+
+[50] Smiles' _Memoirs of John Murray_, ii. p. 300.
+
+
+
+
+QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE
+
+
+At a time when the unprecedented increase of gigantic and rapidly
+acquired fortunes has deeply infected both English and American
+society with the characteristic vices of a Plutocracy, the profound
+feeling of sorrow and admiration elicited by the death of Queen
+Victoria is an encouraging sign. It shows that the vulgar ideals, the
+false moral measurements, the feverish social ambitions, the love of
+the ostentatious and the factitious, and the disdain for simple
+habits, pleasures, and characters so apparent in certain conspicuous
+sections of society, have not yet blunted the moral sense or perverted
+the moral perceptions of the great masses on either side of the
+Atlantic. To this type, indeed, we could scarcely find a more complete
+antithesis than in the life and character of the great Queen who has
+passed away. Nothing more deeply impressed all who came in contact
+with her than the essential simplicity and genuineness of her nature.
+
+She was a great ruler, but she was also to the last a true, kindly,
+simple-minded woman, retaining with undiminished intensity all the
+warmth of a most affectionate nature, all the soundness of a most
+excellent judgment. Brought up from childhood in the artificial
+atmosphere of a Court, called while still a girl to the isolation of a
+throne; deprived, when her reign had yet forty years to run, of the
+support and counsel of her husband, she might well have been pardoned
+if she often found herself out of touch with large sections of her
+people, and had viewed life through a false medium or in partial
+aspects. Yet Lord Salisbury probably in no degree exaggerated when he
+said that if he wished to ascertain the feelings and opinions of the
+English people, and especially of the English middle classes, he knew
+no truer or more enlightening judgment than that of the Queen. She
+thought with them and she felt with them; she shared their ambitions;
+she knew by a kind of intuitive instinct the course of their
+judgments; she sympathised deeply with their trials and their sorrows.
+
+She could hardly be called a brilliant woman. It is difficult indeed
+to judge the full social capacities of anyone who lives under the
+constant restraints of a royal position, but I do not think that in
+any sphere of life the Queen would have been regarded as a woman of
+striking wit, or originality, or even commanding power. The qualities
+that made her so successful in her high calling were of another kind:
+supreme good sense; a tact in dealing with men and circumstances so
+unfailing that it almost amounted to genius; an indefatigable industry
+which never flagged from early youth till extreme old age; a sense of
+duty so steady and so strong that it governed all her actions and
+pleasures, and saved her not only from the grosser and more common
+temptations of an exalted position, but also in a most unusual degree
+from the subtle and often half-concealed deflecting influences that
+spring from ambition or resentment, from personal predilections and
+personal dislikes. It was these qualities, combined with her
+unrivalled experience of affairs, and strengthened by long and
+constant intercourse with the foremost English statesmen of two
+generations, that made her what she undoubtedly was--a perfect model
+of a constitutional Sovereign.
+
+The position of a Sovereign under a parliamentary government like ours
+is a singular and difficult one. There was a school of politicians who
+were much more prominent in the last generation than in the present
+one, who regarded the Sovereign, in political life at least, as little
+more than a figure-head or a cipher, absolved from all responsibility,
+but also divested of all power, and fulfilling functions in the
+Constitution which are little more than mechanical. This view of the
+unimportance of the Monarchy will now be held by few really
+intelligent men. Those take but a false and narrow view of human
+affairs who fail to realise the part which sentiment and enthusiasm
+play in the government of men; and no one who knows England will
+question that the throne is the centre of a great strength of personal
+attachment which is wholly different from any attachment to a party or
+a parliament.
+
+In India and the Colonies this is still more the case. It is not the
+British Parliament or the British Cabinet that there forms the centre
+of unity or excites genuine attachment. The Crown is the main link
+binding the different States to one another, and the pervading
+sentiment of a common loyalty unites them in one great and living
+whole. In foreign politics it cannot be a matter of indifference that
+a Sovereign is closely related to nearly all the greatest rulers in
+the world, and in frequent, intimate, unconstrained correspondence
+with them. This is a kind of influence which no Minister, however
+powerful, can exercise, and it was possessed by Queen Victoria
+probably to a greater degree than by any Sovereign on record, for
+there has scarcely ever been one who included among her relations so
+many of the Sovereigns of the world. Future historians will no doubt
+have ample means of judging how frequently and how judiciously it was
+employed in assuaging differences and promoting European peace. All
+the great offices in Church and State, all the great distributions of
+honours were submitted to her; and though in a large number of cases
+this patronage is purely Ministerial or professional, there are many
+cases in which the Sovereign had a real voice, and a strong objection
+on her part was usually attended to. In Church patronage and in the
+distribution of honours she is known to have taken a great interest,
+and to have exercised a considerable influence.
+
+The one subject on which the Queen was not always in harmony with her
+people was that of foreign politics. She and the Prince Consort took a
+keen interest in them, and during his lifetime she followed very
+implicitly his guidance. The strong German sympathies she imbued from
+her own marriage were much intensified by the marriages of her
+children, and especially by that of her eldest daughter to the heir of
+the Prussian throne. The influence also of Stockmar, who was the
+closest adviser of her early married life, was not wholly for good,
+and the theory which the Prince held that the direction of foreign
+affairs is in a peculiar degree under the care of the Sovereign, and
+that the Prince, her husband, should be regarded as 'her permanent
+Minister,' created during many years much friction. In a
+constitutional country, where the responsibility of affairs rests
+wholly on the Minister, who is doubly responsible to the Cabinet and
+to the Parliament, such a theory can only be maintained with great
+qualifications.
+
+On the other hand, the government of the country was carried on in the
+name of the Queen. Foreign despatches were addressed to her and could
+only be answered with her sanction. The right of the English
+Sovereigns to be present at the Cabinet Councils of their Ministers
+was abdicated when George I. came to the throne, but every important
+departure in policy was submitted to the Queen and required her
+assent. The testimony of Ministers of all shades of policy supports
+the belief that this was no idle form. The Queen, though always open
+to argument and tolerant of contradiction, had her own decided
+opinions; she exercised her undoubted right of expressing and
+defending them, and even apart from her royal position, her great
+experience and her singular clearness and rectitude of judgment made
+her opinion well worth listening to.
+
+The claim put forward by the Queen in her famous memorandum of August
+1850, can, I think, hardly be pronounced excessive. She demanded only
+that before a line of policy was adopted and brought before her she
+should be distinctly informed of the facts of the case and of the
+motives that inspired it; that when she had given her sanction to a
+measure it should not be arbitrarily altered or modified by the
+Minister; that she must be kept acquainted with all important
+communications between foreign Ministers and her own Foreign
+Secretary, and that the drafts of foreign despatches must be sent to
+her for her approval in sufficient time for her to make herself
+acquainted with them. She complained that Lord Palmerston was
+accustomed to send despatches to the Continent without submitting
+them, in their last revise, to the Sovereign; that in one case he
+retained without her knowledge a passage which the Prince Consort had
+deleted; that he paid little or no attention to the numerous memoranda
+which were drawn up by the Prince for his instruction; that he of his
+own will and without any consultation committed his Government, in a
+conversation with the French Ambassador, to an approbation of the
+_coup d'état_ of Napoleon III. If the general line of his policy had
+been in accordance with the royal wishes, indiscretions of detail
+could probably have been overlooked, but the Queen and Prince were
+both undoubtedly on many occasions--and especially in 1848 and
+1849--strongly opposed to the policy of Lord Palmerston. In the
+interests of peace they objected to the remarkably provocative
+character of his despatches, which excited a degree of animosity and
+resentment among the Governments of the Continent that has rarely been
+paralleled--on two, if not three, occasions it brought England into
+grave danger of a war with France--and which aroused a very widespread
+indignation among statesmen of his own party at home.
+
+The widely different tone which was adopted by Lord Clarendon and Lord
+Granville, the open breach between Palmerston and Lord John Russell on
+account of the way in which the former conducted his foreign policy
+without consultation with the Cabinet, and the refusal of Lord Grey,
+in a most critical moment, to take office in a Government in which
+Lord Palmerston held the seals of the Foreign Office, show how fully
+in this respect the sentiments of the Queen accorded with those of
+many of Lord Palmerston's own colleagues. But in addition to mere
+questions of manner and procedure, there was much in the substance of
+the policy of Palmerston to which the Queen objected. Her dislike to
+the Revolutionary element on the Continent, which Lord Palmerston
+either encouraged or viewed with indifference, her sympathy with the
+old governments and dynasties, that were so gravely shaken in the year
+of the Revolution, were very marked. In the disputes between Germany
+and Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein question her sympathies, unlike
+those of her people, were decidedly with Germany, and although she was
+fully sensible of the misgovernment of some of the Italian States, she
+was not favourable to that cause of Italian unity which Lord John
+Russell and Lord Palmerston so strenuously upheld. Her nature, which
+was very frank, made it impossible for her, even if she desired it, to
+conceal her opinions, and she devoted much time and pains to making
+herself acquainted with the details of every question as it arose. She
+made it a rule to sign no paper that she had not read. She did not
+hesitate fully to apprise her Ministers of her views when they
+differed from their own, and she enforced her views by argument and
+remonstrance. She more than once drew up memoranda of her dissent from
+the opinions of her Foreign Minister, and insisted on their being
+brought before the Cabinet for consideration. In the formation of a
+new Ministry she more than once exercised her power of deciding to
+whom the succession of the first places should be offered. After an
+adverse vote of the House of Commons, she considered herself fully
+authorised to decide whether she would accept the resignation of a
+Minister or submit the issue to the test of a dissolution, and there
+were occasions on which she remonstrated with her Ministers on their
+too ready determination to resign.
+
+At the same time it is certain that the Queen fulfilled with
+perfection that most difficult duty of an able constitutional
+Sovereign--the duty of yielding her convictions to those of her
+responsible Ministers and acting faithfully with Ministers she
+distrusted. To a Sovereign with clear views and a more than common
+force of character this must often have been very painful, and to have
+fulfilled it faithfully and with no loss of dignity is no small merit.
+It is the universal testimony of all who served her, that no Sovereign
+ever supported her successive Ministers with a more perfect loyalty or
+held the scales between contending parties with a more complete
+impartiality. No one understood better to what point a constitutional
+Sovereign may press her opinions and at what point she is bound to
+give way; and while maintaining her rightful authority she never in
+any degree transgressed its bounds. In the very beginning of her reign
+she showed this quality in a high degree. She looked up to Lord
+Melbourne with an almost filial affection, and there were peculiar
+reasons why his great opponent, Sir Robert Peel, should have been
+distasteful to her. The dispute about the removal of her Ladies of the
+Bedchamber, and still more the conduct of Sir Robert Peel in
+supporting the reduction of the income which the Whigs had proposed
+for Prince Albert, must have touched her feelings on the most
+sensitive points, and the stiff, formal, somewhat awkward manner of
+Peel seemed very little fitted to ingratiate him with a young
+Sovereign. Yet when the change of Ministry arrived, Peel found no
+trace of resentment in the Queen. She gave him her complete
+confidence, and she fully estimated his great qualities. Of all the
+Ministers who served her there is indeed none of whom she has written
+in warmer terms. When Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister in 1855 it
+was contrary to her earnest desire, but when the change was made
+Palmerston himself acknowledged that he had 'no reason to complain of
+the least want of cordiality or confidence on the part of the Court.'
+At the time when she was most opposed to her Ministers, she fully
+acquiesced in the principle that she must submit all letters on public
+affairs to them and frame her replies upon their advice. There were
+constant attempts on the part of foreign Sovereigns who were connected
+with her to carry on affairs by correspondence with her without the
+knowledge and sanction of her Ministers, but the Queen steadily
+resisted them. Anything, indeed, that in any way savoured of intrigue
+was in the highest degree repugnant to her nature.
+
+She acted in the same way in internal affairs. Few measures that were
+carried in her time were more repugnant to her than Gladstone's
+disestablishment of the Irish Church. It abolished an institution of
+which she was herself the head and which a special clause in the
+Coronation Oath required her to uphold, and she foretold, not without
+good reason, that it would not pacify Ireland but would be an
+encouragement to further agitation. The question, however, had been
+submitted at a general election to the decision of the country, and
+after that decision had been unequivocally given in favour of the
+policy of Gladstone, she frankly accepted it with the assent of the
+Prime Minister. When a great danger of a conflict between the two
+Houses of Parliament had arisen, she devoted herself actively in
+preventing it. She employed for that service the instrumentality of
+Archbishop Tait--a great statesman-prelate, whose promotion to the see
+of Canterbury was due to her own personal initiative, contrary to the
+wish of Lord Beaconsfield, but most fully justified by the result--and
+it was largely due to the intervention of the Queen that the Church
+Bill was not thrown out in the House of Lords. She acted in a
+somewhat similar way with reference to the Franchise Bill of 1884,
+though on this occasion she does not seem to have disliked the
+measure, which she urged the House of Lords to accept.
+
+On three very memorable occasions the intervention of the Queen had
+probably a great effect on English politics. It is well known that at
+the time when the issue of peace or war with the United States was
+trembling in the balance on account of the seizure of the Southern
+envoys on the 'Trent,' the Queen, acting in accordance with the Prince
+Consort, by softening and revising the language of an English despatch
+to America, did very much to prevent the dispute from leading to a
+great war; that in the proclamation which was issued to the Indian
+people after the Sepoy Mutiny, she insisted on the excision of some
+most unfortunate words that seemed to menace the native creeds, and on
+the insertion of an emphatic promise that they should in no wise be
+interfered with, and thus probably prevented a new outburst of most
+dangerous fanaticism; that at the time of the Schleswig-Holstein
+dispute she contributed powerfully and actively to give a turn to the
+negotiations that averted a war with Prussia and Austria, which, as is
+now almost universally recognised, could only have led to a great
+catastrophe.
+
+Whatever opinions may be formed of the merits of the dispute between
+Denmark and the German powers about Schleswig-Holstein, few persons
+who judge by the event can doubt that an isolated intervention of
+England on behalf of Denmark against the combined forces of Austria
+and Prussia would have been absolutely impotent to effect the object
+that was desired, and that even if France had consented to join in the
+struggle it would have led to a military disaster hardly less than
+that of the war of Sedan. If, contrary to all probability, the
+combined forces of France and England had proved stronger than those
+of Austria and Germany, the result could have hardly failed to be that
+France would have been established on the left bank of the Rhine, and
+that the treaty of Vienna, which it was one of the great objects of
+English policy to maintain, would have been torn into shreds.
+
+The dangers, however, of conflict arising from the extreme
+irritability of English public opinion against Germany on the Danish
+question, were very great, and there can be little doubt that the
+personal influence of the Queen with the German Sovereign was an
+appreciable influence, and it was her desire that a paragraph in the
+Queen's Speech opening Parliament in February 1864 was erased. Words
+which contained at least a veiled or attributed threat to Germany were
+omitted, and instead of them an inoffensive paragraph was inserted
+expressing the Queen's ardent desire for peace and recording the
+earnest efforts she had made to maintain it.[51] At the same time
+when, by the Convention of Gastein in August 1865, the Duchies were
+severed from the Danish throne and placed in the virtual possession of
+Prussia and Austria, the protest of Lord Russell against so flagrant a
+violation of public right, and especially of the right of the people
+to be consulted on their own destiny, was drawn up with her full
+assent and indeed in a great measure at her suggestion.[52]
+
+On other occasions her remonstrances were disregarded, and courses
+were pursued to which she strongly objected. The surrender after
+Majuba was in her opinion a pusillanimous abandonment of the English
+flag, and it was with extreme reluctance that she acquiesced in it.
+Still more vehement were her feelings about the long abandonment of
+General Gordon in the Soudan. She had been indefatigable in urging on
+the Ministry of Gladstone the duty of speedy measures for his rescue,
+and when, owing to the long delay of the Ministry, the most heroic of
+modern Englishmen perished at Khartoum, her indignation knew no
+bounds. In a letter to his sisters, burning with mingled pity and
+indignation, she pronounced his 'cruel though heroic fate' to be 'a
+stain left upon England,' which she keenly felt. This was one of the
+few occasions in which she allowed her sentiments in hostility to the
+policy of her Ministers to appear publicly before the world. In
+general, she had a profound distrust of the policy and judgment of Mr.
+Gladstone, and she fully shared the dread with which the great body of
+English statesmen looked upon the Home Rule policy. It was no new
+sentiment on her part, for she had lived through the Repeal agitation
+of O'Connell, and as far back as 1843 Sir Robert Peel had somewhat
+unconstitutionally declared in Parliament that he was authorised by
+the Queen to state that she, like her predecessor, was resolved to
+maintain the Union inviolate by all the means in her power.
+
+There can now be no harm in saying--what when both parties were alive
+was naturally kept in the background--that the relations of the Queen
+with Mr. Gladstone were usually of a very painful character. She had
+personally not much to complain of. The skill and firmness with which
+Mr. Gladstone resisted the attempts to diminish the parliamentary
+subsidies for her family were fully and gratefully recognised by the
+Queen, but the main course of his politics, both foreign and domestic,
+filled her with alarm, and she never appears to have experienced the
+attraction which his great personal gifts exercised over most of those
+with whom he came in immediate contact. The extreme copiousness of his
+vocabulary, the extreme subtlety of his mind and reasoning, and the
+imperiousness of temper with which he seldom failed to meet
+opposition, were all repugnant to her. To those who have experienced
+the sustained emphasis of language with which Mr. Gladstone was
+accustomed in conversation to enforce his views, there is much truth
+as well as humour in the saying which was attributed to the Queen, 'I
+wish Mr. Gladstone would not always speak to me as if I was a public
+meeting'; and a little episode which is related by Sir Theodore Martin
+illustrates the irritation which Mr. Gladstone's methods of business
+must have caused to a very busy and overworked lady who always loved
+few words and simple and direct arguments.[53] At all times the Queen
+had decided political opinions, and the experience of a long reign had
+given her a large measure of not unjustifiable self-confidence. Few
+persons had studied as she had during all those years the various
+political questions that arose, and she had had the advantage of
+discussing them at length with a long succession of the leading
+statesmen of England. Under such circumstances her opinions had no
+small weight, and although in the Liberal Government she gave her full
+confidence to Lord Clarendon and Lord Granville, she looked with the
+gravest apprehension on the policy of Mr. Gladstone.
+
+It was a painful and irksome position, but it did not lead the Queen
+to any unconstitutional course. No public act or word ever disclosed
+her feelings. It was indeed in most cases very slowly, and in small
+circles and through private channels, that the convictions of the
+Queen became known.
+
+At the close of the second Ministry of Mr. Gladstone she at once
+offered him an earldom, which he refused, and on his death she fully
+acquiesced in the public funeral in Westminster Abbey, and the Prince
+of Wales attended it as her representative. In an autograph letter to
+Mrs. Gladstone she spoke with the deep and genuine warmth that was
+never wanting in her letters of condolence of her sympathy with the
+bereavement of that lady. She spoke of his illustrious gifts and of
+his personal kindness to herself, but it was noticed that no sentence
+in the letter intimated any approbation of his general policy. 'Truth
+in the inmost parts' was indeed a prominent characteristic of the
+Queen, and she wrote nothing which was not in accordance with her true
+convictions.
+
+There were occasions when she took independent steps, and some of these
+had a considerable influence on politics. Louis Napoleon was one of the
+few great Sovereigns who were not related to her, and to few persons
+could the _coup d'état_ which brought him to the throne have been more
+repugnant, but the cordial personal relations she established with him
+undoubtedly contributed considerably to the good relations which for
+many years subsisted between England and France. Bismarck detested
+English Court influence and was greatly prejudiced against her, but he
+has left a striking testimony to the favourable impression which her
+tact and good sense made upon him when he first came into contact with
+her. She possessed to a high degree the power of choosing the right
+moment and striking the true chord, and she appears to have been an
+excellent judge not only of the feelings of large bodies of men, but
+also of the individual characters of those with whom she dealt. She had
+a style of writing which was eminently characteristic and eminently
+feminine, and it is easy to trace the letters which were entirely her
+own. Her letters of congratulation, or sympathy, or encouragement on
+public occasions scarcely ever failed in their effect and never
+contained an injudicious word. The same thing may be said of her many
+beautiful letters to those who were suffering from some grievous
+calamity. Whether she was writing to a great public character like the
+widow of an American President, or expressing her sorrow for obscure
+sufferers, there was the same note of true womanly sympathy, so
+manifestly spontaneous and so manifestly heartfelt, that it found its
+way to the hearts of thousands. The tact for which she was so justly
+celebrated, like all true tact, sprang largely from character, from the
+quick and lively sympathies of an eminently affectionate nature. No one
+could have been less theatrical, or less likely in any unworthy way to
+seek for popularity; but she knew admirably the occasions or the methods
+by which she could strike the imagination and appeal most favourably to
+the feelings of her people. She showed this in the very beginning of her
+reign when she insisted, in defiance of the opinion of the Duke of
+Wellington, on riding herself through the ranks of her troops at her
+first review. She showed it on countless other occasions of her long
+reign--pre-eminently in her two Jubilees and in her last visit to
+Ireland. It is well known that this visit was entirely her own idea. To
+many it seemed rash or even positively dangerous. They dwelt upon the
+bitter disaffection of a great portion of the Irish people, upon the
+danger of mob outrage or even assassination, upon the extreme difficulty
+of preventing a royal visit to Ireland from taking a party character and
+being regarded as a party triumph or defeat. But the Queen, as Sir
+William Harcourt once truly said, 'never feared her people,' and nothing
+could be more happy than the manner in which she availed herself of the
+new turn given to Irish feeling by the splendid achievements of Irish
+soldiers in South Africa, to come over, as if to thank her Irish people
+in person, and at the same time to repair in extreme old age a neglect
+for which she had been often, and not altogether unjustly, blamed. There
+never indeed was a more brilliant and unqualified success. To those who
+witnessed the spontaneous and passionate enthusiasm with which she was
+everywhere greeted, it seemed as if all bitter feeling vanished at her
+presence; and the Irish visit, which was one of the last, was also one
+of the brightest pages of her reign. The credit of its most skilful
+arrangements belongs chiefly to the officials in Dublin, but the Irish
+people will long remember the patient courage with which the aged Queen
+went through its fatigues; the tactful kindness and the gracious dignity
+with which she won the hearts of multitudes who had never before seen
+her or spoken to her; the evident enjoyment with which she responded to
+the cordiality of her reception. One feature of that visit was
+especially characteristic. It was the Children's Review in Phoenix Park,
+where, by the desire of the Queen, 'some fifty thousand children were
+brought together to meet her. No act of kindness could have gone more
+directly home to the hearts of the parents, and it left a memory in many
+young minds that will never be effaced.
+
+It is rather, however, by the example of a life than by any public
+acts that a constitutional Sovereign can impress her personality on
+the affections of her people. Of the reign of Queen Victoria it may be
+truly said that very few in English history have been so blameless as
+this, which was the longest of all. Her Court was a model of quiet
+dignity and decorum, singularly free from all the atmosphere of
+intrigue and from all suspicion of injudicious or unworthy
+favouritism. She managed it as she managed her family, with a happy
+mixture of tact and affection; and though she gave her confidence to
+many she gave it to such persons and in such a way that it seemed
+never to be abused. No domestic life could in all its relations have
+been more perfect, and her love of children amounted to a passion.
+Among the great female rulers it would be difficult to find one less
+like Queen Victoria than the Empress Catherine of Russia, but they had
+this common trait of an intense love of children and a great power of
+winning their affection. There is a charming letter of Catherine to
+Grimm, describing her life among her grandchildren, which might almost
+have been written by the English Queen. Her vast family, spread
+through many countries, was her abiding interest and delight, and
+although she had to pay in full measure the natural penalty of many
+bereavements, she at least never knew the dreary loneliness that
+clouded the last days of her great predecessor, Elizabeth.
+
+In the early years of her reign she fully filled her place as the
+leader of English society. In the plays she patronised, in the art
+she preferred, in the restrictions of her Drawing Rooms, in the
+fashions she countenanced, in the intimacies she selected or
+encouraged, her influence was always healthy and pure, and for some
+years it powerfully affected the tone of English society.
+Unfortunately, after the great calamity of her widowhood the nerves of
+the Queen seem to have been shaken, and though she never intermitted
+her political duties and spent daily many hours over her
+correspondence, she allowed her social duties to fall too much and too
+long into abeyance. She still, it is true, occasionally appeared in
+public ceremonies. She laid the first stones of several hospitals and
+infirmaries. She presided over the inauguration of several great
+industrial enterprises. She sometimes opened Parliament in person, and
+was sometimes present at military and naval reviews. But she scarcely
+ever appeared in London, except for a few days. She never appeared in
+a London theatre. She shrank from great crowds and large social
+gatherings, and buried herself too much in her Highland home. This is
+one of the few real reproaches that history is likely to bring against
+her. Her influence on English society was never wholly lost, and it
+was always an influence for good, but for many years it was exerted
+less frequently and less powerfully than it should have been, and the
+tone of large sections of society lost something by her retirement.
+
+It may be doubted, however, whether this long retirement really
+injured her in the minds of her people. Her rare occasional
+appearances had a greater weight, and the depth of feeling exhibited
+by her long widowhood became a new title to respect. The transparent
+simplicity and unselfishness of her character were now generally
+appreciated, and her own books contributed greatly to make her people
+understand her. It is in general far from a wise thing for royal
+personages to descend into the arena of literature unless they possess
+some special aptitude for it. They expose themselves to a kind of
+criticism wholly different from that which follows them in their
+public lives--a criticism more minute and often more deliberately
+malevolent than that to which an ordinary writer is subject. The Queen
+wrote pure and excellent English and she had a good literary taste,
+but she certainly could never have become a great writer; and the
+complete frankness and unreserve of her Journals, as well as their
+curious homeliness of thought and feeling, were not viewed with favour
+in some sections of the fashionable and of the literary world. There
+were circles in which the word 'bourgeois,' and there were others in
+which the word 'commonplace,' was often pronounced. Yet in this, as on
+nearly all occasions when the Queen acted on her own impulse, she
+acted wisely. Her books had at once an enormous circulation, and there
+can be no doubt that they contributed very widely to her popularity.
+Multitudes to whom she had before been little more than a name, now
+realised that she was one with whom they had very much in common. Her
+evident longing for sympathy produced an immediate response. Her deep
+domestic affection, her constant interest in her servants, her high
+spirits, her love of scenery, her love of animals, her power of taking
+delight in little things, appeared vividly in her pages and came home
+to the largest classes of her people.
+
+In some respects the Queen was an eminently democratic Sovereign.
+While maintaining the dignity of her position, rank and wealth were in
+her eyes always subordinate to the great realities of life and to
+true human affections. In no one was the touch of Nature that makes
+the whole world kin more constantly visible. She was never more in her
+place than in visiting some poor tenant on the morrow of a great
+bereavement, or uttering words of comfort by the sick bed of some
+humble dependant. Men of all ranks who came in contact with her were
+struck with her thoughtful kindness, and her royal gift of an
+excellent memory never showed itself more frequently than in the
+manner in which she remembered and inquired after the fortunes and
+happiness of obscure persons related to those with whom she spoke.
+
+Her religious opinions were brought very little before the public.
+Beyond a deep sense of Providential guidance and of the comforting
+power of religion, little is to be gathered from her published
+utterances; but she seemed equally at home in the Scotch Presbyterian
+and the Anglican Episcopal Church, and her marked admiration for such
+men as Dean Stanley and Norman Macleod, and for the preaching of
+Principal Caird, gives some clue to the bias of her opinions. Her mind
+was not speculative but eminently practical, and while she patronised
+good works of the most various kinds, there is reason to believe that
+those which most appealed to her personal feelings were those which
+directly contributed to alleviate the sufferings, or promote the
+material welfare, of the poor. She devoted the greater part of her
+Jubilee present to institutions for providing nurses for the sick
+poor, and this is said to have been one of the charities in which she
+took the warmest and most constant interest.
+
+She is said not to have had any sympathy with the movement for the
+extension of political power to women, which became so conspicuous in
+her reign; but her own success in filling for sixty-three years the
+highest political position in the nation will always be quoted in its
+support. Considering, indeed, how comparatively small has been the
+number of reigning female Sovereigns, it is remarkable how many in
+modern times have shown themselves pre-eminently capable. Isabella of
+Spain, Catherine of Russia, Maria Theresa of Austria, and our own
+Elizabeth, all rise far above the level of ordinary Sovereigns. Some
+of these seem figures of a larger and stronger mould than Queen
+Victoria, but they governed under very different constitutional
+conditions, and, with one exception, there are serious blots on their
+memory. There are few sadder facts in history than that the pure and
+tender-hearted Spanish Queen should have been deeply tinged with the
+persecuting fanaticism of her age and country; that she should have
+consented to the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile, to the
+expulsion of the Moors from her dominions, to the first law in Europe
+establishing a practical censorship of the Press. The unscrupulous
+ambition, the shameless favouritism, the gross personal vices of
+Catherine, are as conspicuous as her high intelligence, her
+indomitable will, her majestic commanding power. The reign of
+Elizabeth is perhaps the most glorious in English history, but the
+character of that great Queen is lamentably tarnished by waywardness
+and caprice. Among purely constitutional Sovereigns Queen Anne holds a
+respectable, though certainly not a brilliant, place, and it may be
+added that much of the merit of the very constitutional though not
+very glorious reign of George II. is due to the excellent sense and
+judgment of Queen Caroline. In spite of the saying of Burke, the age
+of chivalry is not wholly dead. The sex of Queen Victoria no doubt
+gave an additional touch of warmth to the loyalty of her people, and
+many of the qualities that made her most popular are intensely, if not
+distinctively, feminine. They would not, however, have given her the
+place she will always hold in English history, if they had not been
+united with what men are accustomed to regard as more peculiarly
+masculine--a clear, well-balanced mind, singularly free from
+fanaticisms and exaggerations, excellently fitted to estimate rightly
+the true proportion of things.
+
+In the last years of her reign the political horizon greatly cleared.
+Lord Beaconsfield, during his later Ministries, obtained not only her
+fullest political confidence, but also won a warmer degree of personal
+friendship than she had bestowed on any Minister since the death of
+Lord Melbourne; and her relations with his successor, Lord Salisbury,
+appear to have been perfectly harmonious. The decisive rejection by
+the country of the Home Rule policy removed a great incubus from her
+mind, and she was fully in harmony with the strong Imperialist
+sentiments which now began to prevail in English thought, and
+especially with the warmer feeling towards our distant colonies which
+was one of its chief characteristics. Her own popularity also rapidly
+grew. She had keenly felt and bitterly resented the reproaches which
+had at one period been frequently brought against her for her neglect
+of social and ceremonial duties during many years of her widowhood.
+Her censors, she maintained, made no allowance for her loneliness, her
+advancing years, her feeble health, the overwhelming and incessant
+pressure of her more serious political duties. But her two Jubilees,
+bringing her once more into close touch with her people, put an end to
+these reproaches. The Queen found with pleasure and perhaps with
+surprise how capable she still was of performing great public
+functions, and the vast outburst of spontaneous loyalty and affection
+of which she became the object gave her deep and unconcealed pleasure.
+To those, however, who were closely in connection with her it was
+touching to observe the gracious and unaffected modesty with which she
+received the homage of her subjects. Flattery was one of the things
+she disliked the most, and all who knew her best were struck with the
+singularly modest view she always took of herself. But blending with
+this modesty, and even with a shyness which she never wholly
+conquered, was the craving of a deeply affectionate and womanly nature
+for sympathy, and this craving was now abundantly gratified.
+
+Still, with all this there was much that was melancholy in her later
+days. She had survived nearly all the intimacies of her youth. Death
+had made--especially in very recent times--many gaps in the circle of
+those who were nearest to her, and several of her children and of her
+children's husbands had preceded her to the tomb. Her sight had
+greatly failed. She was bowed down by physical infirmity, and her last
+year was saddened by a long, sanguinary, and inglorious war. Yet
+almost to the very end she continued with unabated courage to fulfil
+her daily task, and there was no sign that she had lost anything of
+her quick sympathy and her admirable judgment and tact. Her life was a
+most harmonious whole in which mind and character were happily
+attuned,
+
+    Like perfect music set to noble words.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[51] _Queen Victoria_, by Sidney Lee, p. 349.
+
+[52] Ollivier, _L'Empire Libéral_, vii. p. 455.
+
+[53] Sir Theodore Martin was asked by the Queen to give her a _précis_
+of a very long and unintelligible letter of Mr. Gladstone purporting to
+explain the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill (_Queen Victoria as I
+knew Her_, by Sir Theodore Martin).--ED.
+
+
+
+
+OLD-AGE PENSIONS
+
+
+There are many signs that the question of old-age pensions is destined
+to assume a great prominence in England; although it is probable that
+the large increase of national expenditure which is certain to follow
+the unhappy war in South Africa may, for some time, postpone actual
+legislation on the subject. The generation has passed away which
+witnessed the enormous abuses of Poor Law relief that existed, under
+the old English Poor Law, before 1834, and the rapid diminution of
+pauperism that was effected by the sterner administration introduced
+in that year.
+
+The principles of poor-law relief which were then recognised by the
+best minds in England have been somewhat forgotten. These principles
+were that, while in England provision is made for the support of all
+who are absolutely destitute, it is of the utmost importance that on
+the whole the condition of the pauper should be a less eligible one
+than that of an independent labourer; that nothing should be done that
+could diminish habits of thrift, forethought, and steady industry
+among the poor; nothing that could weaken their sense of the necessity
+of providing for their latter days, or of their duty of supporting,
+when they have the means, their aged parents and relations. In
+accordance with these principles it was laid down that outdoor relief
+should be either absolutely refused to the able-bodied or only
+granted under most exceptional circumstances; that the workhouse test,
+with its stringent, deterrent discipline, should be steadily
+maintained; that relaxations and special favours granted out of public
+funds should be limited, as far as possible, to cases of special
+calamity which it was impossible for any prudence or foresight to have
+averted.
+
+It would certainly be a great exaggeration to say that these
+principles have disappeared. Indeed, the robust, independent,
+self-respecting character which it was the object of the Manchester
+School to encourage is abundantly displayed in the gigantic Friendly
+and other working-class Co-operative Societies which have so largely
+increased in England during the last half-century. Two of these
+Friendly Societies--the Manchester Unity and the Foresters--have each
+of them more than seven hundred thousand members on their roll. At the
+same time, it is equally certain that in many quarters a different,
+and, in my opinion, very dangerous, spirit prevails. In England as
+elsewhere there is an increased tendency to aggrandise the functions
+of the State and to look to State aid or State control rather than
+individual or co-operative effort as the remedy of every evil. Social
+questions have assumed a greater prominence in politics; and, with the
+lowering of the franchise, the vague State Socialism, which, in
+different degrees, pervades most working-class politics, has given a
+bias to both parties in the State. It has become prominent in every
+election and has produced many rash pledges.
+
+The close connection between taxation and representation, which was
+once considered the cardinal principle of English Liberalism, has, in
+a marked degree, diminished, both in Imperial and local taxation. It
+used to be contended that those who chiefly paid should chiefly
+regulate, and that taxation should be as much as possible the
+voluntary grant of the taxpayers, restricted to their common purposes.
+But in many quarters a different belief has grown up. It is held that
+in the hands of a democracy taxation should be made the means of
+redressing the inequalities of fortune, ability, or industry; the
+preponderant class voting and spending money which another class are
+obliged to pay. The income-tax is so arranged that a large majority of
+the voters are exempt from its burden; a highly graduated system of
+death duties is now nearly the most prominent of our Imperial taxes;
+and the Local Government Act of 1894 has placed local taxation on the
+most democratic basis. The latter has given the power of voting rates
+to many who do not pay them; and, by abolishing the nominated, or
+ex-officio, guardians, and the plural voting of the larger ratepayers,
+it has almost destroyed the influence of property on local taxation.
+
+At the same time the doctrine has arisen, and is now sedulously
+propagated in England, that the State ought to undertake to provide at
+the public expense for all old persons, or at least for all deserving
+old persons, who have not succeeded in obtaining a sufficient
+livelihood for themselves; that this provision should not be regarded
+as an eleemosynary grant, but as a positive right; and that, in order
+to free it from the taint of pauperism, and take away from the
+recipient all reluctance to receive it, a new fund should be created,
+entirely distinct from poor-law relief, and administered by some other
+tribunal than the poor-law guardians.
+
+The claim has been supported on another ground. The immense
+improvement of the material condition of the English working classes
+during the last half-century is beyond all question; but it is much
+more evident among the young and the strong than among the old. The
+intense competition of modern industry, stimulated to the highest
+point by free trade, by the factory system, and by the vast
+development of machinery, has expelled the old and feeble from some of
+its most important fields; and the influence of trade-unions in
+enforcing, in each trade which they can control, a uniform and minimum
+wage, has obliged the employer to employ only the most efficient
+labour.
+
+The old man who could once easily obtain a little work at low wages
+now finds it much more difficult; and the recent legislation
+compelling the employer to compensate his workmen for all accidents
+that take place in his employment, even when those accidents are in no
+degree due to any negligence on his own part or on that of his
+servants, has acted in the same direction. Such serious obligations
+have been thrown on the employer in the more dangerous trades, that he
+is obliged in self-defence to restrict himself to the workmen who are
+least liable to accidents; and they are naturally those whose
+strength, activity, and eyesight are at their best. Among the
+recipients of poor-law relief the proportion of men over sixty-five is
+enormously great; and some figures which, in 1893, were brought before
+the Commission on the Aged Poor, made a great impression on the
+country. It was stated that in a single year 29.3 of the whole
+population over sixty-five were in receipt of poor-law relief in
+England and Wales; and assuming that a third part of these old persons
+belonged to the well-to-do, it was calculated that not much less than
+three in seven must fall into the ranks of pauperism.
+
+There has been much controversy about the accuracy of this statement;
+and, even if it be admitted, a good deal has been said to attenuate
+its force. In the poor-law system as it was reformed in 1834, it was a
+first principle that the workhouse, with its painful and degrading
+associations, was to be the chief form of poor-law relief, and that
+outdoor relief should only be granted on exceptional occasions and on
+stringent conditions. This provision has been gradually relaxed.
+Outdoor relief, which, in the eyes of the poor, carries with it very
+little of the discredit and dislike that gathers round the workhouse,
+is now by far the larger part of poor-law relief; and in many
+districts it is administered with great laxity.
+
+It has been proved by the clearest evidence that the immense majority
+of the aged and deserving poor who are in receipt of poor-law relief
+only receive it in the form of outdoor relief, and very often only in
+the form of medical relief, and that if they go to the workhouse it is
+only when their peculiar circumstances make it desirable for them to
+do so. Wherever a more stringent system of relief is imposed,
+pauperism invariably and rapidly decreases; and Mr. Loch, the
+Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, has collected much
+evidence to show that, on the whole, old-age pauperism is diminishing,
+though it has not been diminishing at the same rate as pauperism under
+the age of sixty. The administration of the workhouses has also
+greatly improved; and the poor-law infirmaries are becoming hospitals
+which are largely resorted to in time of sickness by many who might
+easily avoid them. On the whole, old-age destitution is, and must be,
+a grave question for philanthropists; but there has been great
+exaggeration about its magnitude and its hardships.
+
+The expediency of devising a new and better method of providing for
+the destitute aged poor of deserving character has long been
+smouldering obscurely in English politics; but it obtained a real
+importance for the first time when a very strong Royal Commission,
+under the presidency of Lord Aberdare, was appointed, at the beginning
+of 1893, to inquire into the question. After long and careful inquiry,
+and after hearing a great multitude of witnesses, this Commission
+reported in the spring of 1895. The majority of the members, while
+recommending various reforms in the administration of the poor-law,
+reported decisively against any system of old-age pensions, either in
+the form of endowment or assisted assurance, as likely to do more harm
+than good; but a minority, which derived special importance from the
+presence of Mr. Chamberlain, refused to accept this decision as final,
+and urged that the question should be submitted to a smaller body of
+experts. In the election which took place in 1895 the question
+appeared frequently upon the platform, and many members on both sides
+of politics pledged themselves on the subject.
+
+The weight which is always attached to the speeches of Mr. Chamberlain
+gave a great impulse to the movement. He never countenanced the idea
+of universal old-age pensions, which was already advocated by many;
+but he strongly maintained that special provision, apart from the
+poor-law and in the shape of pensions, might, and ought to, be made
+for the old and deserving poor; he expressed his belief that such a
+measure 'would do more than anything else to secure the happiness of
+the working classes'; and he suggested as the most feasible scheme
+that 'whenever a man acquires for himself in a Friendly Society or
+any other society a pension of 2_s._ 6_d._ a week the State should
+come in and double that pension.' Mr. Chamberlain, however, did not
+insist on this precise proposal; but he gave the question a great
+prominence; and among politicians on both sides there was a manifest
+tendency to make party capital out of it.
+
+A purely non-party Committee, presided over by Lord Rothschild, and
+consisting mainly of distinguished financial authorities connected
+with the permanent Civil Service, and therefore removed from active
+politics, was appointed in 1896, in accordance with the recommendation
+of the Aberdare Commission, to inquire especially into the question of
+old-age pensions; and it reported in a document of conspicuous
+ability. It was unanimous in condemning as impracticable or dangerous
+all the schemes for such pensions that were brought before it; and it
+fully confirmed the views of the preceding Commission. The report, and
+the evidence on which it is based, clearly show the ways in which
+measures intended for the benefit of the working class may prove in
+the highest degree injurious to them.
+
+If the matter could have been decided by pure reasoning, this report
+might have been generally accepted as decisive. But many of the
+supporters of the Government had at the election made speeches in
+favour of old-age pensions. One of its most powerful members had
+thrown his weight into the scale. The idea had taken hold of great
+sections of the working classes. The trade-unions, that see in
+increasing old-age poverty the chief drawback to their policy of
+enforcing in each trade a uniform and minimum wage, were naturally
+delighted that the State should undertake, out of public funds, to
+remove their difficulty. A number of Bills dealing with the question
+had been introduced into the House of Commons by private members; and
+the reluctance of the Government to take it up had become a favourite
+form of party attack. The Government acted as perhaps most
+Governments, under the circumstances, would have done. While refusing
+to give any pledge, and repudiating any sympathy with the idea of
+universal pensions, and insisting that an encouragement of thrift
+should be an essential condition of any old-age pension scheme, they
+refused to admit that a false departure had been made; and they
+appointed a new Committee--of which the writer of these lines was a
+member--to report upon the best means of improving the condition of
+the aged deserving poor, and upon the feasibility of dealing with
+their case by old-age pensions.
+
+Mr. Chaplin, the President of the Local Government Board, an
+experienced and very popular member of the Cabinet, presided over the
+Committee; and the fact that he drew up the report of the majority
+gave that report its chief political importance. The Committee
+consisted largely of members who had already committed themselves
+deeply in favour of old-age pensions; and it will hardly be disputed
+in England that it carried with it much less financial and political
+weight than its predecessors; and that the majority report--which was
+carried by 9 to 4--is more remarkable for the boldness of its
+recommendations than for the cogency of its reasoning. It completely,
+and almost contemptuously, discarded the conclusions of the majority
+of the Aberdare Commission, and the unanimous opinion of the
+Rothschild Committee; and it recommended that old-age pensions,
+derived in part from Imperial and in part from local sources, and
+varying from 5_s._ to 7_s._ a week, should be granted to all the
+deserving poor who had attained the age of sixty-five and whose
+incomes did not exceed 10_s._ a week. It proposed that these pensions
+should be granted by committees established in every poor-law union
+and elected by the poor-law guardians; that they should be revised
+every three years; and that they should be distributed through the
+agency of the post-office.
+
+On the great difficulties that seemed so formidable to its
+predecessors it touched very lightly. How many of the poor were likely
+under the proposed system to become pensioners, and what burden of
+taxation was likely to be thrown on the State, were questions that
+were put aside as irrelevant to the inquiry. To meet the enormous
+difficulty of deciding upon the real merits, and of investigating the
+real circumstances, of the great masses of independent and industrious
+labourers who live in the manufacturing towns, or are constantly
+moving from one great centre of population to another, and circulating
+in quest of work through the whole extent of the Empire, it was
+suggested that the relief be confined to those who were resident in a
+single locality; and it was pointed out that a number of charities,
+endowed out of old legacies or donations, and applying to particular
+classes or districts, had come to be administered by the Charity
+Commissioners, and that in this restricted field they had been able to
+convert a large part of the income at their disposal from doles into
+permanent pensions.
+
+The thrift test and the character test, which previous inquirers had
+found it almost impossible to establish on a satisfactory basis, were
+defined on the loosest lines. The pensioner must not, during the
+preceding twenty years, have been sentenced to penal servitude or
+imprisonment without the option of a fine; he must not, during the
+same period of time, have been in receipt of poor-law relief 'other
+than medical relief or unless under circumstances of a wholly
+exceptional character'; and he must have 'endeavoured to the best of
+his ability, by his industry and by the exercise of reasonable
+providence, to make provision for himself and those immediately
+dependent on him.'
+
+The extreme vagueness and the extreme elasticity of such provisions
+are sufficiently manifest; and it is difficult to see how they can
+give any real assistance in practical legislation; while they leave
+the door open to the largest and most lavish expenditure. I have
+endeavoured in a minority report to deal with these questions at
+somewhat greater length than my present space will admit; but a few
+pages may suffice to give an outline of the case of those who believe
+the new policy to be both mistaken and dangerous.
+
+Nothing is more certain or more cheering in the condition of modern
+England than the extraordinary diminution that has taken place, during
+the present generation, in pauperism. It began with the reform of the
+poor law in 1834; and although it has been found possible to relax
+greatly the stringency of the poor-law regulations that were then
+made, it has steadily continued. Much of this is due to the increase
+in the rate of wages which has taken place in most departments of
+English industry, and which has been accompanied by a great decrease
+in the cost of most of the chief necessaries of life, as well as by a
+considerable reduction in the hours of work. Sir Robert Giffen, in the
+very remarkable paper which he published, in 1883, on the condition of
+the working classes in England during the preceding fifty years, has
+shown that in every class of work in which it is possible to make a
+comparison the wages of the labourer have in these fifty years risen
+at least 20 per cent., and in most cases between 50 and 100 per cent.;
+and he has clearly demonstrated that no other section of the community
+has obtained so large a proportion of the increase of the national
+wealth, and improved in so great a degree in material prosperity.
+
+But the mere increase of wages is but one element of this improvement.
+The very mainspring of the prosperity of the great masses of the
+British working classes is to be found in their increased sobriety,
+and in the habits of thrift and providence that have followed the
+spread of education. The statistics of the Friendly Societies, the
+Industrial and Provident Societies, the Building Societies, the
+savings-banks, and of countless other institutions, created by
+voluntary working-class effort for the purpose of insuring against
+sickness or death, and providing working-class investments, attest in
+the clearest manner the rapid growth of provident and thrifty habits
+among the wage-earning classes. In no other respect is the improvement
+of the nation so marked and so indisputable and no element in the
+national character is more important to its prosperity and to its
+enduring greatness. In the evidence that was brought before our
+Committee, it was shown that since 1849 the pauperism of Great Britain
+had been reduced from 62.7 per 1,000 to 26.2 per 1,000, if lunatics
+and vagrants are included, to 22.8 per 1,000, if lunatics and vagrants
+are excluded.
+
+The first, and most vital, condition of any sound legislation for the
+relief of poverty is that it should not impair these industrial
+qualities, or weaken these vast voluntary organisations of self-help
+which are their result. Can it be said that the old-age pension policy
+is compatible with this condition?
+
+It proposes to open, in addition to the existing system of poor
+relief, a new fund, amounting to many millions of pounds a year, and
+drawn from compulsory taxation for the purpose of subsidising simple
+poverty; a fund to which it is to be rather creditable than otherwise
+to resort; a fund which is intended to deal, not with exceptional
+calamity, but with that which springs from the mere efflux of time,
+and which is, beyond all others, the most normal and most easily
+foreseen. It proposes to teach the whole working population to look to
+the State, and not to themselves, for the provision for their old age,
+and for the old age of those who might be dependent on them, and thus
+to destroy the most powerful of all motives to thrift--the very
+mainspring of productive and self-sacrificing industry. And it
+proposes to do this at a time when wages are higher than they have
+ever been before; when voluntary societies for securing the poor from
+want are flourishing and increasing as they have never done before;
+when the rapid decline of pauperism is one of the most marked and most
+universally recognised signs of national improvement. Can it be
+seriously believed that the addition of many millions a year to the
+State funds directly employed in the relief of poverty will, in the
+long run, tend to diminish pauperism or to encourage self-reliance and
+thrift?
+
+Mr. Chamberlain and the other more considerable advocates of old-age
+pensions clearly see that if such pensions are to be of real value
+they must discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving; and
+they believe that they may have the effect of stimulating, instead of
+weakening, thrift. For this purpose several schemes have been devised.
+
+The most popular Continental method of achieving this end is by a law
+obliging the working man in early life to insure against old age, and
+by supplementing the income derived from this insurance by a State
+subsidy. In Germany, where this system is actually carried out, the
+old-age pension is derived from three sources--viz. compulsory
+insurance by the workers, compulsory contribution by the employer, and
+a State subsidy. Compulsory insurance found for many years a powerful
+English advocate in Canon Blackley; and it has been recommended by a
+recent inquiry in Holland, which, however, refused to propose any
+system of old-age pensions. According to the best accounts, the German
+system has been far from successful either economically or
+politically; and it has certainly not prevented Socialism from
+becoming one of the great dangers of the State. Into this question,
+however, it is needless to enter, as it is now universally admitted in
+England that compulsory insurance for old age is an impossibility; for
+it would certainly be repudiated by the working classes.
+
+A large group of proposals are to the effect that old-age pensions
+should be granted to all poor persons over the age of sixty-five whose
+total income is less than 10_s._ a week, provided that a certain
+portion of that income consists of a fixed annuity acquired by their
+own industry and thrift. It is urged that in most of the great
+branches of industry a deserving man in his earlier and stronger years
+could easily earn such an annuity; and it is suggested that the State
+should double it, or add to it sufficient to make it up to 10_s._ a
+week, or supplement it by a fixed grant of 2_s._ 6_d._, or 5_s._, or
+even 7_s._ a week.
+
+The objections to such schemes are very serious. It is obvious that if
+they encourage a workman to save up to the amount required to secure a
+pension, they would have a directly opposite effect as soon as that
+amount had been attained. The first result of any addition to his
+income would then be to disqualify him for a pension. It is also
+obvious that the pensioner of sixty-five would have a strong
+inducement to abstain from the work he could easily do, and that if he
+continued to do it he would compete on exceptionally favourable terms
+with the workman who, though he had passed the prime of life, was not
+yet entitled to a pension, restricting his means of employment and
+beating down his wages. Many of the most necessitous and deserving
+poor would also be left unrelieved.
+
+Although it is true that in the more flourishing trades men could
+easily in early life save out of their wages a sufficient sum to
+acquire this annuity, there are large fields of industry in which such
+a saving would be almost or absolutely impossible. We have had
+melancholy evidence of how utterly insufficient most forms of women's
+wages are to provide the needed margin. The same thing is true of the
+agricultural labourer in the more depressed districts in England and
+in large tracts of Ireland and Scotland. Even in the more remunerative
+employments innumerable special circumstances would prevent a thrifty
+and deserving man from obtaining this annuity. Certainly no one is
+more deserving of compassion and State aid than the widow and young
+orphans of a working man; but the scheme we are considering would not
+only not help them, but would most seriously injure them. It is a
+direct incentive to the workman to sink his savings in an annuity
+which would terminate with his own life.
+
+The whole policy, indeed, of attempting to turn all working-class
+savings into this one channel is a false one; and it has been shown
+that no kind of saving is in fact less popular among working men than
+the purchase of a deferred annuity. I may here be allowed to quote a
+few lines from my own report:
+
+'In the infinitely various conditions of a working-man's life thrift
+will take many forms, and an attempt to prescribe a single form is
+eminently injudicious. The whole life-plan of a farmer whose farm will
+remain with him to the end will be different from that of an artisan
+or a domestic servant whose power of earning a livelihood depends
+entirely upon his physical strength. The former will probably find it
+most profitable to expend his savings on the improvement of his farm.
+Where the system of peasant proprietorship prevails most agricultural
+thrift is directed to the purchase and enlargement of farms. In
+Ireland it is largely directed to the purchase of tenant right, or to
+enabling the younger members of the family to emigrate.
+
+'Nor is it true that even the artisan will find the purchase of an
+annuity the best thing to be aimed at. To buy a house or some
+furniture; to start a small business; to expend his savings in tiding
+over periods of slack or failing work; to avail himself of the
+advantage which some fluctuation in the market gives to the man who
+can transport himself promptly to a new locality or a new business is
+often far more to his advantage. Above all, money expended in settling
+his family is often his best policy as well as the course which is
+most beneficial to the community. At present a large proportion of
+working men look forward to their children to help them in their old
+age, and make it a main object of their lives to place them in a
+position to do so. It does not seem to me a wise thing for the State
+either to emancipate children from this duty or to induce every
+married working man to sink his savings in an annuity which will end
+with his life and from which his widow and children can derive no
+benefit. It is certainly not for the advantage of the country that in
+selecting between alternative ways of providing for old age he should
+be induced to choose that which throws the greatest burden on the
+State. With the vast increase of population, with the great
+fluctuations of modern industry, and with the rapid development of the
+colonies, it is extremely desirable both in the interest of the
+working men and of the State that they should be induced to transfer
+themselves from congested towns and from exhausted industries to new
+fields. A general pension system would certainly contribute most
+powerfully to prevent them from doing so.'
+
+It has been proposed by others that the pension fund should be placed
+in the hands of Friendly or Benefit Societies, and that they should be
+intrusted with its administration, or that subscription to such
+societies for a certain number of years should be taken by the State
+as the thrift test. On the first proposal it is sufficient to say,
+that these great voluntary societies are themselves opposed to it; for
+if they were directly subsidised by the State, they would be obliged
+to submit to a State control of their management and their finances
+which they do not desire. It is observed that only a very small
+proportion of the subscribers to these societies ever find it
+necessary to come upon the poor rates; and if a system of old-age
+pensions were confined to these limits, it would act in the most
+unequal manner. Their members are drawn in a far larger proportion
+from the lucrative and flourishing trades than from those which are
+struggling and underpaid. Few women belong to them. In Ireland, which
+is the poorest part of the Empire, Friendly Societies scarcely exist;
+and the same thing is true of large districts in Wales and Scotland.
+The main result of such proposals would be to concentrate the new
+State fund for the relief of poverty on the richest parts of the
+Empire, and on the trades that need it the least.
+
+The extreme difficulty of finding any efficient test of thrift is very
+evident; and those proposed by a large number of the advocates of
+old-age pensions are so easy as to be almost worthless. Some consider
+it sufficient that a man has for a certain number of years not been in
+receipt of poor-law relief, except medical relief or relief granted
+under 'exceptional circumstances.' Others would accept the mere fact
+that a man has lived to be sixty-five, as the drunken and disreputable
+workman seldom lives so long. A large number of resolutions have
+condemned Mr. Chaplin's report on the grounds that old-age pensions
+ought not to be confined to the 'deserving' poor; that they ought to
+begin at an earlier age than sixty-five; that they ought to be
+administered by a body totally unconnected with the poor law, so as to
+carry with them no taint of pauperism or eleemosynary relief. They
+ought, it is said, to be universal; to be looked on as a matter of
+strict right; to be considered as of the same nature as the pension
+given to the soldier or the Civil Servant.
+
+It is obvious that all this may carry us very far. It is estimated
+that some of the most popular proposals would involve an annual
+expenditure of considerably more than twenty millions of
+pounds--making allowance for the saving that might be effected in the
+ordinary poor-law relief, but not counting the cost of administration.
+And this expenditure would be a growing one; and once accepted it
+could hardly be withdrawn. The vast addition to the national debt that
+might follow a great European war or the great shrinkage of the
+national income that might easily follow some revolution in trade or
+manufacture, might render the burden of taxation incomparably more
+serious than at present; but once the great mass of the population had
+learned to regard State support in old age as their normal prospect
+and their inalienable right, it would be impossible, without producing
+a social revolution, to recede. All the advantages gained by
+generations of economical administration of the national finance would
+be nullified; while the certain result of this crushing addition to
+taxation would be to weaken incalculably the spirit of thrift,
+providence, and self-reliance, and at the same time to lower wages, by
+removing one of the great considerations by which they are regulated.
+And this reduction of wages would fall not only on the recipient of
+the pension, but also on multitudes who would never live to attain it.
+Nothing can be more certain than that a general system of pensions
+attached to the labour of the wage-earner must lower wages, at least
+among all those who are approaching the pension age; while it would
+prevent or retard their natural increase over a far wider area.
+
+It would also most certainly bring with it the gravest danger of
+corruption. It would not be easy to secure the pure and the impartial
+administration of these vast funds; but the political dangers would be
+much more serious. It is proposed that the pension system should be
+first introduced on a small scale, but gradually extended till it
+included all the aged poor, or at least all who were deserving. Such a
+question would infallibly pass into the competitions of party warfare.
+It would become in most constituencies one of the most prominent of
+electioneering tests. Rival candidates would be competing for the
+votes of a wage-earning electorate who had a direct pecuniary interest
+in increasing or extending pensions and in relaxing the conditions on
+which they are given. Can it be doubted that in many cases their first
+object would be to outbid one another, and that national and party
+politics would soon be forced into a demoralising race of
+extravagance?
+
+I cannot conclude without protesting against the supposition that
+those who think with me are indifferent to the great evil of old-age
+destitution and propose nothing for its relief. The committees which
+have most clearly pointed out the dangers of old-age pensions have
+also urged, that within the lines of our present poor-law system it is
+quite possible to do much, by an improved classification, to
+distinguish among the recipients of poor-law relief between the
+respectable and the worthless. Much has already been done, and in the
+most important unions the guardians have introduced a large amount of
+classification by merit. As I have already said, the immense majority
+of the respectable aged poor are now relieved only in their own homes
+or in comfortable infirmaries. The severe test of absolute destitution
+has in practice been greatly relaxed; there is a legal provision
+preventing those who are receiving help from Friendly Societies from
+being disqualified for relief; husbands and wives are no longer
+separated in the workhouse; and in some unions of which we had
+evidence much more has been done. This, however, depends too much on
+the will of particular Boards of Guardians, and there are in
+consequence great inequalities of treatment. The condition of the
+deserving poor may be greatly improved by relaxation in points of
+hours, discipline, and visitors, and by workhouse arrangements
+securing more universally that paupers who have lived respectable
+lives should not be obliged to mix with the drunken, the disreputable,
+and the hopelessly idle. And, though extensions of outdoor relief
+should be carefully watched, and entail great dangers, yet under wise
+and strict administration something more may be done in this
+direction.
+
+But all this should be regarded as essentially poor-law relief, and
+not as the recognition of a claim of right for services supposed to
+have been rendered to the community. No form of State Socialism is
+more dangerous than the doctrine which has been countenanced by Prince
+Bismarck, and which is making many disciples in England--namely, that
+an industrious man, who has pursued his course in life with perfect
+independence, made his own contracts, chosen his own work, and been
+paid for it by stipulated wages, is entitled, if he fails in obtaining
+a sufficiency for his old age, to be placed as a 'soldier of industry'
+in the same category as State servants, and to receive like them, not
+on the ground of compassion, but of right, a State pension drawn from
+the taxation of the community. There is no real analogy between the
+relief that is very properly granted to such workmen in their
+destitution, and the pensions--largely of the nature of deferred
+pay--that are given by the State or by private employers, under the
+terms of distinct contracts, and for specific services duly rendered,
+to those who have entered into their employment and placed themselves
+under their control.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Aberdare Commission, 303
+
+Addington, 273
+
+American Revolution, 34-37, 55-57, 77, 78
+
+Anne, Queen, 295
+
+Anti-Semite movement, 116-121, 123-125, 128
+
+Arnold, Dr., 251
+
+Australia, 58
+
+Austria, 116, 145
+
+
+Bacon, 28, 94, 101
+
+Bayard, Mr., 48
+
+Bayle, 97
+
+Beaconsfield, Earl of (B. Disraeli), 126, 151, 153, 207, 211, 214,
+    215, 217, 283;
+  imperialism, 46;
+  policy regarding Eastern Crisis, 222;
+  relations with Lord Derby, 223;
+  Queen Victoria's regard for, 296
+
+Beer, George, 56
+
+Bentham, J., 43, 101
+
+Bernard, Claude, 121
+
+Bismarck, Prince, 288, 289, 317
+
+Blackley, Canon, 310
+
+Blennerhassett, Lady, 131-133, 145, 148, 149
+
+Blomfield, Bishop, 263
+
+Bossuet, 96-98
+
+Boulanger, General, 116
+
+Bright, 207, 208
+
+British Empire, growth, 51, 53, 64;
+  defence, 61, 65;
+  unity, 45, 48, 51, 62, 67
+
+Browning, Robert, 105, 251
+
+Buckle, H.T., 29, 100-102, 251, 269
+
+Burke, Edmund, 28, 54, 55, 151, 295
+
+Butler's 'Analogy,' 91, 92
+
+
+Caird, Principal, 294
+
+Canada, 59, 60
+
+Canning, 151, 174, 188, 189, 198, 199;
+  attitude towards Catholic Question, 156, 160, 161, 166-170, 172, 188;
+  quoted, 213
+
+Cardan, quoted, 10
+
+Carlyle, Thomas, 47, 91, 216, 247, 251;
+  school of, 29;
+  style, 105;
+  characteristics, 106-113;
+  teaching, 107, 108, 110-115
+
+Caroline, Queen, 295
+
+Castlereagh, Viscount, 156, 157, 160, 161, 167, 169, 170, 188
+
+Catherine, of Russia, Empress, 291, 295
+
+Catholic Emancipation, 78-86, 152, 153, 157-174, 187-190, 193, 194, 197;
+  _see also under_ Ireland
+
+Cato, 15
+
+Chamberlain, Joseph, 303-304, 309
+
+Charlemagne, 17-19, 266
+
+Charlemont, 73, 81
+
+Chartism, 108, 115
+
+Chatham, Lord, 85, 86, 138, 151, 157-160, 165, 186, 273
+
+Chaucer, 18, 117
+
+Chivalry, 17, 19, 295
+
+Chrysostom, Dio, 16
+
+Church, Dean, 250, 265
+
+Clarendon, Lord, 244, 246, 280
+
+Cobden, Richard, 44, 46, 62
+
+Colenso, Bishop, 272
+
+Coleridge, 22, 96, 112, 147
+
+Colonial policy of Great Britain, 43-46, 52, 53, 55-61
+
+Colonies, British:
+  defence, 49, 56, 65;
+  federation, 63, 64;
+  governors, 52, 54, 60;
+  representation, 51, 65, 66;
+  trade, 47, 56, 63-65, 225;
+  value of, 47-50;
+  attachment to the Crown, 277
+
+Comte, 100
+
+Constant, Benjamin, 142, 144, 148
+
+Constitutional sovereignty, 277
+
+Co-operation, 108, 217, 299
+
+Croker, 177, 178
+
+Crusades, 18, 19, 266
+
+Curchod, Mlle., _see_ Necker, Mme.
+
+Curwen's Act, 177
+
+
+Dalling, Lord, 151
+
+Darwin and his teaching, 90, 101, 114, 247, 251
+
+Davies, Sir John, quoted, 70
+
+Delane, J.T., 243
+
+De Quincey, 107
+
+Derby, 14th Earl of, 201, 202, 204-206, 208-210, 212, 214, 215
+
+Derby, 15th Earl of:
+  career, 200, 205-213, 215, 217, 218, 222-224, 234, 235;
+  views on Church questions, 205, 210, 214, 232, 233;
+  on Reform Bill, 210;
+  Indian policy, 205, 209, 210;
+  foreign policy, 212, 213, 217-224;
+  colonial policy, 208, 224, 225, 228-230;
+  attitude towards Home Rule, 234;
+  contemporary opinion of him, 206-209, 211-213, 219, 220;
+  marriage 215;
+  interest in social questions, 205, 206, 212, 216, 217, 224, 235;
+  in working men, 205, 206, 210, 216, 217, 237;
+  tastes, 239, 240;
+  conversation, 240, 241;
+  estimate of his talents and character, 202-204, 207, 209, 212, 217,
+    219-224;
+  speeches, 202, 205, 211, 212, 214, 215, 217, 222-224, 229, 234-236
+
+Dicey, Professor 89
+
+Disraeli, B., _see_ Beaconsfield
+
+Duigenan, 169, 174
+
+
+Eastern Question, Lord Derby's views on, 218-223
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, 242, 243, 246, 247
+
+Education, popular, 108, 185
+
+Eldon, Lord, 160, 174, 189, 190, 192, 253
+
+Elizabeth, Queen, 291, 295;
+  inscription on tomb of, 187
+
+Ellenborough, Lord, 208, 209
+
+Emerson, R.W., 96, 104
+
+Emigration, 49, 50, 53, 108
+
+Erasmus, 257
+
+'Essays and Reviews,' 90
+
+
+Faber, 250
+
+Factory legislation, 108
+
+Federation, 63, 64, 225
+
+Feudalism, 17, 69, 110
+
+Fitzwilliam, Lord, 85
+
+Flood, 73, 81
+
+Foster, Leslie, 195
+
+Fox, 158, 162, 174
+
+France, 73, 97, 98, 116
+
+Franklin, Benjamin, 94
+
+_Fraser's Magazine_, 104
+
+Free Trade, 44, 45, 47, 63, 64, 78, 225
+
+French Revolution, 28, 37, 38, 82, 139, 141, 142
+
+Froude, J.A., 251, 269
+
+
+Galdos' 'Gloria,' 117
+
+George II., 295
+
+George III. and Catholic Emancipation, 85, 86, 157-162, 194
+
+George IV., as Prince Regent, 162, 163, 165, 166;
+  as King, 188-191, 194
+
+German literature, 146, 147
+
+Germany, 106, 107, 116, 118, 145, 260, 262, 310, 317
+
+Gibbon, 3, 134, 263, 264
+
+Giffen, Sir Robert, 307, 308
+
+Gladstone, W.E., 214, 246, 249, 250, 283, 286-288
+
+Goethe, 107, 147
+
+Gordon, General, 286
+
+Goulburn, 196, 197
+
+Grattan, 78, 81, 82, 84, 161, 163, 164, 166, 168-171, 174, 186, 187,
+    195, 197
+
+Grenville, George, 36, 56, 57
+
+Grenville, Lord, 158, 161, 162, 166
+
+Greville, Charles, 206, 207, 209, 243
+
+Grey, Lord, 166, 280
+
+Grote, 251, 269
+
+Guizot, 151, 244
+
+Gustavus III., King of Sweden, 138
+
+
+Hallam, A., 96, 251, 269
+
+Harcourt, Sir William, quoted, 290
+
+Hastings, Warren, 54, 55
+
+Haussonville, M. d', 134, 138
+
+Hawkesbury, Lord, 161
+
+Hawtrey, Provost, 265
+
+Heber, Bishop, 255
+
+High Church movement, 90, 92, 249-251, 270
+
+Hippisley, Sir John, 163, 169
+
+Historians, qualities requisite, 2, 4-6, 10-12;
+  motto for, 10;
+  scientific school, 2-4;
+  literary, 3;
+  methods, 7, 8, 22, 23;
+  applied to religion, 97-99;
+  eighteenth century, 22, 23;
+  fatalist school, 29, 30;
+  individualist school, 29, 31
+
+History:
+  biographical element, 7, 9;
+  individual influences, 12, 13;
+  fiction and, 20;
+  accident as affecting, 31, 100;
+  of institutions, 27, 28;
+  of revolutions, 29, 30, 34-38;
+  speculations, 32, 33;
+  advantages of studying, 38-40;
+  moral lessons, 40, 42
+
+Hobbes, 94, 98, 99
+
+Home Rule, _see under_ Ireland
+
+Homer, 16, 22
+
+
+Ideals, varying popular, 14-19
+
+Imperial Institute, 43
+
+Imperialism, 46-51, 63, 64, 296
+
+India, 44, 46-48, 54, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 277
+
+Ireland (_see also_ Ulster):
+  invasions, 69;
+  rebellions, 71, 82, 83, 85, 157;
+  influence of the Reformation, 70;
+  under the Stuarts, 71;
+  trade, 71, 72, 75, 78;
+  effects of English Revolution, 71, 72;
+  of American Revolution, 77, 78;
+  of French Revolution, 82;
+  Young's views on, 76, 77;
+  Catholics and Protestants, 70-79, 81-87;
+  Volunteer movement, 78, 87;
+  political agitation, 77, 78, 82, 87, 88;
+  union with Great Britain, 74, 75, 81, 83-85, 157;
+  Catholic Emancipation, 81-86, 157-174, 189, 194-198;
+  corruption, 175-179, 181, 183;
+  discontent, 165, 183, 184, 189, 194;
+  tithe commutation, 185-187;
+  Church disestablishment, 214, 215, 250, 283;
+  land tenure, 70, 75-77, 86, 87;
+  landlords, 75-77, 79, 86, 87;
+  Home Rule, 25, 87-89, 234, 246, 286, 296;
+  Queen Victoria's visit, 290, 291;
+  present condition, 86, 87;
+  representation in Parliament, 86
+
+Irish Acts of Parliament,
+  of settlement, 71;
+  octennial, 77;
+  of 1793, 85, 158, 159;
+  of union, 74, 75, 81, 83-85
+
+Irish Parliament, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77-83, 85
+
+Irishmen, United, 81, 84, 85
+
+Isabella of Spain, Queen, 295
+
+Italian art, 103
+
+Italy, 97, 98, 145, 146
+
+
+Jefferson, quoted, 37, 38
+
+Jeffrey, 107
+
+Jewish type,
+  stability of, 120, 121;
+  trade, 118, 119, 121;
+  writings, modern investigation of, 8, 9, 257-259, 261, 262, 271, 272
+
+Jews,
+  calumnies against, 117, 118;
+  characteristics, 118-130;
+  code, 121;
+  compared with other tribes, 119;
+  continuity of race, 119, 120;
+  distinguished, 126-129;
+  persecution of, 116-121, 123-126;
+  return of, to Palestine, 129, 130;
+  Milman's 'History of the', 257, 258, 262, 272
+
+
+Kant, Immanuel, 92, 147, 247
+
+Keats, John, 256
+
+Keble, John, 250, 270
+
+Kruger, President, 226-228
+
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, quoted, 22
+
+Leroy, Beaulieu, M. Anatole, 116-128
+
+Lewis, Sir G. Cornewall, 45, 153, 246, 273
+
+Liverpool, Lord, 156, 166, 168, 182, 188, 192-194, 197-199
+
+Lloyd, Dr., 192
+
+Locke, 96, 101
+
+Lockhart, 255
+
+Loughborough, Lord, 186
+
+Louis Napoleon, _see_ Napoleon III.
+
+Lyall, Sir Alfred, 240
+
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 3, 6, 8, 55, 204, 246, 251, 268, 269, 272, 273
+
+Macleod, Norman, 294
+
+Malmesbury, Lord, 206, 210
+
+Manchester School, 44, 45, 47, 50, 299
+
+Marie Antoinette, Queen, 140, 141
+
+Martin, Sir Theodore, 287
+
+Masson's 'Life of Milton,' 132
+
+Melbourne, Lord, 282, 296
+
+Mill, James, 43, 55
+
+Mill, John Stuart, 90, 96, 206, 210, 251
+
+Milman, Dean,
+  career, 253, 256, 262, 263, 271-274;
+  dramatist, 253;
+  poet, 254, 255;
+  translator, 256;
+  hymns, 255;
+  historian, 257-270;
+  critic, 252, 256-261, 263-267, 269;
+  learning, 269;
+  style, 268, 269;
+  views on miracles, 258-260;
+  on German criticism, 260-262;
+  on Christianity, 268;
+  on Tractarian movement, 270;
+  on clerical subscription, 271;
+  Mr. Reeve and, 246;
+  Dean Stanley and, 271;
+  friendships, 252, 273;
+  private correspondence, 253;
+  social gifts, 272, 273;
+  characteristics, 252, 253, 257, 265, 266, 268, 269, 271, 272-274;
+  works, 252-270, 272, 273;
+  portrait, 274
+
+Milman, Arthur, 252
+
+Milner, Bishop, 163, 164
+
+Milton, 132
+
+Mohammedanism, rise of, 32, 101
+
+Molyneux, 74
+
+Monasticism, 24
+
+Montesquieu, 132, 136
+
+Montmorin, Mme, de, 139
+
+Moral standard, changes in, 14-19, 266
+
+Murray, 254
+
+
+Napoleon I., 142-146, 149
+
+Napoleon III., 280, 288
+
+Narbonne, Louis de, 138-141
+
+Necker, Mme., 134, 135, 142
+
+Necker, Monsieur, 133, 138, 140, 144, 146, 149
+
+Necker, Germaine, _see_ Staël, Mme. de
+
+Newcastle, Duke of, 45, 189
+
+Newman, Cardinal, 90, 96, 249-251, 269, 270
+
+
+O'Connell, 164, 165, 171, 174, 189, 192, 193, 286
+
+Old-age pensions, 307, 309, 311-316;
+  proposals for, 300, 309, 310, 313;
+  Royal Commission, 303;
+  Rothschild Committee, 304, 305;
+  Chaplin Committee, 305, 307
+
+Orangemen, 84, 173, 189, 190
+
+
+Palestine, return of Jews to, 129, 130
+
+Paley, 95, 260
+
+Palmerston, Lord, 46, 178, 206-209, 211, 246, 279-282
+
+Parker, editor of Peel Correspondence, 153, 156, 192
+
+Parnell, C.S., 186
+
+Parnell Commission, 88, 89
+
+Parsons, 73, 84
+
+Pasteur, 121
+
+Pauperism, diminution of, 298-309
+
+Peel, Sir Lawrence, 156
+
+Peel, Sir Robert,
+  education, 154, 155;
+  career, 151, 153-156, 168, 172, 177, 187, 188, 194;
+  abolition of Corn Laws, 152, 153;
+  Irish Secretary, 156, 157, 167, 174-187;
+  relations with O'Connell, 174;
+  correspondence, 153, 173, 175-185, 189, 190, 191, 197-199;
+  Croker and, 177, 178;
+  advocates unsectarian education for Ireland, 185, 190;
+  Catholic Emancipation, 152, 153, 168-174, 187, 189-191, 193-195, 197-199;
+  financial measures, 187, 194, 195;
+  patronage, 178-183, 191, 192;
+  police force organised, 184, 185;
+  Home Secretary, 188-198;
+  parliamentary skill, 152, 153, 157, 181, 191;
+  debating powers, 172, 173;
+  Queen Victoria and, 282, 286;
+  recantations, 152, 153, 187, 193, 194;
+  estimate of his character and abilities, 151-154, 156, 157, 172, 181, 191
+
+Perceval, 155, 156, 159-161, 165, 166
+
+Pitt, William, _see_ Chatham
+
+Pliny, quoted, 102
+
+Plunket, 84, 168, 174, 188
+
+Pobedonosteff, 117
+
+Pole, Wellesley, 168
+
+Poor-law relief,
+  improvement in, 316, 317;
+  principles of, 298, 299
+
+Portland, Duke of, 159-161
+
+Portugal, Jews in, 120, 121
+
+Prince Consort, 278-280, 282, 284
+
+Prince Regent, _see_ George IV
+
+Prison reform, Carlyle's views on, 114
+
+Pusey, 250
+
+
+'Quarterly Review,' 256, 257
+
+
+Rationalism in Europe, author's History of, 103
+
+Redesdale, Lord, 175, 181, 182, 186
+
+Reeve, Henry:
+  education, 243;
+  career, 243, 245, 246;
+  editor of _Edinburgh Review_, 242, 246, 247;
+  historical knowledge, 246;
+  views on Home Rule, 246;
+  linguistic talent, 243;
+  literary judgment, 246, 247;
+  religious and philosophical views, 247;
+  political and social influence, 242, 244-246;
+  friendships, 243, 244, 247, 248;
+  writings of, 242-244, 247;
+  closing days, 248
+
+Reform Bills, 210, 211, 213
+
+Reformation,
+  causes of the, 29, 30;
+  effect in Ireland, 70
+
+Revolution,
+  American, 34-37;
+  effects of, in Ireland, 77, 78
+
+Revolution,
+  English, effect of, in Ireland, 71, 72;
+  on trade, 72, 74
+
+Revolutions, history of, 29, 30, 34-38
+
+Richmond, Duke of, 165, 167, 187
+
+Ristori, Mme., 245
+
+Rocca, 148, 149
+
+Rogers, Sir Frederick, 45, 46
+
+Roumania, anti-Semite movement in, 116, 118
+
+Rousseau, 96, 132, 136
+
+Ruskin, 251
+
+Russell, Lord John, 46, 47, 211-213, 241, 246, 263, 280, 281, 285
+
+Russia, anti-Semite movement in, 116-118, 124
+
+
+Salisbury, Lord, 276, 296
+
+Saurin, 165, 168, 169, 174, 183, 188
+
+Schiller, 147
+
+Schleswig-Holstein question, 281, 284, 285
+
+Scotland, Act of Union with, 74
+
+Shaftesbury, Lord, 206, 217
+
+Shelley, P.B., 256, 257
+
+Sidmouth, Lord, 158, 188
+
+Smith, Goldwin, 44, 151
+
+Socialism, 299, 310
+
+Spain, 73, 97, 98, 117, 120, 121, 124, 125
+
+Spencer, Herbert, 90, 109, 247
+
+Staël, Baron de, 138, 140, 142
+
+Staël, Mme. de., parentage, 133, 134;
+  personal appearance, 135;
+  career, 134-138, 142, 145, 148-150;
+  devotion to her father, 138;
+  friendships, 138, 139, 142, 145;
+  literary works, 136, 141, 142, 145-150;
+  Napoleon I., views on, 143, 144;
+  political influence, 139, 140, 142, 144;
+  religious views, 136, 149;
+  travels, 145, 146;
+  characteristics, 136, 137, 141, 145, 148, 149
+
+Stanley, Dean, 251, 260, 271, 294
+
+Stanley, Lord, _see_ Derby, 15th Earl of
+
+Stockmar, Baron, 278
+
+Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 254
+
+
+Tait, Archbishop, 283
+
+Talleyrand, 134, 139, 142, 144
+
+Taxation of American Colonies, 34-36, 56, 57;
+  democratic principles of, 300
+
+Taylor, Sir Henry, 45, 46
+
+Tennyson, Lord, 90, 251
+
+Tocqueville, 242-244
+
+Trade,
+  Colonial, 47, 56, 63-65;
+  Indian, 47;
+  Irish, 71, 72, 75, 78;
+  Jewish, 118, 119, 121;
+  affected by English Revolution, 72
+
+Transportation to Australia, 58
+
+Transvaal affairs, 225-232, 286
+
+Trinity College, Dublin, 90-92, 96-100, 103
+
+
+Ulster, 70, 77, 78, 83, 84
+
+United Irishmen, 81, 84, 85
+
+
+Voltaire, 7, 96, 121, 135
+
+Volunteer movement in Ireland, 78, 87
+
+Victoria, Queen:
+  relations with her Ministers, 279-283, 286-288, 296;
+  memorandum on foreign affairs, 279, 280;
+  political influence, 277, 278, 280, 282-286, 288;
+  patronage, 278;
+  views on foreign policy, 279-281, 283-286;
+  on Irish Church disestablishment, 283;
+  on women's suffrage, 294;
+  on Home Rule, 296;
+  wide experience, 276, 279, 287;
+  letters, 288, 289;
+  journals, 292, 293;
+  widowhood, 275, 292, 296;
+  moral influence, 291, 292;
+  rule of, 275, 277-279, 281-284, 293-295;
+  popularity, 289-291, 293, 296, 297;
+  characteristics, 274-276, 279, 281-283, 287-294, 296, 297;
+  jubilees, 290, 296, 297;
+  visit to Ireland, 290, 291;
+  closing days, 296, 297
+
+
+Walpole, Spencer, 151
+
+Ward, 250
+
+Watts, 274
+
+Wellesley, Lord, _see_ Wellington, Duke of
+
+Wellington, Duke of, 160, 161, 166, 167, 188-190, 198, 272, 289
+
+Whateley, Archbishop, 92-96, 100, 251
+
+Women rulers, 295
+
+Working classes, improvement in their condition, 300, 301, 308
+
+
+York, Duke of, 194, 197-199
+
+Young, Arthur, 76, 77
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+LONDON
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 322: added page number 322, to Murray entry.         |
+    | Page 324: Whateley replaced with Whately                  |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Historical and Political Essays, by William
+Edward Hartpole Lecky
+
+
+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: Historical and Political Essays
+
+
+Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 17, 2007  [eBook #20389]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Ted Garvin, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)
+
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original     |
+    | document have been preserved.                             |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this  |
+    | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this     |
+    | document.                                                 |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
+
+by
+
+WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Longmans, Green, and Co.
+39 Paternoster Row, London
+New York, Bombay, and Calcutta
+1908
+All rights reserved
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                             PAGE
+     THOUGHTS ON HISTORY                                        1
+
+     THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY                            21
+
+     THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH                      43
+
+     IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY                           68
+
+     FORMATIVE INFLUENCES                                      90
+
+     CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE                             104
+
+     ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS                                 116
+
+     MADAME DE STAEL                                          131
+
+     THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL            151
+
+     THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY                              200
+
+     MR. HENRY REEVE                                          242
+
+     DEAN MILMAN                                              249
+
+     QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE                          275
+
+     OLD-AGE PENSIONS                                         298
+
+     INDEX                                                    319
+
+
+
+
+The Essays 'Thoughts on History,' 'Formative Influences,'
+'Madame de Stael,' 'Israel among the Nations,' 'Old-age
+Pensions,' appeared originally in the American Review, the
+_Forum_--the first under the title of 'The Art of Writing
+History'; 'Ireland in the Light of History,' in the _North
+American Review_. Those on Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Henry Reeve,
+and Dean Milman were written for the _Edinburgh Review_. The
+Essay on 'Queen Victoria as a Moral Force' appeared first in
+the _Pall Mall Magazine_; 'Carlyle's Message to His Age' in
+the _Contemporary Review_. 'The Political Value of History'
+was a presidential address delivered before the Birmingham and
+Midland Institute; 'The Empire,' an inaugural address
+delivered at the Imperial Institute; and the 'Memoir of the
+Fifteenth Earl of Derby' was originally prefixed to the
+volumes of his speeches and addresses.
+
+
+
+
+HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS ON HISTORY
+
+
+I do not propose in this paper to enter into any general inquiry about
+the best method of writing history. Such inquiries appear to me to be
+of no real value, for there are many different kinds of history which
+should be written in many different ways. A diplomatic, a military, or
+a parliamentary history, dealing with a short period or a particular
+episode, must evidently be treated in a very different spirit from an
+extended history where the object of the historian should be to
+describe the various aspects of the national life, and to trace
+through long periods of time the ultimate causes of national progress
+and decay. The history of religion, of art, of literature, of social
+and industrial development, of scientific progress, have all their
+different methods. A writer who treats of some great revolution that
+has transformed human affairs should deal largely in retrospect, for
+the most important part of his task is to explain the long course of
+events that prepared and produced the catastrophe; while a writer who
+treats of more normal times will do well to plunge rapidly into his
+theme.
+
+Historians, too, differ widely in their special talents, and these
+talents are never altogether combined. The power of vividly realising
+and portraying men, or societies or modes of thought that have long
+since passed away; the power of arranging and combining great
+multitudes of various facts; the power of judging with discrimination,
+accuracy, and impartiality conflicting arguments or evidence; the
+power of tracing through the long course of events the true chain of
+cause and effect, selecting the facts that are most valuable and
+significant and explaining the relation between general causes and
+particular effects, are all very different and belong to different
+types of mind. It is idle to expect a writer with the gifts of a
+Clarendon, a Kinglake, or a Froude to write history in the spirit of a
+Hallam or a Grote. Writers who are eminently distinguished for wide,
+patient, and accurate research have sometimes little power either of
+describing or interpreting the facts which they collect. All that can
+be said with any profit is that each writer will do best if he follows
+the natural bent of his genius, and that he should select those kinds
+or periods of history in which his special gifts have most scope and
+the qualities in which he is deficient are least needed.
+
+It is the fashion of a modern school of historical writers to deplore
+what they call the intrusion of literature into history. History, in
+their judgment, should be treated as science and not as literature,
+and the kind of intellect they most value is not unlike that of a
+skilful and well-trained attorney. To collect documents with industry;
+to compare, classify, interpret and estimate them is the main work of
+the historian. It is no doubt true that there are some fields of
+history where the primary facts are so little known, so much contested
+or so largely derived from recondite manuscript sources, that a
+faithful historian will be obliged in justice to his readers to
+sacrifice both proportion and artistic charm to the supreme importance
+of analysing evidence, reproducing documents and accumulating proofs;
+but in general the depreciation of the literary element in history
+seems to me essentially wrong. It is only necessary to recall the
+names of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Livy and Tacitus, of Gibbon and
+Macaulay, and of the long line of great masters of style who have
+related the annals of France. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted
+that there is no subject in which rarer literary qualities are more
+demanded than in the higher forms of history. The art of portraying
+characters; of describing events; of compressing, arranging, and
+selecting great masses of heterogeneous facts, of conducting many
+different chains of narrative without confusion or obscurity; of
+preserving in a vast and complicated subject the true proportion and
+relief, will tax the highest literary skill, and no one who does not
+possess some, at least, of these gifts in an unusual measure is likely
+to attain a permanent place among the great masters of history. It is
+a misfortune when some stirring and momentous period falls into the
+hands of the mere compiler, for he occupies the ground and a really
+great writer will hesitate to appropriate and plagiarise the materials
+his predecessor has collected. There are books of great research and
+erudition which one would have wished to have been all re-written by
+some writer of real genius who could have given order, meaning and
+vividness to a mere chaos of accurate and laboriously sifted learning.
+The great prominence which it is now the fashion to ascribe to the
+study of diplomatic documents, is very apt to destroy the true value
+and perspective of history. It is always the temptation of those who
+are dealing with manuscript materials to overrate the small personal
+details which they bring to light, and to give them much more than
+their due space in their narrative. This tendency the new school
+powerfully encourages. It is quite right that the treasure-houses of
+diplomatic correspondence which have of late years been thrown open
+should be explored and sifted, but history written chiefly from these
+materials, though it has its own importance, is not likely to be
+distinguished either by artistic form or by philosophical value. Those
+who are immersed in these studies are very apt to overrate their
+importance and the part which diplomacy and statesmanship have borne
+in the great movement of human affairs.
+
+A true and comprehensive history should be the life of a nation. It
+should describe it in its larger and more various aspects. It should
+be a study of causes and effects, of distant as well as proximate
+causes, and of the large, slow and permanent evolution of things. It
+should include, as Buckle and Macaulay saw, the social, the
+industrial, the intellectual life of the nation as well as mere
+political changes, and it should be pre-eminently marked by a true
+perspective dealing with subjects at a length proportioned to their
+real importance. All this requires a powerful and original intellect
+quite different from that of a mere compiler. It requires too, in a
+high degree, the kind of imagination which enables a man to reproduce
+not only the acts but the feelings, the ideals, the modes of thought
+and life of a distant past, and pierce through the actions and
+professions of men to their real characters. Insight into character is
+one of the first requisites of a historian. It is therefore, much to
+be desired that he should possess a wide knowledge of the world, the
+knowledge of different types of character, foreign as well as English,
+which travel and society and practical experience of business can
+give, and it will also be of no small advantage to him if he has
+passed through more than one intellectual or religious phase, widening
+the area of his appreciation and realisations. He should also have
+enough of the dramatic element to enable him to throw himself into
+ways of reasoning or feeling very different from his own. One of the
+most valuable of all forms of historical imagination is that which
+enables a writer to place himself in the point of view of the best men
+on different sides, and to bring out the full sense of opposing
+arguments. All these gifts or qualities are never in a high degree
+united, but they are all essential to a great historian, and a true
+school of history should widen instead of narrowing our conception of
+it.
+
+The supreme virtue of the historian is truthfulness, and it may be
+violated in many different degrees. The worst form is when a writer
+deliberately falsifies facts or deliberately excludes from his picture
+qualifying circumstances. But there are other and much more subtle
+ways in which party spirit continually and often quite unconsciously
+distorts history. All history is necessarily a selection of facts, and
+a writer who is animated by a strong sympathy with one side of a
+question or a strong desire to prove some special point will be much
+tempted in his selection to give an undue prominence to those that
+support his view, or, even where neither facts nor arguments are
+suppressed, to give a party character to his work by an unfair
+distribution of lights and shades. The strong and vivid epithets are
+chiefly reserved for the good or bad deeds on one side, the vague,
+general and comparatively colourless epithets for the corresponding
+deeds on the other side; and in this way very similar facts are
+brought before the reader with such different degrees of illumination
+and relief that they make a wholly different impression on his mind.
+In the history of Macaulay this defect may, I think, be especially
+traced. The characteristic defect of that great and in most respects
+admirable writer, both as historian and artist, was the singular
+absence of graduation in his mind. The neutral tints which are
+essential to the accurate shading of character seemed almost wanting,
+and a love of strong contrasted lights and shades, coupled with his
+supreme command of powerful epithets, continually misled him. But no
+attentive reader can fail to observe how unequally those epithets are
+distributed and how clearly this inequality discloses the strong bias
+under which he wrote.
+
+The truth of an historical picture lies mainly in its judicious and
+accurate shading, and it is this art which the historian should
+especially cultivate. He will scarcely do so with success unless it
+becomes to him not merely a matter of duty, but also a pleasure and a
+pride. The kind of interest which he takes in his narrative should be
+much less that of a politician and an advocate than of a painter, who,
+now darkening and now lightening the picture, seeks by many delicate
+touches to catch with exact fidelity the tone and hue of the object he
+represents.
+
+The degree of certainty that it is possible to attain in history
+varies greatly in different departments. The growth of institutions
+and laws, military events, changes in manners and in creeds, can be
+described with much confidence, and although it is more difficult to
+depict the inner moral life of nations, the influences that form their
+characters and prepare them for greatness or decay, yet when the
+materials for our induction are sufficiently large this field of
+history may be studied with great profit. Diplomatic history and the
+more secret springs of political history can only be fully disclosed
+when the archives relating to them have been explored and when the
+confidential correspondence of the chief actors in them has been
+published. The biographical element in history is always the most
+uncertain. Even among contemporaries the judgment of character and
+motives depends largely on indications so slight and subtle that they
+rarely pass into books and are only fully felt by direct personal
+contact, and the smallest knowledge of life shows how quickly
+anecdotes and sayings are distorted, coloured, and misplaced when they
+pass from lip to lip. Most of the 'good sayings' of history are
+invention, and most of them have been attributed to different persons.
+A history which is plainly written under the influence of party bias
+has the value of an advocate's speech giving one side of the question.
+When our only materials for the knowledge of a period are derived from
+such histories, the saying of Voltaire should be remembered--that we
+can confidently believe only the evil which a party writer tells of
+his own side and the good which he recognises in his opponents. In
+judging the historian we must consider his nearness to the events he
+relates, his probable means of information and the internal evidence
+in his narrative of accuracy, honesty, and judgment, and we must also
+consider the standard of proof and the methods of historical writing
+prevailing in his time. A modern writer who placed in the mouths of
+his personages speeches which he himself invented would be justly
+discredited, but in antiquity it was a recognised custom for a
+historian to embody in fictitious speeches the reflections suggested
+by his narrative and the motives which he believed to have actuated
+his heroes.
+
+Different ages differ enormously in the severity of proof which they
+exact, in the degree of accuracy which they attain. The credibility of
+a statement also depends not only on the amount of its evidence, but
+also on its own inherent probability. Everyone will feel that an
+amount of testimony that would be quite sufficient to persuade him
+that a butcher's boy had been seen driving along a highway is wholly
+different from that which would be required to persuade him that a
+ghost had been met there. The same rule applies to the history of the
+past, and it is complicated by the great difference in different ages
+of the measure of probability, or, in other words, by the strong
+predisposition in certain stages of knowledge to accept statements or
+explanations of facts which in later stages we know to be incredible
+or in a high degree improbable. Few subjects in history are more
+difficult than the laws of evidence in dealing with the supernatural
+and the extent to which the authority of historians in relating
+credible and probable facts is invalidated by the presence of a
+mythical element in their narratives.
+
+Connected with this subject is also the question how far it is
+possible by merely internal evidence to decompose an ancient document,
+resolving it into its separate elements, distinguishing its different
+dates and its different degrees of credibility. The reader is no doubt
+aware with what a rare skill this method of inquiry has been pursued
+in the present century, chiefly by great German and Dutch scholars, in
+dealing with the early Jewish writings. At the same time, without
+disputing the value of their work or the importance of many of the
+results at which they have arrived, I may be pardoned for expressing
+my belief that this kind of investigation is often pursued with an
+exaggerated confidence. Plausible conjecture is too frequently
+mistaken for positive proof. Undue significance is attached to what
+may be mere casual coincidences, and a minuteness of accuracy is
+professed in discriminating between the different elements in a
+narrative which cannot be attained by mere internal evidence. In all
+writings, but especially in the writings of an age when criticism was
+unknown, there will be repetitions, contradictions, inconsistencies
+and diversities of style which do not necessarily indicate different
+authorship or dates.
+
+I have spoken of the uncertainty of the biographical element in
+history. It must, however, be said that when a historian is dealing
+with men who have played a very prominent part on the stage of life,
+the general acceptance of his judgment is a strong corroboration of
+its truth. It may be added that the later judgment of men is not
+unfrequently more true than the contemporary judgment. The wisdom of a
+teaching or of a policy is shown by its results, and these results are
+in most cases very gradually disclosed. Great men are like great
+mountains which are surrounded by lower peaks that often obscure their
+grandeur and seem to a near observer to equal or even to overtop them.
+It is only when seen from far off that their true dimensions are fully
+realised and they soar to heaven above all rivals. In the page of
+history men are judged mainly by the net result of their lives, by the
+broad lines of their characters and achievements. Many injudicious
+words, many minor weaknesses of conduct, are forgotten. Faults of
+manner, deficiencies of tact, awkwardnesses of appearance, which tell
+so largely upon the judgments of contemporaries, are no longer seen.
+The conversational nimbleness and versatility of intellect, the charm
+or assurance or magnetism of manner, the weight of social position,
+all of which tend to secure to an inferior man a pre-eminence in the
+circle in which he moves, are equally evanescent, and the shy, rugged,
+and tactless recluse often emerges on the strength of his genuine and
+abiding performances to a position in the eyes of the world which he
+never attained during his lifetime.
+
+That fine saying of Cardan, 'Tempus mea possessio, tempus ager meus,'
+might be the motto of the historian. Time is the field which he
+cultivates, and a true sense of space and distance should be one of
+the chief characteristics of his work. Few things are more difficult
+to attain than a just perspective in history. The most dramatic
+incidents are not the most important, and in weighing the joys and
+sorrows of the past our measures of judgment are almost hopelessly
+false. The most humane man cannot emancipate himself from the law of
+his nature, according to which he is more affected by some tragic
+circumstance which has taken place in his own house or in his own
+street than by a catastrophe which has carried anguish and desolation
+over enormous areas in a distant continent. In history, too, there are
+vast tracts which are almost necessarily unrealised. We judge a period
+mainly by its great men, by its brilliant or salient incidents, by the
+fortunes of a small class; and the great mass of obscure, suffering,
+inarticulate humanity, whose happiness is often so profoundly affected
+by political and military events, almost escapes our notice. It should
+be the object of history to bring before us past events in their true
+proportion and significance, and one of the greatest improvements in
+modern history is the increased attention which is paid to the
+social, industrial, and moral history of the poor. The paucity of our
+information and the difficulty of realising the conditions of obscure
+multitudes will always make this branch of history very imperfect, but
+it is one of the most essential to the just judgment of the past.
+
+Another task which lies before the historian is that of distinguishing
+proximate from ultimate causes. Our first natural impulse is to
+attribute a great change to the men who effected it and to the period
+in which it took place, and to neglect or underrate the long train of
+causes which had been, often through many generations, preparing its
+advent. A faithful historian must especially guard against this error.
+He must study the slow process of growth as well as the moment of
+efflorescence, the long progress of decay as well as the final
+catastrophe. He will probably find that the part played by statesmen
+and legislatures is less than he had imagined, and that the causes of
+the movements he relates must be sought over a wider area and through
+a longer period.
+
+Moral, intellectual, or economical movements very slightly connected
+with political life are often those which have most largely
+contributed to the good or evil fortunes of a nation; and even in the
+sphere of politics it is not the events which attract the most vivid
+contemporary interest that have the most enduring influence. Few
+things contribute so much to the formation of the social type as the
+laws regulating the succession of property and especially the
+agglomeration or division of landed property. The growth of militarism
+in a nation, besides its direct and obvious consequences, forms a type
+of character which will sooner or later show itself in almost every
+department of legislation, and the tendency of politics to enlarge or
+narrow the sphere of individual liberty or of government control, will
+affect most deeply the habits of the people. Laws regulating private
+enterprises, substituting State control or initiative for individual
+action, encouraging or discouraging thrift, and above all interfering
+with free contracts, have much more than an immediate influence, for
+they become the prolific parents of many further extensions. In the
+words of an excellent observer, it will be found 'that our legislative
+interference is but the first link of a long chain of repetitions,
+every subsequent interference being naturally produced by the effects
+of the preceding.' It is by studying such tendencies through long
+periods of time that their good or evil influences may be best
+discovered, and this should be one of the great tasks of the
+historian.
+
+But, however large a part may be given to the impersonal influences in
+history, he will still be largely concerned with the record of
+individual achievements, and the great men of the past will form the
+most conspicuous landmarks of his narrative. I have often thought,
+however, that nations are judged too much by the great men they have
+produced and not sufficiently by the way in which they have
+discriminated among them and appreciated them. Genius is like the wind
+that bloweth where it listeth, and it often appears in strangely
+uncongenial quarters. The true nobility of a nation is shown by the
+men they choose, by the men they follow, by the men they admire, by
+the ideals of character and conduct they place before them. Tried by
+such tests, there is often much that is profoundly saddening in the
+history of countries that have been far from poor in the number of
+their great men.
+
+In the judgment of historical characters there are two cautions on
+which it may not be useless to dwell. There is a large class of public
+men who show little capacity in dealing with or directing the present
+conditions of their time, but who see clearly the bourne to which
+existing forces or tendencies are moving and who, judged by their
+distant forecasts, will appear much wiser than their contemporaries.
+It is the natural bias of the historian to place them perhaps higher
+than they deserve. This power of just speculative foresight is no very
+rare gift, and in public affairs it is often as much a hindrance as a
+help. Forms of government and other great religious or political
+institutions, like the products of nature, have their times of
+immaturity, of growth, of ripeness and of decay, and it by no means
+follows because they at last become indefensible, that they have not
+during many generations discharged useful functions and that those who
+first assailed and condemned them are deserving of praise. Not
+unfrequently, indeed, a public man must take his choice whether by
+fully identifying himself with the existing conditions around him and
+employing them to the best advantages he will lead a useful and
+practical life, or whether as an advanced thinker he will associate
+himself with the cause that is one day to conquer, place himself in
+the van of progress and at the sacrifice of much present influence
+deserve the credit of foresight.
+
+Historians will probably always judge men and policies by their net
+results, by their final consequences, and this judgment is on the
+whole the most sure that we can attain. It is not, however, altogether
+infallible. Apart from the question of the moral character of the
+methods employed which a good historian should never omit from his
+consideration, success is not always a decisive proof of sagacity.
+Chance and the unexpected play a great part in human affairs, and a
+judgment founded on a perfectly just estimate of probabilities will
+often prove wrong. The result which was the least probable will come
+true, some wholly unforeseen and unforeseeable occurrence will scatter
+dangers that were very real and give a new complexion to events. The
+rise of some pre-eminently great or of some pre-eminently mischievous
+personage among the guiding influences of a nation will derange the
+most sagacious calculations, and the reckless gambler or the obtuse
+obstructionist may prove more right than the most cautious, the most
+skilful, the most farseeing statesman.
+
+A fatal and very common error is that of judging the actions of the
+past by the moral standard of our own age. This is especially the
+error of novices in history and of those who without any wide and
+general culture devote themselves exclusively to a single period.
+While the primary and essential elements of right and wrong remain
+unchanged, nothing is more certain than that the standard or ideal of
+duty is continually altering. A very humane man in another age may
+have done things which would now be regarded as atrociously barbarous.
+A very virtuous man may have done things which would now indicate
+extreme profligacy. We seldom indeed make sufficient allowance for the
+degree in which the judgments and dispositions of even the best man
+are coloured by the moral tone of the time or society in which they
+live. And what is true of individuals is equally true of nations. In
+order to judge equitably the legislation of any people, we must always
+consider corresponding contemporary legislations and ideas. When this
+is neglected our judgments of the past become wholly false. How often,
+for example, has such a subject as the history of the penal laws
+against Irish Catholics been treated without the smallest reference to
+the contemporary laws against Protestants that existed in every
+Catholic nation and the contemporary laws against Catholics that
+existed in almost every Protestant country in Europe. How often have
+the English commercial restrictions on the American colonies been
+treated as if they were instances of extreme and exceptional tyranny,
+while a more extended knowledge would show that they were simply the
+expression of ideas of commercial policy and about the relation of
+dependencies to the mother-country which then almost universally
+prevailed.
+
+It is not merely the moral standard that changes. A corresponding
+change takes place in the moral type, or, in other words, in the class
+of virtues which is especially cultivated and especially valued. To
+know an age aright we should above all things seek to understand its
+ideal, the direction in which the stream of its self-sacrifice and
+moral energy naturally flowed. Few things in history are more
+interesting and more valuable than a study of the causes that produced
+and modified these successive ideals. Thus in the moral type of pagan
+antiquity the civic virtues occupied incomparably the foremost place.
+The idea of a supremely good man was essentially that of a man of
+action, of a man whose whole life was devoted to the service of his
+country. The life and death of Cato were for generations the favourite
+model. He was deemed, in the words of an old Latin historian, to be of
+all men the one 'most like to virtue.' This pattern retained its force
+till the softening influence of the Greek spirit, permeating Roman
+life, made the stoical ideal seem too hard and unsympathising; till
+the corruption and despotism of the Empire had withdrawn the best men
+from political life and attached a certain taint or stigma to public
+employment; till new religions arose in the East, bringing with them
+new ideals to govern the world. Gradually we may trace the
+contemplative virtues rising to the foremost place until, about the
+fifth century, the ideal had totally changed. The heroic type was
+replaced by the saintly type. The supremely good man was now the
+ascetic. The first condition of sanctity was a complete abandonment of
+secular duties and cares and a complete subjugation of the body. A
+vast literature of legends arose reflecting and glorifying the
+prevailing ideal and holding up the hermit life as the supreme pattern
+of perfection, and this literature occupies a place in mediaevalism
+very similar to that held by the 'Lives' of Plutarch in antiquity.
+
+Ancient art was essentially the glorification of the body, a
+representation of the full strength and beauty of developed manhood.
+The saint of the mediaeval mosaic represents the body in its extreme
+maceration and humiliation. The rhetorician, Dio Chrysostom, in a
+somewhat whimsical passage, which was suggested by a remark of Plato,
+found a special moral significance in the fact that Homer, though he
+places his heroes on the the banks of what he calls 'the fishy
+Hellespont,' never makes them eat fish, but always flesh and the flesh
+of oxen, for this, as he says, is 'strength-producing food' and is
+therefore suited for the formation of heroes and the proper diet for
+men of virtue. Compare this judgment with the protracted, and indeed
+incredible, fasts which the monkish writers delighted in attributing
+to the saints of the desert, and we have a vivid picture of the change
+that had passed over the ideal.
+
+But as time moved on the ascetic ideal gradually declined and was
+replaced by the very different ideal of chivalry. It consisted chiefly
+of three new elements. The first element was a spirit of gallantry
+which gave women a wholly new place in the imaginations of men. It was
+in part a reaction against the extreme austerity of the saints, and
+this reaction was much intensified after the cessation of the panic
+which had risen at the close of the tenth century about the
+approaching end of the world. It was in part produced by the softer
+and more epicurean civilisation which grew up in the country bordering
+on the Pyrenees. It was especially represented in the romances and
+poems of the Troubadours, and the new tendency even received some
+assistance from the Church when the Council of Clermont, which
+originated the Crusades, imposed on the knight the religious
+obligation of defending all widows and orphans.
+
+The second element was an increased reverence for secular rank, which
+grew out of the feudal system, when a great hereditary aristocracy
+arose and all European society was moulded into a compact hierarchy,
+of which the serf was the basis and the emperor the apex. The
+principle of subordination and obedience ran through the whole
+edifice, and a respect for rank was universally diffused. Men came to
+associate their ideal of greatness with regal or noble authority, and
+they were therefore prepared to idealise any great sovereign who might
+arise. Such a sovereign appeared in Charlemagne, who exercised upon
+Christendom a fascination not less powerful than that which Alexander
+had once exercised upon Greece, and he accordingly soon became the
+centre of a whole literature of romance.
+
+The third element was the fusion of religious enthusiasm with the
+military spirit. Christianity in its first phases was utterly opposed
+to the military spirit; but this opposition was naturally mitigated
+when the Church triumphed under Constantine and became associated with
+governments and armies. The hostility was still further qualified when
+many tribes of warlike barbarians embraced the faith, and the military
+obligation which was an essential element of feudalism acted in the
+same direction. But, above all, the rise and conquests of
+Mohammedanism awoke the military energies of Christendom and
+determined the direction it should take. In the Crusades the two great
+streams of military enthusiasm and of religious enthusiasm met, and
+the result was the formation of a new ideal which for a long period
+mainly governed the imagination of Christendom.
+
+It for a time absorbed, eclipsed, and transformed all purely national
+ideals. No poet was ever more intensely English in his character and
+sympathies than Chaucer, and he wrote when the dazzling glories of
+Crecy and Poitiers were still very recent. Yet it is not on these
+fields, but in the long wars with the Moslems, that his pattern knight
+had won his renown. The military expeditions of Charlemagne were
+directed almost exclusively against the Saxons and against Slavonic
+tribes. With the Spanish Mohammedans he came but very slightly in
+contact. He made in person but one expedition against them, and that
+expedition was both insignificant and unsuccessful. But in the
+Karlovingian romances, which were written when the crusading
+enthusiasm was at its height, the figure of the great emperor
+underwent a strange and most significant transformation. The German
+wars were scarcely noticed. Charlemagne is surrounded with the special
+glory that ought to have belonged to Charles Martel. He is represented
+as having passed his entire life in a victorious struggle with the
+Mohammedans of Europe, and is even gravely credited with a triumphant
+expedition to Jerusalem. The three romances of the Crusades which are
+believed to be the oldest were all written by monks, and they all make
+Charlemagne their hero. Even geography was transformed by the new
+enthusiasm, and old maps sometimes represent Jerusalem as the centre
+of the world.
+
+In few periods has there been so great a difference between the ideals
+created by the popular imagination and the realities that are
+recognised by history. Few wars have been accompanied by more cruelty,
+more outrage, and more licentiousness than the Crusades or have
+brought a blacker cloud of disasters in their train. Yet the idea that
+inspired them was a lofty one, and they were so speedily transfigured
+by the imaginations of men that in combination with the other
+influences I have mentioned they created an ideal which is one of the
+most beautiful in the history of the world. We may trace it clearly in
+the romances of Arthur and Charlemagne and of the "Cid;" in the
+"Red-Cross Knight" of Tasso and Spenser; in the old ballads which
+paint so vividly the hero of chivalry, ever ready to draw his sword
+for his faith and his lady-love and in the cause of the feeble and the
+oppressed. The glorification of military courage and self-sacrifice
+which had been so prominent in antiquity was again in the ascendant,
+but it was combined with a new kind of honour and with a new vein of
+courtesy, modesty, and gentleness. When we apply the epithet
+'chivalrous' to a modern gentleman, this is no unmeaning term. There
+is even now an element in that character which may be distinctly
+traced to the ideal of chivalry which the Crusades made dominant in
+Europe.
+
+I do not propose to follow the history of other ideals that have in
+turn prevailed. What I have written will, I trust, be sufficient to
+illustrate a kind of history which appears to me to possess much
+interest and value. It will show, too, that a faithful historian is
+very largely concerned with the fictions as well as with the facts of
+the past. Legends which have no firm historical basis are often of the
+highest historical value as reflecting the moral sentiments of their
+time. Nor do they merely reflect them. In some periods they contribute
+perhaps more than any other influence to mould and colour them and to
+give them an enduring strength. The facts of history have been largely
+governed by its fictions. Great events often acquire their full power
+over the human mind only when they have passed through the
+transfiguring medium of the imagination, and men as they were supposed
+to be have even sometimes exercised a wider influence than men as they
+actually were. Ideals ultimately rule the world, and each before it
+loses its ascendancy bequeaths some moral truth as an abiding legacy
+to the human race.
+
+
+
+
+THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY
+
+
+When, shortly after I had accepted the honourable task which I am
+endeavouring to fulfil to-night, I received from your Secretary a
+report of the annual proceedings of the Birmingham and Midland
+Institute,--when I observed the immense range and variety of subjects
+included within your programme, illustrating so strikingly the intense
+intellectual activity of this great town,--my first feeling was one of
+some bewilderment and dismay. What, I asked myself, could I say that
+would be of much real value, addressing an unknown audience, and
+relating to fields of knowledge so vast, so multifarious, and in many
+of their parts so far beyond the range of my own studies? On
+reflection, however, it appeared to me that in this, as in most other
+cases, the proverb was a wise one which bids the cobbler stick to his
+last, and that a writer who, during many years of his life, has been
+engaged in the study of English history could hardly do better than
+devote the time at his disposal to-night to a few reflections on the
+political value of history, and on the branches and methods of
+historical study that are most fitted to form a sound political
+judgment.
+
+Is history a study of real use in practical, and especially in
+political, life? The question, as you know, has been by no means
+always answered in the same way. In its earlier stages history was
+regarded chiefly as a form of poetry recording the more dramatic
+actions of kings, warriors, and statesmen. Homer and the early
+ballads are indeed the first historians of their countries, and long
+after Homer one of the most illustrious of the critics of antiquity
+described history as merely 'poetry free from the incumbrance of
+verse.' The portraits that adorned it gave some insight into human
+character; it breathed noble sentiments, rewarded and stimulated noble
+actions, and kindled by its strong appeals to the imagination high
+patriotic feeling; but its end was rather to paint than to guide, to
+consecrate a noble past than to furnish a key for the future; and the
+artist in selecting his facts looked mainly for those which could
+throw the richest colour upon his canvas. Most experience was in his
+eyes (to adopt an image of Coleridge) like the stern light of a ship,
+which illuminates only the path we have already traversed; and a large
+proportion of the subjects which are most significant as illustrating
+the true welfare and development of nations were deliberately rejected
+as below the dignity of history. The old conception of history can
+hardly be better illustrated than in the words of Savage Landor. 'Show
+me,' he makes one of his heroes say, 'how great projects were
+executed, great advantages gained, and great calamities averted. Show
+me the generals and the statesmen who stood foremost, that I may bend
+to them in reverence.... Let the books of the Treasury lie closed as
+religiously as the Sibyl's. Leave weights and measures in the
+market-place; Commerce in the harbour; the Arts in the light they
+love; Philosophy in the shade. Place History on her rightful throne,
+and at the sides of her Eloquence and War.'[1]
+
+It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that a very different
+conception of history grew up. Historians then came to believe that
+their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem;
+to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth,
+prosperity, and adversity. The history of morals, of industry, of
+intellect, and of art; the changes that take place in manners or
+beliefs; the dominant ideas that prevailed in successive periods; the
+rise, fall, and modification of political constitutions; in a word,
+all the conditions of national well-being became the subjects of their
+works. They sought rather to write a history of peoples than a history
+of kings. They looked specially in history for the chain of causes and
+effects. They undertook to study in the past the physiology of
+nations, and hoped by applying the experimental method on a large
+scale to deduce some lessons of real value about the conditions on
+which the well-being of society mainly depends.
+
+How far have they succeeded in their attempt, and furnished us with a
+real compass for political guidance? Let me in the first place frankly
+express my own belief that to many readers of history the study is not
+only useless, but even positively misleading. An unintelligent, a
+superficial, a pedantic or an inaccurate use of history is the source
+of very many errors in practical judgment. Human affairs are so
+infinitely complex that it is vain to expect that they will ever
+exactly reproduce themselves, or that any study of the past can enable
+us to predict the future with the minuteness and the completeness that
+can be attained in the exact sciences. Nor will any wise man judge the
+merits of existing institutions solely on historic grounds. Do not
+persuade yourself that any institution, however great may be its
+antiquity, however transcendent may have been its uses in a remote
+past, can permanently justify its existence, unless it can be shown
+to exercise a really beneficial influence over our own society and our
+own age. It is equally true that no institution which is exercising
+such a beneficial influence should be condemned, because it can be
+shown from history that under other conditions and in other times its
+influence was rather for evil than for good.
+
+These propositions may seem like truisms; yet how often do we hear a
+kind of reasoning that is inconsistent with them! How often, for
+example, in the discussions on the Continent on the advantages and
+disadvantages of monastic institutions has the chief stress of the
+argument been laid upon the great benefits which those institutions
+produced in ages that were utterly different from our own,--in the
+dark period of the barbarian invasions, when they were the only
+refuges of a pacific civilisation, the only libraries, the only
+schools, the only centres of art, the only refuge for gentle and
+intellectual natures; the chief barrier against violence and rapine;
+the chief promoters of agriculture and industry! How often in
+discussions on the merits and demerits of an Established Church in
+England have we heard arguments drawn from the hostility which the
+Church of England showed towards English liberty in the time of the
+Stuarts; although it is abundantly evident that the dangers of a royal
+despotism, which were then so serious, have utterly disappeared, and
+that the political action of the Church of England at that period was
+mainly governed by a doctrine of the Divine right of kings, and of the
+duty of passive obedience, which is now as dead as the old belief that
+the king's touch could cure scrofula! How often have the champions of
+modern democracy appealed in support of their views to the glories of
+the democracies of ancient Greece, without ever reminding their
+hearers that these small municipal republics rested on the basis of
+slavery, and that the bulk of those who would exercise the chief
+controlling influence over affairs in a pure democracy of the modern
+type were absolutely excluded from political power! How often in
+discussions about the advantages and disadvantages of Home Rule in
+Ireland do we find arguments drawn from the merits or demerits of the
+Irish Parliament of the eighteenth century, with a complete
+forgetfulness of the fact that this Parliament consisted exclusively
+of a Protestant gentry; that it represented in the highest degree the
+property of the country, and the classes who are most closely attached
+to English rule; that it was constituted in such a manner that the
+English Government could exercise a complete control over its
+deliberations, and that for good or for ill it was utterly unlike any
+body that could now be constituted in Ireland!
+
+Or again, to turn to another field: it is quite certain that every age
+has special dangers to guard against, and that as time moves on these
+dangers not only change, but are sometimes even reversed. There have
+been periods in English history when the great dangers to be
+encountered sprang from the excessive and encroaching power of a
+monarchy or of an aristocracy. The battle to be then fought was for
+the free exercise of religious worship and expression of religious
+opinion, for a free parliament, for a free press, for a free platform,
+for an independent jury-box. All the best patriotism, all the most
+heroic self-sacrifice of the nation, was thrown into defence of these
+causes; and the wisest statesmen of the time made it the main object
+of their legislation to protect and consolidate them.
+
+These things are now as valuable as they ever were, but no reasonable
+man will maintain that they are in the smallest danger. The battles of
+the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been definitely won. A
+kind of language which at one period of English history implied the
+noblest heroism is now the idlest and cheapest of clap-trap. The
+sycophant and the self-seeker bow before quite other idols than of
+old. The dangers of the time come from other quarters; other
+tendencies prevail, other tasks remain to be accomplished; and a
+public man who in framing his course followed blindly in the steps of
+the heroes or reformers of the past would be like a mariner who set
+his sails to the winds of yesterday.
+
+It is difficult, I think, to doubt that the judgments of all of us are
+more or less affected by causes of this kind. It is, I imagine, true
+of the great majority of educated men that their first political
+impression or bias is formed much less by the events of their own time
+than by childish recollections of the more dramatic conflicts of the
+past. We are Cavaliers or Roundheads before we are Conservatives or
+Liberals; and although we gradually learn to realise how profoundly
+the condition of affairs and the balance of forces have altered, yet
+no wise man can doubt the power which the first bias of the
+imagination exercises in very many cases through a whole life.
+Language which grew out of bygone conflicts continues to be used long
+after those conflicts and their causes have ended; but that which was
+once a very genuine voice comes at last to be little more than an
+insincere echo.
+
+The best corrective for this kind of evil is a really intelligent
+study of history. One of the first tasks that every sincere student
+should set before himself is to endeavour to understand what is the
+dominant idea or characteristic of the period with which he is
+occupied; what forces chiefly ruled it, what forces were then rising
+into a dangerous ascendancy, and what forces were on the decline; what
+illusions, what exaggerations, what false hopes and unworthy
+influences chiefly prevailed. It is only when studied in this spirit
+that the true significance of history is disclosed, and the same
+method which furnishes a key to the past forms also an admirable
+discipline for the judgment of the present. He who has learnt to
+understand the true character and tendencies of many succeeding ages
+is not likely to go very far wrong in estimating his own.
+
+Another branch of history which I would especially commend to the
+attention of all political students is the history of Institutions. In
+the constantly fluctuating conditions of human life no institution
+ever remained for a long period unaltered. Sometimes with changed
+beliefs and changed conditions institutions lose all their original
+utility. They become simply useless, obstructive, and corrupt; and
+though by mere passive resistance they may continue to exist long
+after they have ceased to serve any good purpose, they will at last be
+undermined by their own abuses. Other institutions, on the other hand,
+show the true characteristic of vitality--the power of adapting
+themselves to changed conditions and new utilities. Few things in
+history are more interesting and more instructive than a careful study
+of these transformations. Sometimes the original objects almost wholly
+disappear, and utilities which were either never contemplated by the
+founders or were only regarded as of purely secondary importance take
+the first place on the scene. The old plan and symmetry almost
+disappear as the institution is modified now in this direction and now
+in that to meet some pressing want. The first architects, if they
+could rise from the dead, would scarcely recognise their
+creation--would perhaps look on it with horror. The indirect
+advantages of an institution are sometimes greater than its direct
+ones; and institutions are often more valuable on account of the evils
+they avert than on account of the positive advantages they produce.
+Not unfrequently in their later and transformed condition they
+exercise wider and greater influence than when they were originally
+established; for the strength derived from the long traditions of the
+past and from the habits that are formed around anything that is
+deeply rooted in the national life gives them a vastly increased
+importance.
+
+There is probably no better test of the political genius of a nation
+than the power which it possesses of adapting old institutions to new
+wants; and it is, I think, in this skill and in this disposition that
+the political pre-eminence of the English people has been most
+conspicuously shown. It is difficult to overrate its importance. It is
+the institutions of a country that chiefly maintain the sense of its
+organic unity, its essential connection with its past. By their
+continuous existence they bind together as by a living chain the past
+with the present, the living with the dead.
+
+Few greater calamities can befall a nation than to cut herself off, as
+France did in her great Revolution, from all vital connection with her
+own past. This is one of the chief lessons you will learn from
+Burke--the greatest and truest of all our political teachers. Bacon
+expressed in an admirable sentence the best spirit of English politics
+when he urged that 'men in their innovations should follow the example
+of Time itself, which indeed innovated greatly, but quietly, and by
+degrees scarcely to be perceived.'
+
+There is a third department of history which appears to me especially
+valuable to political students. It is the history of those vast
+Revolutions for good or for ill which seem to have transformed the
+characters or permanently changed the fortunes of nations, either by a
+sudden and violent shock or by the slow process of gradual renovation.
+You will find on this subject, in our country, two great and opposite
+exaggerations. There is a school of writers, of which Buckle is an
+admirable representative, who are so struck by the long chain of
+causes, extending over many centuries, that preceded and prepared
+Revolutions, that they teach a kind of historic fatalism, reducing
+almost to nothing the action of Individualities; and there is another
+school, which is specially represented by Carlyle, who reduce all
+history into biographies, into the action of a few great men upon
+their kind.
+
+The one class of writers will tell you with great truth that the Roman
+Republic was not destroyed by Caesar, but by the long train of
+influences that made the career of Caesar a possibility. They will show
+how influences working through many generations had sapped the
+foundations of the Republic--how the beliefs and habits on which it
+once rested had passed away--how its institutions no longer
+corresponded with the prevailing wants and ideas--how a form of
+government which had proved excellently adapted for a restricted
+dominion failed when the Roman eagles flew triumphantly over the whole
+civilised world, and how in this manner the strongest tendencies of
+the time were preparing the downfall of the Republic, and the
+establishment of a great empire upon its ruins. They will show how the
+intellectual influences of the Renaissance, the invention of printing,
+and a crowd of other causes, many of them at first sight very remote
+from theological controversies, had in the sixteenth century so
+shaken the power of the Roman Catholic Church, that the way was
+prepared for the Reformation, and it became possible for Luther and
+Calvin to succeed, where Wyckliffe and Huss had failed. They will show
+how profoundly our theological beliefs are affected by our general
+conception of the system of the universe, and how inevitably, as
+Science changes the latter, the former will undergo a corresponding
+process of modification. Creeds that are no longer in harmony with the
+general spirit of the time may long continue, but a new spirit will be
+breathed into the old forms. Those portions which are most discordant
+with our fresh knowledge will be neglected or attenuated. Although
+they may not be openly discarded, they will cease to be realised or
+vitally operative.
+
+In the sphere of politics a similar law prevails, and the fate of
+nations largely depends upon forces quite different from those on
+which the mere political historian concentrates his attention. The
+growth of military or industrial habits; the elevation or depression
+of different classes; the changes that take place in the distribution
+of wealth; inventions or discoveries that alter the course or
+character of industry or commerce, or reverse the relative advantages
+of different nations in the competitions of life; the increase and,
+still more, the diffusion of knowledge; the many influences that
+affect convictions, habits and ideals, that raise, or lower, or modify
+the moral tone and type--all these things concur in shaping the
+destinies of nations. Legislation is only really successful when it is
+in harmony with the general spirit of the age. Laws and statesmen for
+the most part indicate and ratify, but do not create. They are like
+the hands of the watch, which move obedient to the hidden machinery
+behind.
+
+In all this kind of speculation there is, I believe, great truth, and
+it opens out fields of inquiry that are of the utmost interest and
+importance. I have, however, long thought that it has been pushed by
+some modern writers to extravagant exaggeration. As you well know,
+there is another aspect of history, which, long before Carlyle, was
+enforced by some of the ablest and most independent intellects of
+Christendom. Pascal tells us that if Cleopatra's nose had been
+shorter, the whole face of the world might have been changed, and
+Voltaire is never tired of dwelling on the small springs on which the
+greatest events of history turn. Frederick the Great, who was probably
+the keenest practical intellect of his age, constantly insisted on the
+same view. In the vast field of politics, he maintained, casual events
+which no human sagacity can predict play by far the largest part. We
+are in most cases groping our way blindly in the dark. Occasionally,
+when favourable circumstances occur, there is a gleam of light of
+which the skilful avail themselves. All the rest is uncertainty. The
+world is mainly governed by a multitude of secondary, obscure, or
+impenetrable causes. It is a game of chance in which the most skilful
+may lose like the most ignorant. 'The older one becomes the more
+clearly one sees that King Hazard fashions three-fourths of the events
+in this miserable world.'
+
+My own view of this question is that though there are certain streams
+of tendency, though there is a certain steady and orderly evolution
+that it is impossible in the long run to resist, yet individual action
+and even mere accident have borne a very great part in modifying the
+direction of history. It is with History as with the general laws of
+Nature. We can none of us escape the all-pervading force of
+gravitation, or the influence of the climate under which we live, or
+the succession of the seasons, or the laws of growth and of decay; yet
+man is not a mere passive weed drifting helplessly upon the sea of
+life, and human wisdom and human folly can do and have done much to
+modify the conditions of his being.
+
+It is quite true that religions depend largely for their continued
+vitality upon the knowledge and intellectual atmosphere of their time;
+but there are periods when the human mind is in such a state of
+pliancy that a small pressure can give it a bent which will last for
+generations. If Mohammed had been killed in one of the first
+skirmishes of his career, I know no reason for believing that a great
+monotheistic religion would have arisen in Arabia, capable of moulding
+for more than twelve hundred years not only the beliefs, laws, and
+governments, but also the inmost moral and mental character of a vast
+section of the human race. Gibbon was probably right in his conjecture
+that if Charles Martel had been defeated at the famous battle near
+Tours, the creed of Islam would have overspread a great part of what
+is now Christian Europe, and in that case it might have ruled over it
+for centuries. No one can follow the history of the conversion of the
+barbarians to Christianity without perceiving how often a religion has
+been imposed in the first instance by the mere will of the ruler,
+which gradually took such root that it became far too strong for any
+political power to destroy. Persecution cannot annihilate a creed
+which is firmly established, or maintain a creed which has been
+thoroughly undermined, but there are intermediate stages in which its
+influence on national beliefs has been enormously great. Even at the
+Reformation, though more general causes were of capital importance,
+political events had a very large part in defining the frontier line
+between the rival creeds, and the divisions so created have for the
+most part endured.
+
+In secular politics numerous instances of the same kind will occur to
+every thoughtful reader of history. If, as might easily have happened,
+Hannibal after the battle of Cannae had taken and burned Rome, and
+transferred the supremacy of the world to a maritime commercial State
+upon the Mediterranean; if, instead of the Regency, Louis XV. and
+Louis XVI., France had passed during the eighteenth century under
+sovereigns of the stamp of the elder branch of the House of Orange or
+of Henry IV., or of the Great Elector, or of Frederick the Great; if,
+at the French Revolution, the supreme military genius had been
+connected with the character of Washington rather than with the
+character of Napoleon--who can doubt that the course of European
+history would have been vastly changed? The causes that made
+constitutional liberty succeed in England, while it failed in other
+countries where its prospects seemed once at least as promising, are
+many and complex; but no careful student of English history will doubt
+the prominence among them of the accidental fact that James II., by
+embracing Catholicism, had thrown the Church feeling at a very
+critical moment into opposition to the monarchical feeling, and that
+in the last days of Anne, when the question of the succession was
+trembling most doubtfully in the balance, his son refused to conform
+to the Anglican creed.
+
+Laws are no doubt in a great degree inoperative when they do not
+spring from and represent the opinion of the nation, but they have in
+their turn a great power of consolidating, deepening, and directing
+opinion. When some important progress has been attained, and with the
+support of public opinion has been embodied in a law, that law will do
+much to prevent the natural reflux of the wave. It becomes a kind of
+moral landmark, a powerful educating influence, and by giving what had
+been achieved the sanction of legality, it contributes largely to its
+permanence. Roman law undoubtedly played a great part in European
+history long after all the conditions in which it was first enacted
+had passed away, and the legislator who can determine in any country
+the system of national education, or the succession of property, will
+do much to influence the opinions and social types of many succeeding
+generations.
+
+The point, however, on which I would here especially insist is that
+there has scarcely been a great revolution in the world which might
+not at some stage of its progress have been either averted, or
+materially modified, or at least greatly postponed, by wise
+statesmanship and timely compromise. Take, for example, the American
+Revolution, which destroyed the political unity of the English race.
+You will often hear this event treated as if it were simply due to the
+wanton tyranny of an English Government, which desired to reduce its
+colonies to servitude by taxing them without their consent. But if you
+will look closely into the history of that time--and there is no
+history which is more instructive--you will find that this is a gross
+misrepresentation. What happened was essentially this. England, under
+the guidance of the elder Pitt, had been waging a great and most
+successful war, which left her with an enormously extended Empire, but
+also with an addition of more than seventy millions to her National
+Debt. That debt was now nearly one hundred and forty millions, and
+England was reeling under the taxation it required. The war had been
+waged largely in America, and its most brilliant result was the
+conquest of Canada, by which the old American colonies had benefited
+more than any other part of the Empire, for the expulsion of the
+French from North America put an end to the one great danger which
+hung over them. It was, however, extremely probable that if France
+ever regained her strength, one of her first objects would be to
+recover her dominion in America.
+
+Under these circumstances the English Government concluded that it was
+impossible that England alone, overburdened as she was by taxation,
+could undertake the military defence of her greatly extended Empire.
+Their object, therefore, was to create subsidiary armies for its
+defence. Ireland already raised by the vote of the Irish Parliament,
+and out of exclusively Irish resources, an army consisting of from
+twelve to fifteen thousand men, most of whom were available for the
+general purposes of the Empire. In India, under a despotic system, a
+separate army was maintained for the protection of India. It was the
+strong belief of the English Government that a third army should be
+maintained in America for the defence of the American colonies and of
+the neighbouring islands, and that it was just and reasonable that
+America should bear some part of the expense of her own defence. She
+was charged with no part of the interest of the National Debt; she
+paid nothing towards the cost of the navy which protected her coast;
+she was the most lightly taxed and the most prosperous portion of the
+Empire; she was the part which had benefited most by the late war, and
+she was the part which was most likely to be menaced if the war was
+renewed. Under these circumstances Grenville determined that a small
+army of ten thousand men should be kept in America, under the distinct
+promise that it was never to serve beyond that country and the West
+Indian Isles, and he asked America to contribute 100,000_l._ a year,
+or about a third part of its expense.
+
+But here the difficulty arose. The Irish army was maintained by the
+vote of the Irish Parliament; but there was no single parliament
+representing the American colonies, and it soon became evident that it
+was impossible to induce thirteen State legislatures to agree upon any
+scheme for supporting an army in America. Under these circumstances
+Grenville in an ill-omened moment resolved to revive a dormant power
+which existed in the Constitution, and levy this new war-tax by
+Imperial taxation. He at the same time guaranteed the colonists that
+the proceeds of this tax should be expended solely in America; he
+intimated to them in the clearest way that if they would meet his
+wishes by themselves providing the necessary sum, he would be
+abundantly satisfied, and he delayed the enforcement of the measure
+for a year in order to give them ample time for doing so.
+
+Such and so small was the original cause of difference between England
+and her colonies. Who can fail to see that it was a difference
+abundantly susceptible of compromise, and that a wise and moderate
+statesmanship might easily have averted the catastrophe? There are few
+sadder and few more instructive pages in history than those which show
+how mistake after mistake was committed, till the rift which was once
+so small widened and deepened; till the two sections of the English
+race were thrown into an irreconcilable antagonism, and the fair
+vision of an United Empire in the East and in the West came for ever
+to an end.
+
+Or glance for a moment at the French Revolution. It is a favourite
+task of historians to trace through the preceding generations the long
+train of causes that made the transformation of French institutions
+absolutely inevitable; but it is not so often remembered that when the
+States-General met in 1789 by far the larger part of the benefits of
+the Revolution could have been attained without difficulty, without
+convulsion, and by general consent. The nobles and clergy had pledged
+themselves to surrender their feudal privileges and their privileges
+in taxation; a reforming king was on the throne, and a reforming
+minister was at his side. If the spirit of moderation had then
+prevailed, the inevitable transformation might probably have been made
+without the effusion of a drop of blood. Jefferson was at this time
+the Minister of the United States in Paris. As an old republican he
+knew well the conditions of free governments, and among the
+politicians of his own country he represented the democratic section.
+I know few words in history more pathetic than those in which he
+described the situation. 'I was much acquainted,' he writes, 'with the
+leading patriots of the Assembly. Being from a country which had
+successfully passed through a similar reformation, they were disposed
+to my acquaintance, and had some confidence in me. I urged most
+strenuously an immediate compromise to secure what the Government were
+now ready to yield.... It was well understood that the King would
+grant at this time (1) freedom of the person by Habeas Corpus; (2)
+freedom of conscience; (3) freedom of the press; (4) trial by jury;
+(5) a representative legislature; (6) annual meetings; (7) the
+origination of laws; (8) the exclusive right of taxation and
+appropriation; and (9) the responsibility of Ministers; and with the
+exercise of these powers they could obtain in future whatever might be
+further necessary to improve and preserve their constitution. They
+thought otherwise,' continued Jefferson; 'and events have proved their
+lamentable error; for after thirty years of war, foreign and domestic,
+the loss of millions of lives, the prostration of private happiness,
+and the foreign subjugation of their own country for a time, they have
+obtained no more, nor even that securely.'[2]
+
+Let me, in concluding these observations, sum up in a few words some
+other advantages which you may derive from history. It is, I think,
+one of the best schools for that kind of reasoning which is most
+useful in practical life. It teaches men to weigh conflicting
+probabilities, to estimate degrees of evidence, to form a sound
+judgment of the value of authorities. Reasoning is taught by actual
+practice much more than by any _a priori_ methods. Many good
+judges--and I own I am inclined to agree with them--doubt much whether
+a study of formal logic ever yet made a good reasoner. Mathematics are
+no doubt invaluable in this respect, but they only deal with
+demonstrations; and it has often been observed how many excellent
+mathematicians are somewhat peculiarly destitute of the power of
+measuring degrees of probability. But history is largely concerned
+with the kind of probabilities on which the conduct of life mainly
+depends. There is one hint about historical reasoning which I think
+may not be unworthy of your notice. When studying some great
+historical controversy, place yourselves by an effort of the
+imagination alternately on each side of the battle; try to realise as
+fully as you can the point of view of the best men on either side, and
+then draw up upon paper the arguments of each in the strongest form
+you can give them. You will find that few practices do more to
+elucidate the past, or form a better mental discipline.
+
+History, again, greatly expands our horizon and enlarges our
+experience by bringing us in direct contact with men of many times and
+countries. It gives young men something of the experience of old men,
+and untravelled men something of the experience of travelled ones. A
+great source of error in our judgment of men is that we do not make
+sufficient allowance for the difference of types. The essentials of
+right and wrong no doubt continue the same, but if you look carefully
+into history you will find that the special stress which is attached
+to particular virtues is constantly changing. Sometimes it is the
+civic virtues, sometimes the religious virtues, sometimes the
+industrial virtues, sometimes the love of truth, sometimes the more
+amiable dispositions, that are most valued, and occupy the foremost
+place in the moral type. The men of each age must be judged by the
+ideal of their own age and country, and not by the ideal of ours. Men
+look at life in very different aspects, and they differ greatly in
+their ways of reasoning, in the qualities they admire, in the aims
+which they chiefly prize. In few things do they differ more than in
+their capacity for self-government; in the kinds of liberty they
+especially value; in their love or dislike of government guidance or
+control.
+
+The power of realising and understanding types of character very
+different from our own is not, I think, an English quality, and a
+great many of our mistakes in governing other nations come from this
+deficiency. Some thirty or forty years ago especially it was the
+custom of English statesmen to write and speak as if the salvation of
+every nation depended mainly upon its adoption of a miniature copy of
+the British Constitution. Now, if there is a lesson which history
+teaches clearly, it is that the same institutions are not fitted for
+all nations, and that what in one nation may prove perfectly
+successful, will in another be supremely disastrous. The habits and
+traditions of a nation; the peculiar bent of its character and
+intellect; the degree in which self-control, respect for law, the
+spirit of compromise, and disinterested public spirit are diffused
+through the people; the relations of classes, and the divisions of
+property, are all considerations of capital importance. It is a great
+error, both in history and in practical politics, to attach too much
+value to a political machine. The essential consideration is by what
+men and in what spirit that machine is likely to be worked. Few
+Constitutions contain more theoretical anomalies, and even
+absurdities, than that under which England has attained to such an
+unexampled height of political prosperity; while a servile imitation
+of some of the most skilfully-devised Constitutions in Europe has not
+saved some of the South American States from long courses of anarchy,
+bankruptcy, and revolution.
+
+These are some of the political lessons that may be drawn from
+history. Permit me, in conclusion, to say that its most precious
+lessons are moral ones. It expands the range of our vision, and
+teaches us in judging the true interests of nations to look beyond the
+immediate future. Few good judges will deny that this habit is now
+much wanted. The immensely increased prominence in political life of
+ephemeral influences, and especially of the influence of a daily
+press; the immense multiplication of elections, which intensifies
+party conflicts, all tend to concentrate our thoughts more and more
+upon an immediate issue. They narrow the range of our vision, and make
+us somewhat insensible to distant consequences and remote
+contingencies. It is not easy, in the heat and passion of modern
+political life, to look beyond a parliament or an election, beyond the
+interest of a party or the triumph of an hour. Yet nothing is more
+certain than that the ultimate, distant, and perhaps indirect
+consequences of political measures are often far more important than
+their immediate fruits, and that in the prosperity of nations a large
+amount of continuity in politics and the gradual formation of
+political habits are of transcendent importance. History is never more
+valuable than when it enables us, standing as on a height, to look
+beyond the smoke and turmoil of our petty quarrels, and to detect in
+the slow developments of the past the great permanent forces that are
+steadily bearing nations onwards to improvement or decay.
+
+The strongest of these forces are the moral ones. Mistakes in
+statesmanship, military triumphs or disasters, no doubt affect
+materially the prosperity of nations, but their permanent political
+well-being is essentially the outcome of their moral state. Its
+foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in
+a high standard of moral worth and of public spirit; in simple habits,
+in courage, uprightness, and self-sacrifice, in a certain soundness
+and moderation of judgment, which springs quite as much from character
+as from intellect. If you would form a wise judgment of the future of
+a nation, observe carefully whether these qualities are increasing or
+decaying. Observe especially what qualities count for most in public
+life. Is character becoming of greater or less importance? Are the men
+who obtain the highest posts in the nation men of whom in private life
+and irrespective of party competent judges speak with genuine respect?
+Are they men of sincere convictions, sound judgment, consistent lives,
+indisputable integrity, or are they men who have won their positions
+by the arts of a demagogue or an intriguer; men of nimble tongues and
+not earnest beliefs--skilful, above all things, in spreading their
+sails to each passing breeze of popularity? Such considerations as
+these are apt to be forgotten in the fierce excitement of a party
+contest; but if history has any meaning, it is such considerations
+that affect most vitally the permanent well-being of communities, and
+it is by observing this moral current that you can best cast the
+horoscope of a nation.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] _Pericles and Aspasia._
+
+[2] Jefferson's _Memoirs_, i. 80.
+
+
+
+
+THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH
+
+
+I have been asked on the present occasion to deliver a short address
+which might serve as an introduction to the course of lectures and
+conferences on the history and resources of the different portions of
+the Empire which are to take place in the Imperial Institute. In
+attempting to discharge this task my first reflection is one which the
+very existence of the Institute can hardly fail to suggest to anyone
+with any knowledge of recent history. It is the great revolution of
+opinion which has taken place in England within the last few years
+about the real value to her both of her colonies and of her Indian
+Empire. Not many years ago it was a popular doctrine among a large and
+important class of politicians that these vast dominions were not
+merely useless but detrimental to the mother-country, and that it
+should be the end of a wise policy to prepare and facilitate their
+disruption. Bentham, in a pamphlet called 'Emancipate your Colonies,'
+advocated a speedy and complete separation. James Mill, who held a
+high place among these politicians, wrote an article on Colonies for
+the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' which clearly expresses their view.
+Colonies, he contended, are very little calculated to yield any
+advantage whatever to the countries that hold them, and their chief
+influence is to produce and prolong bad government. Why, then, he
+asks, do European nations maintain them? The answer is very
+characteristic, both of the man and of his school. Something, he
+charitably admits, is due to mere ignorance, to mistaken views of
+utility; but the main cause is of another kind. He quotes the saying
+of Sancho Panza, who desired to possess an island in order that he
+might sell its inhabitants as slaves, and put the money in his pocket;
+and he maintains that the chief cause of our Colonial Empire is the
+selfish interest of the governing few who valued colonies because they
+gave them places and enabled them to multiply wars. In more moderate
+and decorous language, Goldwin Smith wrote a book, the object of which
+was to show how desirable it was that this Empire should be gradually
+but steadily reduced to the sweet simplicity of two islands. Similar
+views prevailed very generally in the Manchester school. Cobden
+frequently expressed them. The question of the colonies, he
+maintained, was mainly a question of pounds, shillings, and pence; he
+proved, as he imagined, by many figures that they were a very bad
+bargain; and he expressed his confident hope that one of the results
+of free trade would be 'gradually and imperceptibly to loosen the
+bands which unite our colonies to us.' About our Indian Empire he
+entertained much stronger opinions. He described it as a calamity and
+a curse to the people of England. He looked on it, in his own words,
+'with an eye of despair,' and declared that it was destroying and
+demoralising the national character. It was the belief of his school
+of politicians that all the nations of the world would speedily follow
+the example of England and adopt a policy of perfect free trade; that
+when all men were able to sell their industries with equal facility in
+all countries, it would become a matter of little consequence to them
+under what flag they lived, and that this complete commercial
+assimilation would soon be followed by a general movement for
+disarming, which would put an end to all fear of future war.
+
+Many politicians who certainly cannot be classified with the
+Manchester school held views tending in some degree in the same
+direction. Even Sir Cornewall Lewis in his treatise on the 'Government
+of Dependencies,' which was published in 1841, summed up the
+advantages and disadvantages of a great empire in a manner that gives
+the impression that in his own judgment the disadvantages on the whole
+predominated. In the Autobiography of that great writer and excellent
+public servant Sir Henry Taylor, who for many years exercised much
+influence in the Colonial Office, we have a curious picture of the
+opinions which were held on this subject about thirty years ago, both
+by Sir Henry Taylor himself and by Sir Frederick Rogers, who was at
+this time permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies. They
+both agreed that all our North American colonies were a kind of
+_damnosa hereditas_, and that it was in a high degree desirable that
+they should be amicably separated from Great Britain. Sir Henry Taylor
+wrote his views on the subject with great frankness to the Duke of
+Newcastle, who was then Secretary of State. 'When your Grace and the
+Prince of Wales,' he said, 'were employing yourselves so successfully
+in conciliating the colonists, I thought that you were drawing closer
+ties which might better be slackened, if there were any chance of
+their slipping away altogether. I think that a policy which has regard
+to a not very far off future should prepare facilities and
+propensities for separation.... In my estimation the worst consequence
+of the late dispute with the United States has been that of involving
+this country and its North American provinces in closer relations and
+a common cause.'[3] 'I have always believed,' wrote Sir Frederick
+Rogers in 1885--'and the belief has so confirmed and consolidated
+itself, that I can hardly realise the possibility of anyone seriously
+thinking the contrary--that the destiny of our colonies is
+independence; and that in this point of view the function of the
+Colonial Office is to secure that our connection while it lasts shall
+be as profitable to both parties, and our separation when it comes as
+amicable as possible.'
+
+I do not believe that opinions of this kind, though they were held by
+a large and powerful section of English politicians, ever penetrated
+very deeply into the English nation. One of the causes of Mr. Cobden's
+'despair' was his conviction that the English people would never be
+persuaded to surrender India except at the close of a disastrous and
+exhausting war, and in his day the policy of national surrender was
+certainly not that of the statesmen who led either party in
+Parliament. No one would attribute it to Mr. Disraeli, in whose long
+political life the note of Imperialism was perhaps that which sounded
+with the clearest ring, and it was quite as repugnant to Lord
+Palmerston and Lord John Russell. In an admirable speech which was
+delivered in the beginning of 1850, Lord John Russell disclaimed all
+sympathy with it, and I can well remember the indignation with which
+in his latter days he was accustomed to speak of the views on the
+subject which were then frequently expressed. 'When I was young,' he
+once said to me, 'it was thought the mark of a wise statesman that he
+had turned a small kingdom into a great empire. In my old age it
+appears to be thought the object of a statesman to turn a great
+empire into a small kingdom.'
+
+I do not think that anyone who has watched the current of English
+opinion will doubt that the views of the Manchester school on this
+subject have within the last few years steadily lost ground, and that
+a far warmer and, in my opinion, nobler and more healthy feeling
+towards India and the colonies has grown up. The change may be
+attributed to many causes. In the first place, what Carlyle called
+'The Calico Millennium' has not arrived. The nations have not adopted
+free trade, but nearly all of them, including unfortunately many of
+our own colonies, have raised tariff walls against our trade. The
+Reign of Peace has not come. National antipathies and jealousies play
+about as great a part in human affairs as they ever did, and there are
+certainly not less than three and a half millions, there are probably
+nearly four millions, of men under arms in what are called the peace
+establishments of Europe. It is beginning to be clearly seen that,
+with our vast, redundant, ever-growing population, with our enormous
+manufactures, and our utterly insufficient supply of home-grown food,
+it is a matter of life and death to the nation, and especially to its
+working classes, that there should be secure and extending fields open
+to our goods, and in the present condition of the world we must mainly
+look for these fields within our own Empire. The gigantic dimensions
+that Indian trade has assumed within the last few years, and the
+extraordinary commercial development of some other parts of our
+Empire, have pointed the moral, and it has been made still more
+apparent by the eagerness with which other Powers, and especially
+Germany, have flung themselves into the path of colonisation. In an
+age, too, when all the paths of professional and industrial life in
+our country are crowded to excess, the competitive system has combined
+with our new acquisitions of territory to throw open noble fields of
+employment, enterprise and ambition to poor and struggling talent, and
+India is proving a school of inestimable value for maintaining some of
+the best and most masculine qualities of our race. It is the great
+seed-plot of our military strength; and the problems of Indian
+administration are peculiarly fitted to form men of a kind that is
+much needed among us--men of strong purpose and firm will, and high
+ruling and organising powers, men accustomed to deal with facts rather
+than with words, and to estimate measures by their intrinsic value,
+and not merely by their party advantages, men skilful in judging human
+character under its many types and aspects and disguises.
+
+If again we turn to our great self-governing colonies, we have learnt
+to feel how valuable it is, in an age in which international
+jealousies are so rife, that there should be vast and rapidly growing
+portions of the globe that are not only at peace with us, but at one
+with us; how unspeakably important it is to the future of the world
+that the English race, through the ages that are to come, should cling
+as closely as possible together. As a distinguished statesman who
+lately represented the United States in England[4] has admirably said,
+'If it is not always true that trade follows flag, it is at least true
+that "heart follows flag,"' and the feeling that our fellow-subjects
+in distant parts of the Empire bear to us is very different from the
+feeling even of the most friendly foreign nation. Our great colonies
+have readily undertaken the responsibility of providing for their own
+defence by land, and even in some degree by sea. If the protection of
+their coasts in time of war might become a great strain upon our navy,
+this disadvantage is largely balanced by the importance of distant
+maritime possessions to every nation that desires to maintain an
+efficient fleet; by the immense advantage to a great commercial Power
+of secure harbours and coaling stations scattered over the world. It
+is not difficult to conceive circumstances in which the destruction of
+some of our main industries, occurring, perhaps, in the midst of a
+great war, might make it utterly impossible for our present population
+to live upon British soil, and when the possession of vast territories
+under the British flag, and in the hands of the British race, might
+become a matter of transcendent importance. Think for a moment of the
+colossal, and indeed appalling, proportions which our great towns are
+assuming! Think of all the vice and ignorance and disease, of all the
+sordid abject misery, of all the lawless passions that are festering
+within them! And then consider how precarious are many of the
+conditions of our industrial prosperity, how grave and how numerous
+are the dangers that threaten it both from within and from without.
+Who can reflect seriously on these things without feeling that the day
+may come--perhaps at no distant date--when the question of emigration
+may overshadow all others? To many of us, indeed, it seems one of the
+greatest errors of modern English statesmanship that when the great
+exodus from Ireland took place after the famine, Government took no
+step to aid it, or to direct it to quarters where it would have been
+of real benefit to the Empire. Many good judges think that the
+advantages of such interference in allaying bitter feelings,
+softening a disastrous crisis, and permanently strengthening the
+Empire, might have been well purchased even if they cost as much as
+England has sometimes lost by one comparatively insignificant war or
+by one disastrous strike. In dealing with this question of emigration
+in the future, colonial assistance may be of supreme importance. And
+those who have understood the significance of that memorable incident
+in our recent history--the despatch of Australian troops to fight our
+battles in the Soudan--may perceive that there is at least a
+possibility of a still closer and more beneficent union between
+England and her colonies--a union that would vastly increase the
+strength of both, and by doing so become a great guarantee of peace in
+the world.
+
+It would be a calumny to suppose that the change of feeling I have
+described was solely due to a calculation of interests. Patriotism
+cannot be reduced to a mere question of money, and a nation which has
+grown tired of the responsibilities of empire, and careless of the
+acquisitions of its past and of its greatness in the future, would
+indeed have entered into a period of inevitable decadence. Happily we
+have not yet come to this. I believe the overwhelming majority of the
+people of these islands are convinced that an England reduced to the
+limits which the Manchester school would assign to it would be an
+England shorn of the chief elements of its dignity in the world, and
+that no greater disgrace could befall them than to have sacrificed
+through indifference, or negligence, or faint-heartedness, an Empire
+which has been built up by so much genius and so much heroism in the
+past. Railways and telegraphs and newspapers have brought us into
+closer touch with our distant possessions, have enabled us to realise
+more vividly both their character and their greatness, and have thus
+extended the horizon of our sympathies and interests. The figures of
+illustrious colonial statesmen are becoming familiar to us. Men formed
+in Indian and colonial spheres are becoming more numerous and
+prominent in our own public life. The presence in England of a High
+Commissioner from Canada, and of Agents-General from our other
+colonies, constitutes a real though informal colonial representation,
+and on more than one recent occasion our foreign policy has been
+swayed by colonial pressure. These young democracies, with their vast
+undeveloped resources, their unwearied energies, their great social
+and industrial problems, are beginning to loom largely in the
+imaginations of Europe. They feel, we believe, a just pride in being
+members of a great and ancient Empire, and heirs to the glories of its
+past. We, in our turn, feel a no less just pride in our union with
+those coming nations which are still lit with the hues of sunrise and
+rich in the promise of the future.
+
+It has been suggested to me that I should on the present occasion say
+something about the methods by which this great Empire was built up,
+but it is obvious that in a short address like the present it is only
+possible to touch on so large a subject in the most cursory manner.
+Much is due to our insular position and our command of the sea, which
+gave Englishmen, in the competition of nations, a peculiar power both
+of conquering and holding distant dependencies. Being precluded,
+perhaps quite as much by their position as by their desire, from
+throwing themselves, like most continental nations, into a long course
+of European aggression, they have largely employed their redundant
+energies in exploring, conquering, civilising, and governing distant
+and half-savage lands. They have found, like all other nations, that
+an Empire planted amid the shifting sands of half-civilised and
+anarchical races is compelled for its own security, and as a mere
+matter of police, to extend its borders. The chapter of
+accidents--which has played a larger part in most human affairs than
+many very philosophical enquirers are inclined to admit--has counted
+for something. But, in addition to these things, there are certain
+general characteristics of English policy which have contributed very
+largely to the success of the Empire.
+
+It has been the habit of most nations to regulate colonial governments
+in all their details according to the best metropolitan ideas, and to
+surround them with a network of restrictions. England has in general
+pursued a different course. Partly on system, but partly also, I
+think, from neglect, she has always allowed an unusual latitude to
+local knowledge and to local wishes. She has endeavoured to secure,
+wherever her power extends, life and property, and contract and
+personal freedom, and, in these latter days, religious liberty; but
+for the rest she has meddled very little; she has allowed her
+settlements to develop much as they please, and has given, in practice
+if not in theory, the fullest powers to her governors. It is
+astonishing, in the history of the British Empire, how large a part of
+its greatness is due to the independent action of individual
+adventurers, or groups of emigrants, or commercial companies, almost
+wholly unassisted and uncontrolled by the Government at home. An
+Empire formed by such methods is not likely to exhibit much symmetry
+and unity of plan, but it is certain to be pervaded in an unusual
+degree, in all its parts, by a spirit of enterprise and self-reliance;
+it will probably be peculiarly fertile in men not only of energy but
+of resource, capable of dealing with strange conditions and
+unforeseen exigencies. England in the past periods of her history has,
+on the whole, been singularly successful in adapting her different
+administrations to widely different national circumstances and
+characters, and governments of the most various types have arisen
+under her rule. Nothing in the history of the world is more wonderful
+than that under the flag of these two little islands there should have
+grown up the greatest and most beneficent despotism in the world,
+comprising nearly two hundred and thirty millions of inhabitants under
+direct British rule, and more than fifty millions under British
+protectorates; while at the same time British colonies and settlements
+that are scattered throughout the globe number not less than fifty-six
+distinct subordinate governments.
+
+This system would have been less successful if it had not been for two
+important facts. The original stuff of which our Colonial Empire was
+formed was singularly good. Some of the most important of our colonies
+were founded in the days of religious war, and the early settlers
+consisted largely of religious refugees--a class who are usually
+superior to the average of men in intellectual and industrial
+qualities, and are nearly always greatly superior to them in strength
+of conviction, and in those high moral qualities which play so great a
+part in the well-being of nations. Besides this, in those distant
+days, the difficulties of emigration were so great that they were
+rarely voluntarily encountered except by men of much more than average
+courage, enterprise and resource. These early adventurers were
+certainly often of no saintly type, but they were largely endowed with
+the robuster qualities that are most needed for grappling with new
+circumstances and carving out the empires of the future.
+
+The second fact is the high standard of patriotism and honour which we
+may, I think, truly say has nearly always prevailed among English
+public servants. It is not an easy thing to secure honest and faithful
+administration in remote countries, far from the supervision and
+practical control of the central government. I think we may boast with
+truth that England has attained this end, not indeed perfectly, but at
+least to a greater degree than most other nations. The history of
+Indian and colonial governors has never been written as a whole, but
+it is well worthy of study. In the appointment of these men party has
+always counted for something, and family has counted for something;
+but they have never been the only considerations, and, on the whole, I
+believe it will be found, if we consider the three elements of
+character, capacity and experience, that our Indian and colonial
+governors represent a higher level of ruling qualities than has been
+attained by any line of hereditary sovereigns, or by any line of
+elected presidents. In the period of the foundation of our Indian
+Empire much was done that was violent and rapacious, but the best
+modern research seems to show that the picture which a few years ago
+was generally accepted had been greatly overcharged. The history of
+Warren Hastings and his companions has been recently studied with
+great knowledge and ability, and with the result that the more serious
+opinions on the subject have been considerably modified. Much
+exaggeration undoubtedly grew up in the last century, partly through
+ignorance of Oriental affairs, and partly also through the eloquence
+of Burke. There is no figure in English political history for which I
+at least entertain a greater reverence than Edmund Burke. I believe
+him to have been a man of transparent honesty, as well as of
+transcendent genius; but his politics were too apt to be steeped in
+passion, and he was often carried away by the irresistible force of
+his own imagination and feelings. Misrepresentations were greatly
+consolidated by the Indian History of James Mill, which was for a long
+time the main, and indeed almost the only, source from which
+Englishmen obtained their knowledge of Indian history. It was written,
+as might be expected, with the strongest bias of hostility to the
+English in India, yet I suspect that many superficial readers imagined
+that a history which was so unquestionably dull must be at least
+impartial and philosophical. Unfortunately, Macaulay relied greatly on
+it, and, without having made any serious independent studies on the
+subject, he invested some of its misrepresentations with all the
+splendour of his eloquence. I believe all competent authorities are
+now agreed that his essay on Warren Hastings, though it is one of the
+most brilliant of his writings, is also one of the most seriously
+misleading.
+
+I am not prepared to say that the reaction of opinion produced by the
+new school of Indian historians has not been sometimes carried too
+far, but these writers have certainly dispelled much exaggeration and
+some positive falsehood. They have shown that, although under
+circumstances of extreme difficulty and extraordinary temptation, some
+very bad things were done by Englishmen in India, these things were
+neither as numerous nor as grave as has been alleged.
+
+On the whole, too, it may be truly said that English colonial policy
+in its broad lines has to a remarkable degree avoided grave errors.
+The chief exception is to be found in the series of mistakes which
+produced the American Revolution, and ended in the loss of our chief
+American colonies. Yet even in this instance it is, I believe, coming
+to be perceived that there is much more to be said for the English
+case than the historians of the last generation were apt to imagine.
+In imposing commercial restrictions on the colonies and endeavouring
+to secure for the mother-country the monopoly of their trade, we
+merely acted upon ideas that were then almost universally received,
+and our commercial code was on the whole less illiberal than that of
+other nations. Both Spain and France imposed restrictions on their
+colonies which were far more severe, and the English restrictions were
+at least mitigated by frequent partial relaxations and exceptions, by
+some important monopolies granted in favour of the colonies in the
+English market and by bounties encouraging several branches of
+colonial produce. It is at least certain that under the large measure
+of political liberty granted by the English Government to the English
+colonies their material prosperity, even in the worst period of
+commercial restriction, steadily and rapidly advanced. This has been
+clearly shown by more than one writer on our side of the Atlantic, but
+the subject has never been treated with more exhaustive knowledge and
+more perfect impartiality than by an American writer--Mr. George
+Beer--whose work on the Commercial Policy of England has recently been
+published by Columbia College, in New York. No one will now altogether
+defend Grenville's policy of taxing America by the Imperial
+Parliament, but it ought not to be forgotten that it was expressly
+provided that every farthing of this taxation was to be expended in
+America, and devoted to colonial defence. England had just terminated
+a great war, which, by expelling the French from Canada, had been of
+inestimable advantage to her colonies, but which had left the
+mother-country almost crushed by debt. All that Grenville desired was,
+that the American colonies should provide a portion of the cost of
+their own defence, as our great colonies are doing at the present
+time, and he only resorted to Imperial taxation because he despaired
+of achieving this end by any other means. The step which he took was
+no doubt a false one. As is so often the case in England, it was made
+worse by party changes and by party recriminations, and many later
+mistakes aggravated and embittered the original dispute; but I think
+an impartial reader of this melancholy chapter of English history will
+come to the conclusion that these mistakes were by no means all on one
+side.
+
+It is a story which is certainly not without its lesson to our own
+time. It is very improbable that any future statesman will follow the
+example of George Grenville, and endeavour by Act of Parliament to
+impose taxation on a self-governing colony; but it would be a grave
+error to suppose that the danger of unwise parliamentary interference
+in Indian and colonial affairs has diminished. Great as are the
+advantages of telegraphs and newspapers in the government of the
+Empire, they are not without their drawbacks. Government by telegraph
+is a very dangerous thing, and there is, I fear, an increasing
+tendency to override local knowledge, and to apply English standards
+and methods of government to wholly un-English conditions.
+Ill-considered resolutions of the House of Commons, often passed in
+obedience to some popular fad, and without any real intention of
+carrying them into effect; language used in Parliament which is often
+due to no deeper motive than a desire to win the favour of some class
+of voters in an English constituency, may do as much as serious
+misgovernment to alienate great masses of British subjects beyond the
+sea. All really competent judges are agreed that one of the first
+conditions of successful government in India has been that Indian
+questions have for the most part been kept out of the range of English
+party politics, and that Indian government has been conducted on
+principles essentially different from democratic government at home.
+
+On the whole, however, it is impossible to review the colonial history
+of England without being struck with the many serious dangers that
+might easily have shattered the Empire, which were averted by wise
+statesmanship and timely--or at least not fatally tardy--concession.
+There was the question of the criminal population which we once
+transported to Australia. In the early stage of the colony, when the
+population was very sparse and the need for labour very imperative,
+this was not regarded as in any degree a grievance; but the time came
+when it became a grievance of the gravest kind, and the Imperial power
+had at length the wisdom to abandon it. There was the question of the
+different and hostile religious bodies existing in different portions
+of the Empire, at a time when the monopoly of political power by the
+members of a single Established Church, the exclusive endowment of its
+clergy, and the maintenance of the purely Protestant character of the
+English Government were cherished as religious duties by politicians
+at home. Yet at this very time an established and endowed Roman
+Catholic Church was flourishing in Canada, and there were numerous
+examples throughout the British dominions of the concurrent endowment
+of different forms of religious belief by the State,[5] while in India
+it abstained, with an extreme, and sometimes even an exaggerated,
+scrupulousness, from all measures that could by any possibility offend
+the native religious prejudices. There was the question of
+Slavery--though we were freed from the most difficult part of this
+problem by the secession of America. In addition, however, to its
+moral aspects, it affected most vitally the material prosperity of
+some of our richest colonies; it raised the very dangerous
+constitutional question of the right of the Imperial Parliament to
+interfere with the internal affairs of a self-governing colony, and it
+brought the Home Government into more serious collision with the local
+Governments than any question since the American Revolution. Whatever
+may be thought of the wisdom of the measures by which we abolished
+slavery in our West Indian colonies, no one at least can deny the
+liberality of a Parliament which voted from Imperial resources twenty
+millions for the accomplishment of the work. There was the conflict of
+race and creed which between 1830 and 1840 had brought Canada to
+absolute rebellion, and threatened a complete alienation of Canadian
+feeling from the mother-country. This discontent was effectually
+allayed and dispelled by the union of Upper and Lower Canada under a
+system of constitutional government of the most liberal character,
+which gave the colonists on all subjects of internal legislation a
+legislative independence that was in practice almost complete.
+Considered as a measure of conciliation this has proved one of the
+most successful of the nineteenth century, and in spite of a few
+discordant notes it may be truly said that there are few greater
+contrasts in the present reign than are presented between Canadian
+feeling towards the mother-country when Queen Victoria ascended the
+throne and Canadian feeling at the present hour. There was also the
+great and dangerous task to be accomplished of adapting the system of
+colonial government to the different stages of colonial development.
+There was a time when the colonies were so weak that they depended
+mainly on England for their protection; but, unlike some of the great
+colonising Powers of ancient and modern times, England never drew a
+direct tribute from her colonies, and, in spite of much unwise and
+some unjust legislation, I believe there was never a time when they
+were not on the whole benefited by the connection. Soon, however, the
+colonies grew to the strength and maturity of nationhood, and the
+mother-country speedily recognised the fact, and allowed no unworthy
+or ungenerous fears to restrain her from granting them the fullest
+powers, both of self-government and of federation. It is true that she
+still sends out a governor--usually drawn from the ranks of
+experienced and considerable English public men--to preside over
+colonial affairs. It is true that she retains a right of veto which is
+scarcely ever exercised except to prevent some intercolonial or
+international dispute, some act of violence, or some grave anomaly in
+the legislation of the Empire. It is true that colonial cases may be
+carried, on appeal, to an English tribunal, representing the very
+highest judicial capacity of the mother-country, and free from all
+possibility and suspicion of partiality; but I do not believe that any
+of these light ties are unpopular with any considerable section of the
+colonists. On the other hand, though it would be idle to suppose that
+our great colonies depend largely upon the mother-country, I believe
+that most colonists recognise that there is something in the weight
+and dignity attaching to fellow-membership and fellow-citizenship in
+a great Empire--something in the protection of the greatest navy in
+the world--something in the improved credit which connection with a
+very rich centre undoubtedly gives to colonial finance.
+
+It is the custom of our friends and neighbours on the Continent to
+bestow much scornful remark on the egotism of English policy, which
+attends mainly to the interests of the British Empire, and is not
+ready to make war for an idea and in support of the interests of
+others. I think, if it were necessary, we might fairly defend
+ourselves by showing that in the past we have meddled with the affairs
+of other nations quite as much as is reasonable. For my own part, I
+confess that I distrust greatly these explosions of military
+benevolence. They always begin by killing a great many men. They
+usually end in ways that are not those of a disinterested
+philanthropy. After all, an egotism that mainly confines itself to the
+well-being of about a fifth part of the globe cannot be said to be of
+a very narrow type, and it is essentially by her conduct to her own
+Empire that the part of England in promoting the happiness of mankind
+must be ultimately judged. It is indeed but too true that many of the
+political causes which have played a great part on platforms, in
+parties, and in Parliaments are of such a nature that their full
+attainment would not bring relief to one suffering human heart, or
+staunch one tear of pain, or add in any appreciable degree to the real
+happiness of a single home. But most assuredly Imperial questions are
+not of this order. Remember what India had been for countless ages
+before the establishment of British rule. Think of its endless wars of
+race and creed, its savage oppressions, its fierce anarchies, its
+barbarous customs; and then consider what it is to have established
+for so many years over the vast space from the Himalayas to Cape
+Comorin a reign of perfect peace; to have conferred upon more than two
+hundred and fifty millions of the human race perfect religious
+freedom, perfect security of life, liberty, and property; to have
+planted in the midst of these teeming multitudes a strong central
+government, enlightened by the best knowledge of Western Europe, and
+steadily occupied in preventing famine, alleviating disease,
+extirpating savage customs, multiplying the agencies of civilisation
+and progress. This is the true meaning of that system of government on
+which Mr. Cobden looked with 'an eye of despair.' What work of human
+policy--I would even say what form of human philanthropy--has ever
+contributed more largely to reduce the great sum of human misery and
+to add to the possibilities of human happiness?
+
+And if we turn to the other side of our Empire, although it is quite
+true that our great free colonies are fully capable of shaping their
+destinies for themselves, may we not truly say that these noble
+flowers have sprung from British and from Irish seeds? May we not say
+that the laws, the Constitutions, the habits of thought and character
+that have so largely made them what they are, are mainly of English
+origin? May we not even add that it is in no small part due to their
+place in the British Empire that these vast sections of the globe,
+with their diverse and sometimes jarring interests, have remained at
+perfect peace with us and with each other, and have escaped the curse
+of an exaggerated militarism, which is fast eating like a canker into
+the prosperity of the great nations of Europe?
+
+When responsible government was conceded by the British Government to
+her more important colonies, it was done in the fullest and largest
+measure. Although the mother-country remained burdened with the task
+of defending them she made no reservation securing for herself free
+trade with her colonies or even preferential treatment, and she
+surrendered unconditionally to the local legislatures the waste and
+unoccupied lands which had long been regarded in England as held in
+trust for the benefit of the Empire as a whole. The growing belief
+that the connection with the colonies was likely to be a very
+transitory one, and also the belief that free-trade doctrines were
+likely speedily to prevail, no doubt influenced English statesmen, and
+it is not probable that any of them foresaw that both Canada and
+Australia would speedily make use of their newly acquired power to
+impose heavy duties on English goods. The strongly protectionist
+character which the English colonies assumed at a time when England
+had committed herself to the most extreme free-trade policy tended no
+doubt to separation, and when the English Government adopted the
+policy of withdrawing its garrisons from the colonies, when the North
+American colonies, with the full assent of the mother-country, formed
+themselves into a great federation, and when a movement in the same
+direction sprang up in Australia, it was the opinion of some of the
+most sagacious statesmen and thinkers in England that the time of
+separation was very near.[6]
+
+On the whole, however, these predictions have hitherto been falsified.
+The federation of North America and, at a later period, the federation
+of Australia have been followed by an increased and not a diminished
+disposition on the side of the colonists to draw closer the ties with
+the mother-country, while in England the popular imagination has been
+more and more impressed with the growing magnitude and importance of
+her colonial dominions. The tendency towards great political
+agglomerations based upon an affinity of race, language and creed,
+which has produced the Pan-Slavonic movement and the Pan-Germanic
+movement, and which chiefly made the unity of Italy, has not been
+without its influence in the English-speaking world, and it is felt
+that a close union between its several parts is essential if it is
+fully to maintain its relative position under the new conditions of
+the world. The English-speaking nations comprise the most rapidly
+increasing, the most progressive, the most happily situated nations of
+the earth, and if their power and influence are not wasted by internal
+quarrels their type of civilisation must one day become dominant in
+the world.
+
+Whether their harmony and unity are likely to be attained is one of
+the great problems of the future, but the ideal is one which every
+patriotic Englishman should at least set before him. It is not one
+which can be called an assured destiny, and to many the chances seem
+on the whole against it. Unexpected collisions of interest or passion
+or ambition may at any time mar the prospects, and in great
+democracies largely influenced by demagogues and by an irresponsible
+and anonymous Press there are always powerful agencies that do not
+make for peace. Immediate party interests both at home and in the
+colonies too frequently blind men to distant and ulterior
+consequences, and the many ill-wishers to the British Empire are sure
+to direct their policy largely to its disruption. The natural bond of
+union of a great Empire is economical unity, binding its several parts
+together by a common system of free trade and by a common commercial
+policy towards other Powers. Unfortunately the profoundly different
+policy adopted on these matters in England and her colonies has made
+such a Union almost impracticable, and it is quite possible for the
+English colonies to be united by closer commercial ties with foreign
+countries than with the mother-country. The question of the common
+defence of the Empire and the question of the representation of the
+colonies in Imperial politics are also questions of great difficulty
+and of pressing importance.
+
+Something has been done showing at least a disposition to meet them.
+The concession of preferential duties in favour of England by some of
+our most important colonies, the small subsidies made to the
+maintenance of the British navy, and the far more important military
+assistance given by the colonies to the mother-country in the Egyptian
+and the South African wars are indicative of the feeling of closer
+unity which has grown up between England and her colonies, and in
+addition to the appointment of Agents-General, the introduction of a
+few eminent colonial judges into the Judicial Committee of the Privy
+Council, which is the Supreme Court of Appeal of the Empire, has given
+the colonies some real representation in Imperial affairs. Much more,
+however, in this direction may be done. There have been several
+instances of eminent colonials obtaining seats in the English House of
+Commons to the great advantage of the Empire, but a regular
+representation of the colonies in this assembly may, I think, be
+dismissed as altogether impracticable. The mere distance is a
+sufficient objection, and at least nine-tenths of the business of the
+House of Commons deals with purely English questions depending for
+their wise solution on inherited English habits and on compromises
+with existing institutions, and a large proportion of them are
+problems which have been already dealt with in the colonies on other
+grounds and without any of the complexities of an old country. What
+reason could there be for calling in the colonists to adjudicate,
+perhaps even to turn the balance, on questions relating to English
+education, English licensing laws, English taxation, English
+dispositions of property? The difficulty of distinguishing between
+Imperial and local questions would be insuperable. The division of the
+House into two categories of members with distinct spheres of voting
+power would prove unworkable, and the colonial representatives would
+during most of their time in Parliament have nothing to do. An
+increase in the number of peers drawn from the colonies would be less
+impracticable, but there would be much that is invidious in the
+choice; much danger that the colonial peers living in England would
+get out of touch with the colonies and become an object of envy and
+jealousy; and English lawyers do not think that a large infusion of
+colonial law peers would raise the competence of the Supreme Judicial
+Tribunal of the Empire, which represents at present the highest legal
+talent and attainments in England and deals mainly with English legal
+questions. A Consultative Council, however, consisting of the
+Agents-General and perhaps reinforced by additional colonial
+representatives and dealing exclusively with Imperial questions, does
+not seem wholly impracticable, and many competent judges believe that
+a supreme legal tribunal for dealing with inter-colonial and
+international conflicts might be constructed which would be both more
+efficient and more representative than any that now exists.
+
+It is probable, however, that the true tie that must unite the
+different portions of the Empire must be mainly a moral one. In the
+conditions of modern life no power is likely to maintain long a vast,
+scattered, heterogeneous Empire if the central governing power within
+it has declined; if through want of efficiency, or moral energy, or
+moral purity, it ceases to win the respect of its several parts. It is
+no less true that the cohesion can only be permanently maintained by
+the wide diffusion of a larger and Imperial patriotism, pervading the
+whole like a vital principle; binding men by the ties of pride and of
+affection to the great Empire to which they belong, and subordinating
+to its maintenance local and party and class interests. If this spirit
+dies out, the movement of disintegration is sure to begin. No
+political machinery, no utilitarian calculation, will in the long run
+be powerful enough to arrest it.
+
+What may be the future place of these islands in the government of the
+world no human being can foretell. Nations, as history but too plainly
+shows, have their periods of decay as well as their periods of growth.
+The balance of power in the world is constantly shifting. Maxims and
+influences very different from those which made England what she is
+are in the ascendant, and the clouds upon the horizon are neither few
+nor slight. But, whatever fate may be in store for these islands, and
+for the political unity we so justly prize, we may at least
+confidently predict that no revolution in human affairs can now
+destroy the future ascendancy of the English language and of the
+Imperial race. Whatever misfortunes, whatever humiliations the future
+may reserve to us, they cannot deprive England of the glory of having
+created this mighty Empire.
+
+    Not Heaven itself upon the Past has power.
+    But what has been, has been--and we have had our hour.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] _Autobiography_, ii. pp. 234, 235.
+
+[4] Mr. Bayard.
+
+[5] See the enumeration of these endowments in Gladstone's _State and
+Church_, Ch. IX.
+
+[6] See Cairnes' _Political Essays_, 49-50, 56.
+
+
+
+
+IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY
+
+
+The kind of interest which belongs to Irish history is curiously
+different from that which attaches to the history of England and to
+that of most of the great nations of the Continent. In very few
+histories do we find so little national unity or continuous progress,
+or such long spaces which are almost wholly occupied by perplexed,
+petty internal broils, often stained by atrocious crimes, but turning
+on no large issue and leading to no clear or stable results. Except
+during the great missionary period of the sixth and seventh centuries,
+and during a brief portion of the eighteenth century, we have little
+of the interest that arises from dramatic situations or shining
+characters, and in few countries has the highest intellect been, on
+the whole, so slightly connected with the administration of affairs.
+To a philosophical student of politics, however, Irish history
+possesses an interest of the highest order. It is an invaluable study
+of morbid anatomy. In very few histories can we trace so clearly the
+effects of political and social circumstances in forming national
+character; the calamity of missed opportunities and of fluctuating and
+procrastinating policy; the folly of attempting to govern by the same
+methods and institutions nations that are wholly different in their
+characters and their civilisation.
+
+The idea which still floats vaguely in many minds that Ireland, before
+the arrival of the Normans, was a single and independent nation, is
+wholly false. Ireland was not a nation, but a collection of separate
+tribes and kingdoms, engaged in almost constant warfare. In this
+respect, however, she resembled many countries which have since
+attained the most perfect unity, and there can be little doubt that,
+if her development had been impeded by no extraneous influences,
+Ireland would have followed the same path as England or France. Much
+stress has been justly laid on the disorganising influence of a long
+succession of Danish invasions, though it must be remembered that
+Ireland owes to the Danes the foundation of some of her most important
+cities. Roman conquest, which introduced into most of Europe
+invaluable elements of order, organisation, and respect for law, never
+extended to Ireland. The Anglo-Norman invasion and conquest produced
+consequences which were almost wholly evil. If the invaders had been
+driven from the Irish shore, the natural course of development would,
+no doubt, have been in time continued. If the invaders had completely
+conquered Ireland, a fusion might have taken place as complete and as
+healthy as in England. Neither of these two events occurred. The
+English conquest was prolonged over nearly four hundred years. A
+hostile and separate power was planted in the centre of Ireland
+sufficiently powerful to prevent the formation of another
+civilisation, yet not sufficiently powerful to impose a civilisation
+of its own. Feudalism was introduced, but the keystone of the system,
+a strong resident sovereign, was wanting, and Ireland was soon torn by
+the wars of great Anglo-Norman nobles, who were, in fact, independent
+sovereigns, much like the old Irish kings. The Scotch invasion of the
+fourteenth century added enormously to the anarchy and confusion; the
+English power as a living reality contracted to the narrow limits of
+the pale; in outlying districts the Anglo-Norman assimilated quickly
+with the Celtic element, while the English legislators in Ireland,
+alarmed at the tendency, made it the main object of their policy, in
+the words of Sir John Davies, 'to make a perpetual separation and
+enmity between the English and Irish, pretending no doubt that the
+English should in the end root out the Irish.'
+
+Such a state of things continued till the long and terrible wars of
+Henry VIII. and Elizabeth broke the power of the independent chiefs
+and of the Celtic clans, and gave Ireland, for the first time, a
+political unity. It is one of the great infelicities of Irish history
+that this result was obtained at the very period of the Reformation.
+The conquerors adopted one religion, while the conquered retained the
+other, and thus a new and most enduring barrier was raised between the
+two nations in Ireland, and a pernicious antagonism was established
+between law and religion.
+
+Another influence not less powerful than religion had at the same time
+come into play. It had become the English policy to place great bodies
+of English and Scotch settlers on the land that was confiscated in
+consequence of rebellion, and under the impulse of the strong spirit
+of adventure which grew up in the generation that followed the
+Reformation, streams of English and Scotch adventurers poured over.
+The great settlement of Ulster under James I. proved ultimately a
+success, and laid the foundation of the prosperity of that province.
+Other plantations were in time absorbed and assimilated by the Celtic
+population; but vast revolutions in the ownership of land, accompanied
+by the subversion of the old tribal customs, laid the foundation of an
+agrarian war which still continues.
+
+Religious and agrarian causes combined with the civil war in England
+to produce the great rebellion of 1641 and the eleven years of
+ghastly, exterminating war which followed. Hardly any page in human
+history is more appalling. A full third of the population of Ireland
+perished. Thirty or forty thousand of the most energetic left the
+country and took service in foreign armies. Great tracts were left
+absolutely depopulated, and after the rearrangement of land, which was
+accomplished by the Act of Settlement, the immense preponderance of
+landed property remained in the hands of the Protestant nation.
+
+New elements, however, of great energy had been planted in Ireland,
+and the field had been thrown open to their exertions. The excellence
+of Irish wool and the cheapness of Irish labour laid the foundation of
+a flourishing woollen manufacture, and with peace, mild
+administration, and much practical tolerance, the wounds of the
+country seemed gradually healing. The later Stuart reigns, which form
+a dark page in English history, were a period of considerable
+prosperity in Ireland, but that period was soon interrupted by the
+Revolution. There was no general or passionate rising in Ireland
+resembling that of 1641, but it was inevitable that the Irish
+Catholics should have adopted the side of the Catholic King, and it
+was equally inevitable that when a Catholic Parliament, consisting
+largely of sons of the men whose properties had recently been
+confiscated, had assembled at Dublin, its members should have made a
+desperate effort to reverse their fortunes and replace the land of the
+country mainly in Catholic hands. The battle of the Boyne shattered
+the Catholic hopes, and it was followed by a new confiscation, by a
+new emigration of the ablest and most energetic Catholics, by a long
+period of commercial restraints, penal laws, and complete Protestant
+ascendancy.
+
+The commercial restraints formed part of a protective policy which was
+at that time general in Europe, and which was severely felt in the
+American colonies. Though it did not absolutely originate in, it was
+greatly intensified by, the Revolution, which gave the manufacturing
+and commercial classes a new power in English government. The linen
+manufacture was spared, but the total destruction by law of the
+flourishing woollen manufacture, followed by a number of restrictions
+imposed on other branches of industry, deprived Ireland of her most
+promising sources of wealth, drove great multitudes of energetic
+Protestants out of the country, and threw the people more and more
+upon the soil as almost their sole means of support.
+
+The penal laws against the Catholics accompanied or closely followed
+the commercial restraints. The blame of them may be divided with some
+equality between the Government of England and the Parliament of
+Ireland. It was the Irish Parliament which enacted these laws, but an
+English Act first made the Irish Parliament exclusively Protestant,
+and the whole legislation was carried at a time when the Irish
+Parliament was completely dependent, and incompetent even to discuss
+any measure without the previous approbation of the English
+Government. In order to judge this legislation with equity, it must be
+remembered that in the beginning of the eighteenth century restrictive
+laws against Protestantism in Catholic countries, and against
+Catholicism in Protestant ones, almost universally prevailed. The laws
+against Irish Catholics were, on the whole, less stringent than those
+against Catholics in England. They were largely modelled after the
+French legislation against the Huguenots, but persecution in Ireland
+never approached in severity that of Louis XIV., and was absolutely
+insignificant compared with that which had extirpated Protestantism
+and Judaism from Spain. The code, however, was not mainly the product
+of religious feeling, but of policy, and in this respect it has been
+defended in its broad outlines, though not in all its details, by such
+Irishmen as Charlemont, Flood, and Parsons. They argued that at the
+close of a long period of savage civil war it was absolutely necessary
+for a small minority, who found themselves in possession of the
+government and land of the country, to deprive the conquered and
+hostile majority of every element of political and military strength.
+This was the real object of the code. It was a measure of self-defence
+justified by necessity and by the fact that it produced in Ireland for
+the space of about eighty years the most perfect tranquillity.
+
+There is much truth in these considerations, but it is also true that
+the penal code produced more pernicious moral, social, and political
+effects than many sanguinary persecutions. In other countries
+disqualifying or persecuting laws were directed against small
+fractions of the nation. In Ireland they were directed against the
+bulk of the community. Being supported by little or no genuine
+religious fanaticism or proselytising ardour, they made few
+Protestants except in the upper orders, where many conformed in order
+to keep their land or to enter professions; but they drove nearly all
+the best and most energetic Catholics to the Continent; they
+discouraged industry; closed the door of knowledge; taught the people
+to look upon law as something hostile to religion; introduced
+division and immorality into families by the rewards they offered to
+apostasy; and condemned the whole country to poverty and impotence by
+fatally depressing the great majority of its people. Under the
+influence of the penal laws the Catholics inevitably acquired the
+vices of serfs, and the Protestants the vices of monopolists. A great
+portion of the code was pronounced, with good reason, to be flagrantly
+opposed to the articles of the Treaty of Limerick, and it completed
+the work of the confiscations by making the landlord class in Ireland
+almost wholly Protestant, while the great majority of the tenantry
+were Catholics.
+
+There was a moment, however, in the beginning of the century when the
+whole current of Irish history might easily have changed. Scotland had
+suffered, like Ireland, from the protective policy that followed the
+Revolution, and her independent Parliament had retaliated by measures
+which threatened the speedy separation of the two crowns, and soon led
+to a legislative Union. In Ireland such a Union was ardently desired
+by enlightened Irishmen, and there is every reason to believe that it
+could then have been carried with universal consent. The Catholics
+were perfectly passive, and would gladly have accepted a change which
+withdrew them from the direct government of the conquerors in a recent
+civil war. The Protestants had as yet no distinctively national
+feeling, and a legislative Union would have emancipated their industry
+and added enormously to their security. Molyneux, the first great
+champion of the legislative independence of Ireland, emphatically
+declared that he and those who thought with him would gladly have
+accepted the alternative of a Union, and both the Irish Houses of
+Parliament voted addresses in favour of such a measure. If it had
+been carried, Ireland would have been at least saved from the evils
+that rose from the commercial restrictions and from the extreme
+jobbing that grew up around the local legislature, and she would,
+perhaps, have been saved from some parts of the penal code. But the
+golden opportunity was lost. The English commercial classes dreaded
+Irish competition in their markets, and the petition of the Irish
+legislature was disregarded.
+
+Nearly seventy years of quiet followed. The establishment of the
+Hanoverian dynasty, the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745, the
+different wars in which England was engaged, left Ireland absolutely
+undisturbed. The House of Commons then sat for a whole reign and met
+only every second year. It was completely subservient to the English
+Privy Council, and it consisted so largely of nomination boroughs that
+a few great nobles commanded a decisive preponderance, and they
+practically conducted the government and administered the patronage of
+Ireland. There was great jobbing and corruption, but taxation, on the
+whole, was exceedingly light, and there was no tendency to throw it
+unduly on the poor, or to create in Ireland any of the many feudal
+burdens that prevailed in France and Germany. The practical evil most
+felt was the system of tithes for the support of the Protestant
+establishment, and it was aggravated by a very unfair exemption of
+pasture land, and also by the prevailing system of farming out tithes
+to a class of men known as tithe proctors. In the country districts
+all power was concentrated in the hands of the landlords, who, with
+many faults and under many difficulties, at least succeeded in
+attaining a large measure of genuine popularity.
+
+There was an Irish army of twelve thousand men, but the greater part
+of it was always sent abroad in time of war, and Ireland was then
+often left with not more than five thousand soldiers. No militia and
+no constabulary force existed, but when Whiteboy or other disturbances
+arose, the landlords put themselves at the head of their tenantry, and
+usually succeeded in suppressing them. Law was very little observed;
+industrial virtues were at the lowest ebb; there was abundance of
+drunkenness, idleness, turbulence, neglect of duty, extreme ignorance,
+and extreme poverty; but there was not much real oppression or
+religious bigotry, and there were no signs of political disturbance or
+conspiracy. After a few years the portions of the penal code which
+restricted the Catholic worship became a dead letter, and Catholic
+chapels were everywhere rising on the Protestant estates. The
+monopoly, however, of place and power continued, though the legal
+profession was full of professing converts. The theological
+temperature in both sects had greatly subsided. Land was usually let
+by the owner on long leases, and at very low rents, to tenants who
+almost invariably divided and sublet their tenancies.
+
+At a later period of the century, when population pressed closely on
+subsistence, the system of middlemen produced a fierce competition
+which raised rent in the lower grades to an enormous height, but this
+evil was less felt with a scanty population, and the hierarchy of
+tenants at least saved the landlords from the dangerous isolation
+which their circumstances tended to produce. Arthur Young, who
+examined the condition of the country very carefully between 1776 and
+1778, perceived great signs of growing prosperity, especially in the
+towns, and, although agriculture was far behind that of England, he
+found a considerable number of active, intelligent, and improving
+landlords. In the opinion of Young the rental of Ireland was unduly
+and unnaturally low, but he urged the landlords to exercise a more
+direct and controlling influence over their estates, and he
+recommended them, for this purpose, to give leases for shorter periods
+and gradually to abolish the system of middlemen and subletting.
+
+In the north there was a powerful, intelligent Protestant community,
+with a strong leaning to republicanism. They were chiefly
+Presbyterians, and they resented bitterly the commercial restrictions
+and the obligation of paying tithes to an Episcopal church. The Irish
+Parliament was so constituted that they had no political power at all
+equivalent to their importance, and, like the Presbyterians in
+England, they were burdened by the Test Act, and their marriages were
+only valid if celebrated in the Established Church. The great power of
+the bishops, both in the Privy Council and in the House of Lords,
+formed a very serious obstacle to church reform. In all classes of
+Protestants, however, in the closing years of George II., there was a
+strong resentment at the political subjection of Ireland, and a
+determination to obtain, if possible, those constitutional rights
+which the Revolution of 1688 had secured for England.
+
+It is impossible, within the narrow limits assigned to me, to give
+even a sketch of the successive stages by which the independence of
+the Irish Parliament was established. The movement began with the
+Octennial Act, limiting the duration of Parliament, and it came to
+full maturity during the war of the American Revolution. Among the
+Irish Catholics there appears to have been absolutely no sympathy with
+the American cause, but Ulster Protestantism was enthusiastically on
+the side of America. Presbyterians from Ulster bore a considerable
+part in the American armies, and under the influence of American
+example public opinion in Ireland rapidly advanced. The great
+Volunteer movement of 1778 and the following years was originated by
+the fact that the Government could supply no troops for the defence of
+Ulster at a time when it was in imminent danger of attack from France.
+The Protestant gentry called their people to arms; and a great
+Protestant force was created, which not only secured the country
+against foreign danger and maintained the most perfect internal order,
+but also exercised a decisive influence over Irish politics. Volunteer
+conventions were assembled which represented both property and
+educated Protestant opinion much more truly than the borough
+Parliament, and which loudly demanded free trade and Parliamentary
+independence. Grattan made himself the mouthpiece of the popular
+feeling; and the English Government and Parliament yielded to the
+demand. The whole system of commercial restraints, which prevented
+Ireland from developing her resources and trading with foreign
+countries and the British colonies, was abolished, leaving the
+commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland to be
+regulated by special Acts. The power of the Privy Council over
+legislation was abolished. The appellate jurisdiction of the Irish
+House of Lords was restored, and, above all, the sole competence of
+the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to legislate for Ireland was
+recognised. The Irish Parliament nearly at the same time made great
+steps towards uniting the people by relieving the Presbyterians from
+the Test Act and from the restrictions on their marriages, and the
+Catholics from those parts of the penal code which chiefly restrained
+their worship, their education, and their industry. At the same time
+the Protestant monopoly of political power and of the higher offices
+remained.
+
+Ireland thus found herself in possession of a Parliament which was, in
+name at least, perfectly independent. It was a purely Protestant
+Parliament, elected by Protestants, consisting mainly of landlords and
+great Protestant lawyers, and representing pre-eminently the property
+of the country. It was intensely and exclusively loyal, and always
+ready to adopt far more stringent coercive measures against anarchy
+and sedition than have ever been adopted by an Imperial Parliament. It
+included many men of great talents and great liberality, and through
+the county constituencies and the representatives of the chief towns
+educated public opinion was seriously felt within its walls; but the
+large majority of its members sat for nomination boroughs within the
+control of the government, and places and pensions were inordinately
+multiplied for the purpose of securing a majority.
+
+Could this constitution last? In framing the course of foreign and
+Imperial policy, in all questions of peace or war, of negotiations or
+alliances, the Irish Parliament had no voice. Yet it might in time of
+war, by withholding its concurrence, withdraw the whole weight of
+Ireland from the forces and fatally dislocate the policy of the
+Empire. It might pursue a commercial policy absolutely inconsistent
+with Imperial interests, and bring Ireland into intimate commercial
+connection with the enemies of England; and if English party spirit
+extended to Ireland and ran in opposite directions in the two
+legislatures, a collision was inevitable. The Lord Lieutenant and
+Chief Secretary, who administered the government of Ireland, were
+appointed by a British Ministry representing the dominant British
+party; the counsels of the Irish Government were framed in a British
+Cabinet; the royal consent was given to every Irish Bill under the
+Great Seal of Great Britain and upon the advice of a British Minister.
+If a machine so constituted could work as long as it was in the hands
+of a small and undoubtedly loyal and largely influenced class, could
+it work if Parliamentary reform made the Irish Parliament subject to
+the fierce and fluctuating tides of popular opinion? above all, if
+Catholic enfranchisement brought a vast, ignorant, and possibly
+seditious element into political life?
+
+It was the recorded opinion of each successive Lord Lieutenant who
+administered the Irish Government after 1782 that it could not, and
+that it must sooner or later end either in a union or a separation.
+They said this, though they fully acknowledged the perfect loyalty
+hitherto shown by the Irish Parliament; the liberality with which it
+voted its supplies; the care with which it subordinated its particular
+measures to the general interests of the Empire. The failure--not
+solely or even mainly through Irish fault--of an attempt to establish
+a fixed commercial arrangement between England and Ireland, and a
+difference between the British and Irish Parliaments on the Imperial
+question of a regency, strengthened the opinion of the English
+Government, and for many years before the Union was enacted it was in
+contemplation. On the two great and pressing questions at issue this
+policy exercised a powerful influence. The Government obstinately
+resisted every serious attempt to reform the Parliament, lest they
+should lose that controlling power which they believed to be essential
+to the permanence of the connection. On the Catholic question their
+views were more fluctuating, but their dominant impression was that
+emancipation could only be safely conceded in an Imperial Parliament,
+and that it ought to be reserved as a boon which might one day make a
+legislative Union acceptable to the Irish people.
+
+In Ireland, or at least in Protestant Ireland, the idea of a Union was
+now intensely unpopular, but the reformers in the Irish Parliament
+were seriously divided. Flood and Charlemont desired Parliamentary
+reform on a purely Protestant basis. They believed that this would
+include in political life the bulk of the property, loyalty,
+intelligence, and energy of the country, and that the Irish Catholics
+could not for a long period be safely admitted to political power.
+Grattan, on the other hand, believed that it was the first interest of
+Ireland to efface the political distinction between the two creeds and
+nations, and that an introduction of a certain proportion of Catholic
+gentry into the Irish Parliament would be in the highest degree
+beneficial. He, at the same time, always taught that Ireland was
+utterly unfit for democracy, and that under her peculiar conditions no
+policy could be more disastrous than one which would 'destroy the
+influence of landed property'; 'set population adrift from the
+influence of property'; subvert or weaken the guiding influence of the
+loyal and educated. When the United Irishmen proposed a Reform Bill
+which would have made the Irish Parliament a purely democratic body,
+Grattan denounced it with the greatest vehemence. 'This plan of
+personal representation,' he said, 'from a revolution of power, would
+speedily lead to a revolution of property, and become a plan of
+plunder as well as a scene of confusion.... Of such a representation
+the first ordinance would be robbery, accompanied with the
+circumstance incidental to robbery, murder.' He believed, however,
+that with a substantial property qualification independent
+constituencies might be formed which would safely represent the best
+elements of both creeds.
+
+The denial of parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation, and the
+refusal of the Irish Parliament to deal with the still more pressing
+question of tithes, produced much disaffection; but still the country
+was steadily improving, and no serious danger was felt till the French
+Revolution burst upon Europe. In every country it stimulated the
+smouldering elements of disorder. In few countries was its influence
+more fatal than in Ireland. I have very lately described at length the
+terrible years of growing conspiracy, anarchy, and crime; of
+fluctuating policy, and savage repression, and revived religious
+animosity, and maddening panic, deliberately and malignantly fomented,
+that preceded and prepared the rebellion. It is sufficient here to say
+that in the beginning of 1798 three provinces were organised to assist
+a French invasion. But at the last moment the leaders were betrayed
+and arrested; the French did not arrive; the rebellion was almost
+confined to a few Leinster counties, and it broke out without leaders
+and without a plan. In most places the rebels proved to be wretched
+bands of marauders intent only on plunder, and, although they
+committed many murders, they were utterly incapable of meeting the
+loyalists in the field. But in Wexford, priests put themselves at the
+head of the movement and turned it into a religious war, deriving its
+main force from religious fanaticism, and waged with desperate courage
+and ferocity. The massacre of Protestants on Vinegar Hill, in
+Scullabogue Barn, and on Wexford Bridge, and the general character
+the rebellion in Leinster assumed, at once and for ever checked all
+that tendency to rebellion which had so long existed among the
+Protestants of Ulster. Some twenty thousand persons perished before
+the flame was extinguished. The repression was as savage as the
+rebellion, and it left Ireland torn by fiercer religious animosities
+than at any period since the Restoration.
+
+It will dispel many illusions if the reader will remember that the
+great Irish rebellion was directed mainly against the Irish
+Parliament, and that it received its death-blow from Irish loyalists
+acting under that Parliament before any assistance arrived from
+England. The conspiracy began among Protestants and Deists, who aimed
+at a union of sects for the purpose of obtaining a democratic
+republic. It turned into a war which was scarcely less essentially
+religious than the wars of the Cevennes or of the Anabaptists. Yet two
+great Catholic provinces remained quiet during the struggle, and a
+great proportion of the loyalist force which crushed the rebellion
+consisted of Catholic militia.
+
+The English Government thought that the time had now come for carrying
+a legislative Union, and, in the eyes of Lord Cornwallis at least, one
+of its chief recommendations was that it would take the government of
+Ireland out of the hands of the triumphant party, and would make
+Catholic emancipation a possibility. The Catholic bishops were sounded
+and found to be very favourable. They declared their full willingness
+to accept an endowment for the priesthood and to give the English
+Government a right of veto on episcopal appointments, and they warmly,
+efficiently, and unanimously supported the Union. The great majority
+of the Catholic landed gentry and probably of the lower priests were
+on the same side; but in general the Catholic laity seem to have
+shown little interest and to have taken little part in the contest. In
+Dublin, Catholics as well as Protestants were generally hostile, but
+Catholic Cork was decidedly favourable, and an assurance that the
+Government desired to carry emancipation in an Imperial Parliament
+proved sufficient to prevent any serious Catholic opposition. The
+United Irishmen seem to have witnessed rather with pleasure than the
+reverse the dethronement of the body which had defeated them, and the
+Presbyterians showed scarcely any interest in the question.
+
+Yet outside the ranks of the Catholic clergy the measure found few
+active supporters, while the Protestants of the Established Church
+were in general ardently and passionately hostile. The great majority
+of the county members and the great preponderance of petitions were
+against the Union, and the opposition to it, which was led by Foster,
+Grattan, Parsons, and Plunket, comprised nearly all the independent
+and unbribed talent in Parliament. The very eminent ability of that
+small group of Protestant gentlemen never flashed more brightly than
+in the closing scenes, and there was a moment when the attitude of the
+Orangemen and the yeomanry was so menacing that the Government were
+seriously alarmed. But a lavish distribution of peerages and places
+purchased a majority, and the troops stationed in Ireland were too
+numerous for armed opposition to be possible. In truth, however, no
+opposition beyond the dimensions of a riot was to be feared. Outside
+Dublin, Catholic, Presbyterian, and seditious Ireland remained almost
+indifferent. Even before the measure had passed, opposition speakers
+complained bitterly that they were deserted by popular support; and it
+is a memorable fact that in the general election that followed the
+Union not a single Irish member of Parliament was defeated because he
+had voted for it.
+
+Pitt intended the Union to be immediately followed by measures
+admitting the Catholics into the Imperial Parliament, paying the
+priests, and commuting the tithes. If these three measures, or even if
+the last two (which were, in truth, the most important), had been
+promptly carried, the Union might have become popular. The Catholic
+question had, of late, been greatly mismanaged. The chief men who
+directed the government in Ireland were bitterly opposed to any
+concession of political power to the Catholics, but the views of the
+English Ministers had been materially changed. They desired above all
+things to separate the Catholics from the United Irishmen, and in 1793
+they forced upon their reluctant advisers in Ireland an Act which
+extended the suffrage to the vast ignorant Catholic masses, though it
+left the Catholic gentry still excluded from Parliament. Two years
+later Lord Fitzwilliam was sent over with instructions to postpone the
+question if possible, but with authority, as he believed, to carry
+emancipation if it could not be postponed, and he found the Irish
+Parliament perfectly prepared to pass it. But the opposition of the
+King and a question of patronage produced a fatal division and led to
+the recall of the Viceroy. The passions aroused by the rebellion
+greatly increased the difficulties of admitting Catholics to a
+separate Parliament, but there is clear evidence that at the time of
+the Union the Irish Protestants were in favour of their admission into
+the Imperial one. The dispositions of the King were well known, but it
+was believed that, if the scheme of Pitt was submitted to him as the
+matured policy of a united Cabinet, he must have yielded. It is well
+known how the plan was prematurely revealed; how Pitt resigned office
+when the King refused his consent; how the agitation of the question
+threw the King into an access of insanity; and how Pitt then promised
+that he would not again raise it during the reign. Pitt's conduct on
+this occasion is, and probably always will be, differently judged.
+There can be but one opinion of its calamitous effect upon Irish
+history.
+
+Ninety years have passed since the Union, and the conditions of
+Ireland have completely changed. The whole system of religious
+disqualification and commercial disability has long since passed away.
+Every path has been thrown open, and English professions, as well as
+the great Colonial and Indian services, are crowded with Irishmen. The
+Established Church no longer exists. Representation has been placed on
+a broadly democratic basis, giving Ireland, however, an absurdly
+disproportioned weight in the representation of the kingdom, and its
+poorest and most backward districts an absurdly disproportioned weight
+in the representation of Ireland. Finally, an attempt has been made to
+put down agrarian agitation by legislation to which there is no real
+parallel in English history, and some parts of which would have been
+impossible under the Constitution of the United States. Landlords who
+possessed by the clearest title known to English law the most absolute
+ownership of their estates have been converted into mere
+rent-chargers. Tenants who entered upon their tenancies under formal
+written contracts for limited periods have been rooted for ever on the
+soil. Rents have been reduced by judicial sentence, with complete
+disregard both to previous contracts and to market value, and the
+legal owner has had no option of refusing the change and re-entering
+on the occupation of his land. A scheme of purchase, too, based upon
+Imperial credit, has been established and will probably soon be
+largely extended, which is so extravagantly and almost grotesquely
+favorable to the tenant that it enables him by paying for the space of
+forty-nine years, instead of his reduced judicial rent, an annual sum
+which is considerably smaller, to purchase the freehold of his farm.
+It is a simple and incontestable truth that neither in the United
+States, nor in England, nor in any portion of the Continent of Europe,
+is the agricultural tenant so favoured by law as in Ireland, or
+anything of the nature of landlord oppression made so impossible. But
+though agitation has diminished, it has not ceased, and the great body
+of the poorer Catholics still follow the banner of Home Rule.
+
+About a third of the population of Ireland, on the other hand, regard
+Home Rule as the greatest catastrophe that could befall themselves,
+their country, or the Empire; and it is worthy of notice that they
+include almost all the descendants of Grattan's Parliament, and of the
+volunteers and of those classes who in the eighteenth century
+sustained the spirit of nationality in Ireland. Belfast and the
+surrounding counties, which alone in Ireland have attained the full
+height and vigour of English industrial civilisation; almost all the
+Protestants, both Episcopalian and Nonconformist; almost all the
+Catholic gentry; the decided preponderance of Catholics in the lay
+professions, and a great and guiding section of the Catholic
+middle-class are on the same side. Their conviction does not rest upon
+any abstract doctrine about the evil of federal governments or of
+local parliaments. It rests upon their firm persuasion that in the
+existing conditions of Ireland no Parliament could be established
+there which could be trusted to fulfil the most elementary conditions
+of honest government--to maintain law; to protect property; to observe
+or enforce contracts; to secure the rights and liberties of
+individuals and minorities; to act loyally in times of difficulty and
+danger in the interests of the Empire.
+
+They know that the existing Home Rule movement has grown up by the
+guidance and by the support of men who are implacable enemies to the
+British Empire; that it has been for years the steady object of its
+leaders to inspire the Irish masses with feelings of hatred to that
+Empire, contempt for contracts, defiance of law and of those who
+administer it; that, having signally failed in rousing the
+agricultural population in a national struggle, those leaders resolved
+to turn the movement into an organised attack upon landed property;
+that in the prosecution of this enterprise they have been guilty, not
+only of measures which are grossly and palpably dishonest, but also of
+an amount of intimidation, of cruelty, of systematic disregard for
+individual freedom scarcely paralleled in any country during the
+present century; and finally that, through subscriptions which are not
+drawn from Ireland, political agitation in Ireland has become a large
+and highly lucrative trade--a trade which, like most others, will no
+doubt continue as long as it pays.
+
+The nature, methods, and objects of the organisation which would
+probably exercise a dominant influence over an Irish Parliament have
+been established by overwhelming evidence and beyond all reasonable
+doubt, after a long, careful, and most impartial judicial
+investigation. The report of the late Special Commissioners[7] and the
+evidence on which it is founded have been published; and their
+conclusions have very recently been summed up in an admirable work by
+Professor Dicey, perhaps the ablest of living writers on political
+subjects. Readers may find in these works abundant evidence of the
+true character of the Irish Home Rule movement. If they read them with
+impartiality they will, I believe, have little difficulty in
+concluding that there have been few political movements in the
+nineteenth century which are less deserving of the respect or support
+of honest men.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[7] The Parnell Commission.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+FORMATIVE INFLUENCES
+
+
+It was about four years before the great upheaval of beliefs in
+England, which was partly caused and partly disclosed by the
+publication of the 'Essays and Reviews,' in 1860, that I entered
+Trinity College, Dublin. I had then a strong leaning toward
+theological studies and looked forward to a peaceful clerical life in
+a family living near Cork; and in addition to the ordinary university
+course, I went through that appointed for divinity students. I found
+my life at the university one of more than common intellectual
+activity, for although circumstances and temperament made me perhaps
+culpably indifferent to college ambitions and competitions, I soon
+threw myself with intense eagerness into a long course of private
+reading, chiefly relating to the formation and history of opinions.
+The great High Church wave which had a few years before been so
+powerful, had been broken when Newman and many other leaders of the
+party had passed to Catholicism. Darwin and Herbert Spencer had not
+yet risen above the horizon. Mill was in the zenith of his fame and
+influence. The intellectual atmosphere was much agitated by the recent
+discoveries of geology, by their manifest bearing on the Mosaic
+cosmogony and on the history of the Fall, and by the attempts of Hugh
+Miller, Hitchcock, and other writers to reconcile them with the
+received theology. In poetry, Tennyson and Longfellow reigned, I
+think with an approach to equality which has not continued. In
+politics, the school of orthodox political economy was almost
+unchallenged. In spite of the protests of Carlyle, all sound Liberals
+in England then desired to restrict as much as possible the functions
+of government, and to enlarge as much as possible the sphere of
+individual liberty; and they regarded unrestrained competition and
+inviolable contracts as the chief conditions of material progress.
+
+The first great intellectual influence which I experienced was, I
+believe, that of Bishop Butler, who was at that time probably studied
+more assiduously at Dublin than in any other university in the
+kingdom. There were few sermons in the college chapel in which some
+allusion to his writings might not be found, and few serious students
+whose modes of thought were not at least coloured by his influence.
+That influence now appears to me to have been not only various, but
+even in some measure contradictory. The 'Analogy' is perhaps the most
+original, if not the most powerful, book ever written in defence of
+the Christian creed; but it has probably been the parent of much
+modern Agnosticism, for its method is to parallel every difficulty in
+revealed religion by a corresponding difficulty in natural religion,
+and to argue that the two must stand or fall together. Butler's
+unrivalled sermons on human nature, on the other hand, have been
+essentially conservative and constructive, and their influence has
+been at least as strong on character as on belief. Their doctrine is
+that consciousness reveals in the inner principles of our being a
+moral hierarchy, 'a difference in nature and kind altogether distinct
+from strength'; and that among these principles conscience has, by the
+very structure of our nature, a recognised supremacy or guiding
+authority which clearly distinguishes it from all others.
+
+'The principle of reflection or conscience being compared with the
+various appetites, affections, and passions in men, the former is
+manifestly supreme and chief, without regard to strength.... From its
+very nature it manifestly claims superiority over all others, so that
+you cannot form a notion of this faculty, conscience, without taking
+in judgment, direction, superintendency. To preside and govern, from
+the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it
+strength as it has right, it would govern the world.'
+
+It was a noble philosophy, well fitted to strengthen and elevate the
+character, and it has supported many amid the dissolution of positive
+beliefs. Utilitarian theories of morals move very smoothly as long as
+their only task is to define the course which it is in the interests
+of society that each man should pursue. They are less successful in
+furnishing any firm and adequate reason why a man should pursue that
+course when individual interests and individual passion are opposed to
+it. It is the merit of the schools of Kant and of Butler, that they
+raise the idea of duty above all the calculations of self-interest,
+and make it the supreme and guiding principle of life.
+
+Among living men, the strongest intellectual influence at that time in
+Dublin was, I think, Whately, our archbishop, an original and powerful
+thinker who has scarcely obtained a place in the literary and
+intellectual history of his time commensurate with the wide and deep
+influence he undoubtedly exercised. For this there are many reasons.
+Unlike the High Church leaders who flourished with him at Oxford in
+the second quarter of the nineteenth century, he never identified
+himself with any organised party or school of thought, and he thus
+deprived himself of many echoes and of much support. It was, indeed,
+one of his first principles that there is no more fatal obstacle to
+the discovery of truth than the deflecting influence of party and
+system, and that the jealous maintenance of an independent judgment is
+the first element of intellectual honesty. Few considerable writers
+have appealed less to common passions or wide sympathies; and the only
+passion--if it can be called so--that appears strongly in his
+writings, is the love of truth for its own sake, which is the rarest
+and highest of all. He was accustomed to speculate much upon that
+strange power of intellectual magnetism which enables some men to draw
+others to their views apart from any process of definite reasoning;
+and he acknowledged with truth that he was wholly destitute of it;
+that he had never produced any effect which could not be clearly
+accounted for, or altered any judgment except by distinct reasons. As
+a writer, his style, though wholly without grace, was admirable in its
+lucidity. He had a singular felicity of illustration, and especially
+of metaphor, and a rare power of throwing his thoughts into terse and
+pithy sentences; but his many books, though full of original thinking
+and in a high degree suggestive to other writers, had always a certain
+fragmentary and occasional character, which prevented them from taking
+a place in standard literature. He was conscious of it himself, and
+was accustomed to say that it was the mission of his life to make up
+cartridges for others to fire. The little volume of 'Miscellanies,'
+including his commonplace book and his notes for his books, which was
+published by his daughter, exhibits with great clearness the character
+of his mind. Though a very candid and, in the best sense of the word,
+a very tolerant man, and an excellent scholar, he had, I think, little
+power of reproducing the modes of thought of men whose mental
+structure was widely different from his own, or of entering into the
+intellectual conditions of other ages; but he touched a large circle
+of subjects, social, political, and even scientific, as well as moral
+and religious, with an original and most independent judgment; and he
+raised greatly the moral standard of love of truth and the
+intellectual standard of severe reasoning wherever his influence
+extended. He delighted in that fine saying of Hobbes that, 'words are
+the counters of the wise man, but the money of the fool'; he believed
+that most controversies might be resolved into verbal ambiguities; and
+his hatred of vagueness, grandiloquence, affected obscurity, and
+rhetorical exaggeration exercised a very useful influence over young
+men. He was also a most attentive and sagacious observer of human
+nature, and few modern writers have written so wisely on the
+diversities and the management of character and on the science of
+life. In this respect he had a strong affinity to Bacon--the Bacon not
+of the 'Organon,' but of the 'Essays'--and perhaps still more to
+Benjamin Franklin. In theology he challenged the severest inquiry, and
+believed that if honestly pursued it would lead only to orthodox
+belief. 'A good man,' he once wrote, 'will indeed wish to find the
+evidence of the Christian religion satisfactory; but a wise man will
+not for that reason think it satisfactory, but will weigh the evidence
+the more carefully on account of the importance of the question.'
+
+His strongest antipathy was to the teaching of the Oxford 'Tracts,'
+and he wrote about them with great severity, but more from the moral
+than the intellectual side. He believed the Tractarian doctrines of
+'reserve' and 'economy' to be essentially disingenuous; he considered
+that there was good reason to conclude that leading members of the
+Oxford school had remained in the Church of England for a considerable
+time after they had adopted the Roman theology, had used language
+deliberately intended to mask their position, and had employed their
+influence as English clergymen to sap the English Church; and he
+especially denounced as the grossest dishonesty the attempt that was
+made in Tract XC. to show that a man was justified in subscribing to
+the Articles of the Church of England and at the same time holding
+everything laid down by the Council of Trent, 'though the Articles
+were expressly drawn up to condemn the authoritative teaching of the
+Roman Church, and after the Council of Trent had held 22 out of its
+whole number of 25 sessions.' The quibbling, special-pleading,
+equivocating mind which is consciously or half-consciously
+endeavouring by subtle distinctions to maintain an untenable position,
+was of all things the most abhorrent to him, and while the
+Evangelicals denounced the Tractarians as leading men to Rome,
+Whately, perhaps alone among his contemporaries, steadily predicted
+that their teachings would be followed by a great period of religious
+scepticism. This, he said, would be the result of the discredit they
+were throwing on the evidential school, of their habit of coupling
+ecclesiastical with Scripture miracles, and of their doctrine that it
+is the function of faith to supply the missing links of imperfect
+evidence and to impart the character of certainty to propositions
+which in reason rest only on probabilities. He himself was of the
+school of Grotius and Paley, and believed that simple historical
+evidence established supernatural facts. This subject long held a
+foremost place in my thoughts and studies, and I afterward wrote much
+upon it in connection with the history of witchcraft and the miracles
+of the Saints.
+
+I owed much to Whately, but I was studying concurrently with him
+teachers of very opposite schools, among others Coleridge, Newman, and
+Emerson in English; Pascal, Bossuet, Rousseau, and Voltaire in French.
+Locke's writings formed part of the college course, and I became very
+familiar with them, and fully shared Hallam's special admiration for
+the little treatise 'On the Conduct of the Understanding,' while
+Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh, and Mill opened out wide and various
+vistas in moral philosophy. The following passage from Coleridge,
+which I chose as the motto of almost my first published writing,
+exercised so great an influence over my later studies, and shows so
+happily the direction in which I was endeavoring to turn my mind, that
+I may be excused from quoting it at length:
+
+'Let it be remembered by controversialists on all subjects, that every
+speculative error which boasts a multitude of advocates has its golden
+as well as its dark side; that there is always some truth connected
+with it, the exclusive attention to which has misled the
+understanding; some moral beauty which has given it charms for the
+heart. Let it be remembered that no assailant of an error can
+reasonably hope to be listened to by its advocates, who has not proved
+to them that he has seen the disputed subject in the same point of
+view and is capable of contemplating it with the same feelings as
+themselves; for why should we abandon a cause at the persuasion of one
+who is ignorant of the reasons which have attached us to it?'
+
+Adopting an illustration which had been employed by Bossuet for
+another purpose, I came to believe that religious systems resemble
+those pictures occasionally seen in the museums of the curious, which
+appear at first to be mere incongruous assemblages of unconnected and
+unmeaning figures, till they are regarded from one particular point of
+view, when these figures immediately mass themselves into a regular
+form, and the whole picture assumes a coherent and symmetrical
+appearance. To discover in each system this point of view; to
+cultivate that peculiar form of imagination which makes it possible to
+realise how different forms of opinions are held by their more
+intelligent adherents, appeared to me the first condition of
+understanding them.
+
+In this method of inquiry I was, at a little later period, much aided
+by the writings of Bayle, a great critic who brought to the study of
+opinions an almost unrivalled knowledge, and one of the keenest and
+most detached of human intellects. Gradually, however, by a natural
+and insensible process I passed into the habit of examining opinions
+mainly from an historical point of view--investigating the
+circumstances under which they grow up; their relation to the general
+conditions of their time; the direction in which they naturally
+develop; the part, whether for good or ill, which during long spaces
+of time they have played in the world. It was first of all in
+connection with the Roman Catholic controversy, with which we were
+much occupied in Ireland, that I learnt to pursue this course. Of the
+enormous and essential difference between matured Catholicism and the
+Christianity of the New Testament, I never doubted, and my convictions
+were much deepened by long travels in Italy, France, and Spain, during
+which I endeavoured to study carefully Catholicism in its actual
+workings as a popular religion, and not as it appears clarified and
+rationalised in such books as the 'Exposition,' by Bossuet. I often
+asked myself, who could have imagined from a perusal of the New
+Testament that Christianity was intended to be a highly centralised
+monarchy, governed with supreme divine authority by the Bishop of
+Rome; that this bishop was to be connected, not with the great author
+of the Epistle to the Romans, but with St. Peter; that the figure
+which was to occupy the most prominent place in the devotions and
+imaginations of millions of Christian worshippers was to be the Virgin
+Mary, who is not so much as mentioned in the Epistles; that in the
+immediate neighbourhood, and with the full sanction of the highest
+ecclesiastical authorities, graven images were to be employed in
+devotion as conspicuously as in a pagan temple, particular images
+being singled out from all others for particular devotion by special
+indulgences and by special miracles? I soon convinced myself that
+popular Catholicism, as it exists in southern Europe and as it has
+existed through a long course of centuries, is as literally
+polytheistic and idolatrous as any form of paganism, though it has
+many beauties, and though much of its very mingled influence has been
+for good. In the teaching of my early youth, this transformation of
+Christianity was described as the great predicted apostasy, the
+mystery of iniquity, the work of Antichrist among mankind. Under the
+influence of the historic method it assumed a different aspect, and
+the mystery became very explicable. Hobbes had struck the keynote in a
+passage of profound truth as well as of admirable beauty:
+
+'If a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical
+dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is no other than the
+ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave
+thereof.'
+
+Few evolutions in history, indeed, can be more clearly traced than the
+successive stages through which Rome, by a gradual and very natural
+process, obtained the primacy of Christendom. In the condition of
+Europe, again, at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire, the
+invasion, the triumph, and the rapid conversion of the barbarians, the
+chief causes of the materialising transformation which Christian ideas
+underwent appeared abundantly evident; and it became clear to me that
+some such transformation was inevitable, and essential to their enduring
+influence. Was it possible, I asked myself, that in ages of anarchy and
+convulsion, any religion resembling Protestant Christianity could have
+prevailed among great masses of wild and ignorant barbarians, with all
+the associations and mental habits of idolaters, at a time when neither
+rag paper nor printing was invented, and when a wide diffusion of the
+Bible was absolutely impossible? But such methods of reasoning could not
+stop there. I was naturally led to consider how different are the
+measures of probability, the predispositions toward the miraculous, the
+canons of evidence and proof, the standards and ideals of morals in
+different ages, and how largely these differences affect the whole
+question of evidence. I began to realise the existence of climates of
+opinion; to observe how particular forms of belief naturally grow and
+flourish in certain stages of intellectual development, and fade when
+these conditions have changed; how much that is called apostasy and
+imposture is in reality anachronism, the survival in one age of forms of
+belief that were the appropriate product of an earlier one.
+
+A writer of extraordinary brilliancy and power was at this time
+exercising a great influence either of attraction or repulsion on all
+serious students of history. Those who are old enough to remember the
+appearance of the first volume of Buckle's 'History,' in 1857, and of
+the second volume, in 1861, will remember also how rapidly and how
+passionately it divided opinion. It was in truth a book in which
+extraordinary merits were balanced by extraordinary defects. On the
+special subject of the growth of religions, which most interested me,
+it was peculiarly deficient, for with all his great gifts Buckle was
+almost colour-blind to the devotional and reverential aspect of things,
+and he had little more power than Whately of projecting himself into
+the beliefs, ideals, and modes of thought of other men and ages. His
+unqualified, undiscriminating contempt for the ages of superstition is
+the more remarkable, because fifteen years before the appearance of his
+first volume, Comte, with whom Buckle had some affinity, and for whom
+he expressed great admiration, had been placing those ages on a
+pinnacle of extravagant eulogy. His doctrine that there is no real
+progress in moral ideas and no real history of morals, I have always
+believed to be profoundly untrue, and to have vitiated a large part of
+his conclusions; and although he rendered valuable service in showing
+by ample illustrations that the capital changes in history are much
+less due to the great men who directly effected them than to the long
+train of intellectual, political, or industrial tendencies that had
+prepared them, he pushed this, like many of his other generalisations,
+to exaggeration and even to extravagance. Individuals, and even
+accidents, have had a great modifying and deflecting influence in
+history, and sometimes the part they have played can scarcely be
+over-estimated. If, as I have elsewhere said, a stray dart had struck
+down Mohammed in one of the early skirmishes of his career, there is no
+reason to believe that the world would have seen a great military and
+monotheistic religion arise in Arabia, powerful enough to sweep over a
+large part of three continents, and to mould during many centuries the
+lives and characters of about a fifth part of the human race. In one
+respect, too, Buckle was singularly unfortunate in the time in which he
+appeared. From the days of Bacon and Locke to the days of Condillac and
+Bentham, it had been the tendency of advanced liberal thinkers to
+aggrandise as much as possible the power of circumstances and
+experience over the individual, and to reduce to the narrowest limits
+every influence that is innate, transmitted, or hereditary. They
+represented man as essentially the creature of circumstances, and his
+mind as a sheet of blank paper on which education might write what it
+pleased. Buckle pushed this habit of thought so far that he even
+questioned the reality of such an evident and well-known fact as
+hereditary insanity. But only two years after the appearance of the
+first volume of the 'History of Civilisation,' Darwin published his
+'Origin of Species,' which gradually effected a revolution in
+speculative philosophy almost as great as it effected in natural
+science; and from that time the supreme importance of inborn and
+hereditary tendencies has become the very central fact in English
+philosophy. It must be added that Buckle had many of the distinctive
+faults of a young writer; of a writer who had mixed little with men,
+and had formed his mind almost exclusively by solitary, unguided study.
+He had a very imperfect appreciation of the extreme complexity of
+social phenomena, an excessive tendency to sweeping generalisations,
+and an arrogance of assertion which provoked much hostility. His wide
+and multifarious knowledge was not always discriminating, and he
+sometimes mixed good and bad authorities with a strange indifference.
+
+This is a long catalogue of defects, but in spite of them Buckle
+opened out wider horizons than any previous writer in the field of
+history. No other English historian had sketched his plan with so bold
+a hand, or had shown so clearly the transcendent importance of
+studying not merely the actions of soldiers, politicians, and
+diplomatists, but also those great connected evolutions of
+intellectual, social, and industrial life on which the type of each
+succeeding age mainly depends. To not a few of his contemporaries he
+imparted an altogether new interest in history, and his admirable
+literary talent, the vast range of topics which he illuminated with a
+fresh significance, and the noble enthusiasm for knowledge and for
+freedom that pervades his work, made its appearance an epoch in the
+lives of many who have passed far from its definite conclusions. The
+task which he had undertaken was almost too vast for the longest life,
+and when he died at Damascus, in 1862, he had not yet completed his
+fortieth year, and his judgment was probably still far from its full
+maturity. A few lines of Pliny which I wrote on the title-page of his
+history, will suffice to show the feelings with which I heard of his
+death:
+
+'Mihi autem videtur acerba semper et immatura mors eorum qui immortale
+aliquid parant. Nam qui voluptatibus dediti quasi in diem vivunt,
+vivendi causas quotidie finiunt; qui vero posteros cogitant et
+memoriam sui operibus extendunt, his nulla mors non repentina est, ut
+quae semper inchoatum aliquid abrumpat.'
+
+I do not purpose to pursue these recollections further. I had drifted
+far from my Cork living and very decisively into the ways of
+literature, and after I left the university I spent about four years
+on the Continent. I read much in foreign libraries, and I also derived
+great profit as well as keen pleasure from the study of Italian art,
+which throws an invaluable light on the branches of history I was then
+investigating. In its earlier phase especially, before the sense of
+beauty dominates over the idea, art represents with a singular
+fidelity not only the religious beliefs of men, but also the far more
+delicate and evanescent shades of their realisations, ideals, and
+emotions.
+
+The result of those years of study was my 'History of the Spirit of
+Rationalism in Europe,' which appeared in the early part of 1865. With
+many defects, it had at least the merit of describing with great
+sincerity the process by which the opinions of its author had been
+formed, and to this sincerity it probably owed no small part of its
+success.
+
+
+
+
+CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE.
+
+
+When Carlyle came to London in 1831, bringing with him the 'Sartor
+Resartus,' which is now perhaps the most famous of all his works, it
+is well known that he applied in turn to three of the principal
+publishers in London, and that each of them, after due deliberation,
+positively refused to print his manuscript. When at last, with great
+difficulty, he procured its admission into 'Fraser's Magazine,'
+Carlyle was accustomed to say that he only knew of two men who found
+anything to admire in it. One of them was the great American writer,
+Emerson, who afterwards superintended its publication in America. The
+other was a priest from Cork, who wrote to say that he wished to take
+in 'Fraser's Magazine' as long as anything by this writer appeared in
+it. On the other hand, several persons told Fraser that they would
+stop taking in the magazine if any more of such nonsense appeared in
+it. The editor wrote to Carlyle that the work had been received with
+'unqualified disapprobation.' Five years elapsed before it was
+reprinted as a separate book, and in order that it should be reprinted
+it was found necessary for a number of Carlyle's private friends to
+club together and guarantee the publisher from loss by engaging to
+take three hundred copies. But when, a few years before his death, a
+cheap edition of Carlyle's works was published, 'Sartor Resartus' had
+acquired such a popularity that thirty thousand copies were almost
+immediately sold, and since his death it has been reprinted in a
+sixpenny form; it has penetrated far and wide through all classes, and
+it is now, I suppose, one of the most popular and most influential of
+the books that were published in England in the second quarter of the
+century.
+
+Such a contrast between the first reception and the later judgment of
+a book is very remarkable, and it applies more or less to all
+Carlyle's earlier writings. It is a memorable fact in the literary
+history of the nineteenth century that one of the greatest and most
+industrious writers in England lived for many years in such poverty
+that he often thought of abandoning literature and emigrating to the
+colonies, and he would probably have done so if he had not found in
+public lecturing a means of supplying his frugal wants. The cause of
+this long-continued neglect is partly, no doubt, to be found in his
+style, for, like Browning, Carlyle wrote an English which was so
+contorted and sometimes so obscure that his readers had to be slowly
+educated into understanding, or at least enjoying, it. But there are
+other and deeper causes which I propose to devote the short time at my
+disposal to indicating.
+
+It has been truly said that there are two great classes among writers.
+There are those who are echoes and there are those who are voices.
+There are some writers who represent faithfully and express strongly
+the dominant tendencies, opinions, habits, characteristics of their
+age, collecting as in a focus the half-formed thoughts that are
+prevailing around them, giving them an articulate voice, and by the
+force of their advocacy greatly strengthening them. There are others
+who either start new ways of thinking for which the public around
+them are still unprepared, or who throw themselves in opposition to
+the dominant tendencies of their times, pointing out the evils and
+dangers connected with them, and dwelling specially on neglected
+truths. It is not surprising that the first class are by far the most
+popular. The public is much like Narcissus in the fable, who fell in
+love with his own reflection in the water. All men like to find their
+own opinions expressed with a power and eloquence they cannot
+themselves attain, and most men dislike a writer who, in the first
+flush of a great enthusiasm, points out all that can be said on the
+other side. But when the first enthusiasm is over--when the prevailing
+tendency has fully triumphed and the evils and defects connected with
+it are disclosed--the words of this unpopular or neglected teacher
+will begin to gather weight. It will be found that although he may not
+have been wiser than those who advocated the other side, yet his words
+contained exactly that kind of truth which was most needed or most
+generally forgotten, and his reputation will steadily rise.
+
+This appears to me to have been very much the position which Carlyle
+occupied towards the chief questions of his day, and it explains, I
+think, in a great degree the growth of his influence. It is
+remarkable, indeed, how many things there are in his writings which
+appeared paradoxes when he wrote, and which now seem almost truisms.
+Thus at a time when the political and intellectual ascendency of
+France over the Continent was at its height, Carlyle was one of the
+few men who clearly recognised the essential greatness that lay hid in
+Germany, and especially in Prussia--a greatness which after the wars
+of 1866 and 1870 became very evident to the world. He was one of the
+first men in England to recognise the importance of German
+literature, and especially the supreme greatness of Goethe. His
+translation of 'Wilhelm Meister' was published in 1824, and his noble
+essay on Goethe in 1832; but at first it seemed to find scarcely any
+echo. The editor for whom he wrote it reported that all the opinions
+he could gather about this essay were 'eminently unfavourable.' De
+Quincey, who of all English critics was believed to know Germany best,
+and Jeffrey, who exercised the greatest influence on English literary
+opinion, combined to depreciate or ridicule Goethe. But there is now
+no educated man who disputes that Carlyle in this matter was
+essentially right, and that his critics were wholly wrong. And to turn
+to subjects more directly connected with England, Carlyle wrote at a
+time when the whole school of what was called advanced thought rested
+upon the theory that the province of Government ought to be made as
+small as possible, and that all the relations of classes should be
+reduced to simple, temporary contracts founded on mutual interest.
+According to this theory, it was the one duty of Government to keep
+order. For the rest it should stand aside, and not attempt to meddle
+in social or industrial questions. The most complete liberty of
+thought and action should be established, and everything should be
+left to unrestricted competition--to the free play of unprivileged,
+untrammelled, unguided social forces. This was the theory which was
+called orthodox political economy--the _laisser-faire_ system--the
+philosophy of competition or supply and demand, and it was incessantly
+denounced by Carlyle as Mammon worship, as 'devil take the hindmost,'
+as 'pure egoism'; 'the shabbiest gospel that had been taught among
+men.' He declared that in the long run no society could flourish, or
+even permanently cohere, if the only relation between man and man was
+a mere money tie. He maintained that what he called the condition of
+England question, or, in other words, the great mass of struggling,
+anarchical poverty that was growing up in the chief centres of
+population, was a question which imperiously demanded the most
+strenuous Government intervention--which was, in fact, far more
+important than any of the purely political questions. The whole system
+of factory legislation, the whole system of legislation about working
+men's dwellings, which has taken place in this century, has been a
+realisation of the ideas of Carlyle. When Carlyle first wrote, it was
+the received opinion that the education of the people was a matter in
+which the Government should in no degree interfere, and that it ought
+to be left altogether to individuals, or Churches, or societies. In
+his work on Chartism, which was published as early as 1834, Carlyle
+argued that the 'universal education of the people' was an
+indispensable duty of the Government. It was not until about twenty
+years ago that this duty was fully recognised in England. In the same
+work he maintained that State-aided, State-organised, State-directed
+emigration must one day be undertaken on a large scale, as the only
+efficient agent in coping with the great masses of growing pauperism.
+In his 'Past and Present,' which was published in 1843, he threw out
+another idea which has proved very prolific, and which is probably
+destined to become still more so. It is that it may become both
+possible and needful for the master worker 'to grant his workers
+permanent interest in his enterprise and theirs.'
+
+It is evident how much less strange those ideas appear now than they
+did when they were first put out some fifty years ago. One of the
+most remarkable changes that has taken place during the lives of men
+who are still of middle age has been in the opinion of advanced
+thinkers about the function of Government. In the early days of
+Carlyle the whole set, or lie, of opinion in England was towards
+cutting in all directions the bands of Government control, diminishing
+as much as possible the sphere of Government functions or
+interference. It was a revolt against the old Tory system of paternal
+Government, against the system of Guilds, against the State
+regulations which once prevailed in all departments of industrial
+life. In the present generation it is not too much to say that the
+current has been absolutely reversed. The constantly increasing
+tendency, whenever any abuse of any kind is discovered, is to call
+upon Parliament to make a law to remedy it. Every year the network of
+regulation is strengthened; every year there is an increasing
+disposition to enlarge and multiply the functions, powers, and
+responsibilities of Government. I should not be dealing sincerely with
+you if I did not express my own opinion that this tendency carries
+with it dangers even more serious than those of the opposite
+exaggerations of a past century: dangers to character by sapping the
+spirit of self-reliance and independence; dangers to liberty by
+accustoming men to the constant interference of authority, and
+abridging in innumerable ways the freedom of action and choice. I wish
+I could persuade those who form their estimate of the province of
+Government from Carlyle's 'Past and Present' and 'Latter-day
+Pamphlets' to study also the admirable little treatise of Herbert
+Spencer, called 'The Man and the State,' in which the opposite side is
+argued. What I have said however, is sufficient to show how
+remarkably Carlyle, in some of the parts of his teaching that were
+once the most unpopular, anticipated tendencies which only became very
+apparent in practical politics when he was an old man or after his
+death.
+
+The main and fundamental part of his teaching is the supreme sanctity
+of work; the duty imposed on every human being, be he rich or be he
+poor, to find a life-purpose and to follow it out strenuously and
+honestly. 'All true work,' he said, 'is religion'; and the essence of
+every sound religion is, 'Know thy work and do it.' In his conception
+of life all true dignity and nobility grows out of the honest
+discharge of practical duty. He had always a strong sympathy with the
+feudal system which annexed indissolubly the idea of public function
+with the possession of property. The great landlord who is wisely
+governing large districts and using all his influence to diffuse
+order, comfort, education, and civilisation among his tenantry; the
+captain of industry who is faithfully and honestly organising the
+labour of thousands, and regarding his task as a moral duty; the rich
+man who, with all the means of enjoyment at his feet, devotes his
+energies 'to make some nook of God's creation a little fruitfuller,
+better, more worthy of God--to make some human hearts a little wiser,
+manfuller, happier, more blessed,' always received his admiration and
+applause. No one, on the other hand, spoke with more contempt of a
+governing class which had ceased to govern; of titles which had lost
+their original meaning, and no longer implied or expressed duties
+performed; of wealth that was employed solely or mainly in selfish
+enjoyment or in idle show. It was Carlyle's deep conviction that the
+best test of the moral worth of every nation, class, and individual,
+is to be found in their standard of work and in their dislike to a
+useless and idle life. As is well known, he had no sympathy with the
+prevailing political ideas. He believed that men were not only not
+equal, but were profoundly unequal; that it was the first interest of
+society that the wisest men should be selected as its leaders, and
+that the popular methods of finding the wisest were by no means those
+which were most likely to succeed. 'No British man,' he complained,
+'can attain to be a statesman or chief of workers till he has first
+proved himself a chief of talkers.' 'The two greatest nations in the
+world, the English and American, are all going to wind and tongue.' He
+believed much more than his contemporaries did that there was need and
+room in our modern English life for strong Government organisation,
+guidance, discipline, reverence, obedience, and control. 'Wise
+command, wise obedience,' he wrote in one of his 'Latter-day
+Pamphlets,' 'the capability of these two is the best measure of
+culture and human virtue in every man.'
+
+There is another class of workers to which he himself belonged--the
+men who are the teachers of mankind. He taught them by his example as
+well as by his precepts. Whatever else may be said about Carlyle, no
+one can question that he took his literary vocation most seriously. He
+was for a long time a very poor man, but he never sought wealth by
+advocating popular opinions, by pandering to common prejudices, or by
+veiling most unpalatable beliefs. In the vast mass of literature which
+he has bequeathed to us there is no scamped work, and every competent
+judge has recognised the untiring and conscientious accuracy with
+which he verified and sifted the minutest fact. His standard of
+truthfulness was extremely high, and one of his great quarrels with
+his age was that it was an age of half-beliefs and insincere
+professions. He maintained that religious beliefs which had once been
+living realities had too often degenerated into mere formulas, untruly
+professed or mechanically repeated with the lips only, and without any
+genuine or heartfelt conviction. He often repeated a saying of
+Coleridge: 'They do not believe--they only believe that they believe.'
+He used to speak of men who 'played false with their intellects'; or,
+in other words, turned away their minds from unwelcome truths and by
+allowing their wishes or interests to sway their judgments, persuaded
+or half-persuaded themselves to believe whatever they wished. A firm
+grasp of facts, he maintained, was the first characteristic of an
+honest mind; the main element in all honest, intellectual work. His
+own special talent was the gift of insight, the power of looking into
+the heart of things, piercing to essential facts, discerning the real
+characters of men, their true measure of genuine, solid worth. Creeds,
+professions, opinions, circumstances, all these are the externals or
+clothes of men. It is necessary to look behind them and beyond them if
+we would reach the genuine human heart. One of the reasons why he
+detested what he called stump oratory was because he believed it to be
+a great school of insincerity. Its end was not truth, but
+plausibility. It was the effort of interested men to throw opinions
+into such forms as might most captivate uninstructed men; to keep back
+every unpopular side; to magnify everything in them that was
+seductive. He once said to me that two great curses seemed to him
+eating away the heart and worth of the English people. One was drink.
+The other was stump oratory, which accustomed men to say without
+shame what they did not in their hearts believe to be true, and
+accustomed their hearers to accept such a proceeding as perfectly
+natural. And the same strong passion for veracity he carried into his
+judgment of other forms of work. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that
+the standard of conscientious work had been lowered in England through
+the feverish competition of modern times, and under the system of what
+he called 'cheap and nasty'; that English work had lost something of
+its old solidity and worth, and was now made rather to captivate than
+to wear. Carlyle saw in this much more than an industrial change. He
+maintained that the love and pride of thorough work had long been a
+pre-eminently English quality, that it was the very tap-root of the
+moral worth of the English character, and that anything that tended to
+weaken it was a grave moral evil.
+
+It is worth while trying to understand what truth underlay those parts
+of his teaching which seem most repulsive. The worship of force, which
+is so apparent in many of his writings, is a striking example. He was
+often accused of teaching that might is right. He always answered that
+he had not done so--that what he taught was that right is might; that
+by the providential constitution of the Universe truth in the long run
+is sure to be stronger than falsehood; that good will prevail over
+evil, and that right and might, though they differ widely in short
+periods of time, would in long spaces prove to be identical. Nothing,
+he was accustomed to say, seemed weaker than the Christian religion
+when the disciples assembled in the upper room; yet it was in truth
+the strongest thing in the world, and it accordingly prevailed. It was
+one of his favourite sayings 'that the soul of the Universe is just,'
+and he believed therefore that the ultimate fate of nations, whether
+it be good or bad, was very much what they deserved. It is curious to
+observe the analogy between this teaching and the doctrine of the
+survival of the fittest, which a very different teacher--Charles
+Darwin--has made so conspicuous.
+
+He scandalised--and I think with a good deal of reason--most of his
+contemporaries by the ridicule which he threw upon the career of
+Howard, and upon the great movement for prison reform which was so
+actively pursued in his time. Much of what he wrote on this subject
+is, to me at least, very repulsive; but you will generally find in the
+most extravagant utterances of Carlyle that there is some true meaning
+at bottom. He maintained that the passion for reforming and improving
+prisons and prison-life had been carried in England to such a point
+that the lot of a convicted criminal was often much better than that
+of an honest and struggling artisan. He believed that a just and wise
+distribution of compassion is a most important element of national
+well-being, and that the English people are very apt to be indifferent
+to great masses of unobtrusive, struggling, honourable, unsensational
+poverty at their very doors, while they fall into paroxysms of emotion
+about the actors in some sensational crime, about some seductive
+murderess, about the wrongs of some far-off and often half-savage
+race. 'In one of these Lancashire weavers dying with hunger there is
+more thought and heart, a greater arithmetical amount of misery and
+desperation, than in whole gangs of Quashees.' He maintained, too,
+that a strain of sentiment about criminals was very prevalent in his
+day, which tended seriously to obliterate or diminish the real
+difference between right and wrong. He hated with an intense hatred
+that whole system of philosophy which denied that there was a deep,
+essential, fundamental difference between right and wrong, and turned
+the whole matter into a mere calculation of interests. He was
+accustomed to say that one of the chief merits of Christianity was
+that it taught that right and wrong were as far apart as Heaven and
+Hell, and that no greater calamity can befall a nation than a
+weakening of the righteous hatred of evil.
+
+The parts of Carlyle's teaching on which I have dwelt to-day will be
+chiefly found in his 'Past and Present,' his 'Heroes and Hero
+Worship,' his 'Latter-day Pamphlets,' his 'Chartism,' and in the two
+admirable essays called 'Signs of the Times' and 'Characteristics.' In
+my own opinion, though Carlyle teaches much, his writings are most
+valuable as a moral force. Very few great writers have maintained more
+steadily that the moral element is the deepest and most important part
+of our being, deeper and stronger than all intellectual
+considerations. In his writings, amid much that has imperishable
+value, there is, I think, much that is exaggerated, much that is
+one-sided, much that is unwise. But no one can be imbued with his
+teaching without finding it a great moral tonic, and deriving from it
+a nobler, braver, and more unworldly conception of human life.
+
+
+
+
+ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS[8]
+
+
+Among the strange and unforeseen developments that have characterised
+the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century, few are likely to be
+regarded by the future historian with a deeper or more melancholy
+interest than the anti-Semite movement, which has swept with such a
+portentous rapidity over a great part of Europe. It has produced in
+Russia by far the most serious religious persecution of the century.
+It has raged fiercely in Roumania, the other great centre of the
+Oriental Jews. In enlightened Germany it has become a considerable
+parliamentary force. In Austria it counts among its adherents men of
+the highest social station. Even France, which from the days of the
+Revolution has been specially distinguished for its liberality to the
+Jews, has not escaped the contagion. General Boulanger found the
+anti-Jewish sentiment sufficiently powerful to make an appeal to it
+one of the articles of his programme, and the extraordinary popularity
+of the writings of Drumont shows that Boulanger had not altogether
+miscalculated its force.
+
+It is this movement which has been the occasion of the very valuable
+work of M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu on 'Israel among the Nations.' The
+author, who is universally recognised as one of the greatest of living
+political writers, has special qualifications for his task. With an
+exceedingly wide knowledge of the literature relating to his subject
+he combines much personal knowledge of the Jews in Palestine and in
+many other countries, and especially in those countries where the
+persecution has most furiously raged.
+
+That persecution, he justly says, unites in different degrees three of
+the most powerful elements that can move mankind--the spirit of
+religious intolerance; the spirit of exclusive nationality; and the
+jealousy which springs from trade or mercantile competition. Of these
+elements M. Leroy-Beaulieu considers the first to be on the whole the
+weakest. In that hideous Russian Persecution which 'the New Exodus' of
+Frederic has made familiar to the English reader, the religious
+element certainly occupies a very leading place. Pobedonosteff, who
+shared with his master the chief guilt and infamy of this atrocious
+crime, belonged to the same type as the Torquemadas of the past, and
+the spirit that animated him has entered largely into the anti-Semite
+movement in other lands. The 'Gloria' of Galdos, perhaps the most
+powerful religious novel of our time, describes the conflict in modern
+Spain of the fanaticism of Catholicism with the fanaticism of Judaism.
+Even the old calumny that the Jews are accustomed at Easter to murder
+Christian children in order to mix their blood with the passover
+bread, is still living in many parts of Europe. M. Leroy-Beaulieu has
+collected much curious evidence on the subject. It is a calumny which
+appears first to have become popular about 1100 A.D. It is
+embodied in a well-known tale of Chaucer. It is the subject of one of
+the great frescoes that were painted around the Cathedral of Toledo to
+commemorate the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Two Popes of the
+thirteenth century, to their great honour, declared its falsehood,
+and by the order of Benedict XIV. Ganganelli wrote a full memoir
+examining and refuting it. But in spite of all condemnations, in spite
+of many exposures in the law courts, it is still a popular belief in
+Russia, Poland, Roumania, Hungary, and Bohemia, and even within the
+last ten years it has been the direct cause of many outrages against
+the Jews.
+
+Another element to which M. Leroy-Beaulieu attaches considerable
+importance is the Kultur Kampf in Germany. When the German Government
+was engaged in its fierce struggle with the Catholics, these
+endeavoured to effect a diversion and to avenge themselves on papers,
+which were largely in the hands of Jews, by raising a new cry. They
+declared that a Kultur Kampf was indeed needed, but that it should be
+directed against the alien people who were undermining the moral
+foundations of Christian societies; who were the implacable enemies of
+the Christian creed and of Christian ideals. The cry was soon taken up
+by a large body of Evangelical Protestants. The 'Germania' and the
+'Civilta Cattolica,' which were the chief organs of Ultramontanism in
+Germany and Italy, and the 'Kreuz Zeitung,' which represented the
+strictest forms of German Protestantism, agreed in fomenting it.
+
+Still more powerful, in the opinion of our author, has been the spirit
+of intense and exclusive nationality which has in the present
+generation arisen in so many countries and which seeks to expel all
+alien or heterogeneous elements, and to mould the whole national being
+into a single definite type. The movement has been still further
+strengthened by the greater keenness of trade competition. In the
+midst of many idle, drunken, and ignorant populations the shrewd,
+thrifty, and sober Jew stands conspicuous as the most successful
+trader. His rare power of judging, influencing, and managing men, his
+fertility of resource, his indomitable perseverance and industry,
+continually force him into the foremost rank, and he is prominent in
+occupations which excite much animosity. The tax-gatherer, the agent,
+the middleman, and the moneylender are very commonly of Jewish race,
+and great Jewish capitalists largely control the money markets of
+Europe at a time when capital is the special object of socialistic
+attacks.
+
+The most valuable portion of this work is, I think, that examining the
+part which the Jewish race is now playing in the world, and tracing
+the action of historical causes on the formation of their character.
+On the old problem of the continued existence of the race through so
+many ages M. Leroy-Beaulieu has much to say. He reminds us that in the
+East the idea of nationality is habitually absorbed in the idea of
+religion, and that there are many examples of the long survival of
+peoples or tribes which have lost their political individuality. He
+instances the Copts of Egypt, the Maronites and Druses of Lebanon, the
+Parsees of India, the Armenians and Greeks of Asia as displaying,
+though in a less degree, the same phenomenon as the Jews. He
+attributes the long continuance of the Jews as a separate people
+mainly to two causes. One of them is Christian hatred, which compelled
+the Jews for many centuries to remain a separate people, unmixed with
+surrounding nations; living in a separate quarter; marrying among
+themselves; strengthened and disciplined in the struggle of life by
+enormous difficulties and by the constant elimination through
+persecution of the weaker elements. The other is the very elaborate
+Jewish ritual extending to all departments of life, which has stamped
+upon them an intensely distinctive character.
+
+The force of these causes is undoubted, but they are not, I think, the
+only elements to be considered. M. Leroy-Beaulieu appears to me to
+have somewhat underrated the physiological force and tenacity of the
+Jewish race-type. Following the line of reasoning of a remarkable
+essay of Renan, he shows very clearly that the modern Jews are far
+from being pure Semites. He proves from Josephus and from other
+sources that there was a considerable period, both before and after
+the Christian era, when great numbers of Greeks, Latins, and Egyptians
+adopted the Jewish faith; that much alien blood afterward poured into
+the race through conversions among the barbarians and through the
+circumcision of the slaves of Jewish masters, and that there is even
+reason to believe that, in some periods of history, marriages with
+Christians were not infrequent. It is probable, however, that most
+alien elements that were introduced into the race sooner or later
+mingled with the old stock, and no fact is more clearly shown than the
+extraordinary power of the Jewish type to survive and dominate in a
+mixed race. A single instance of a marriage with a Jewess will be
+sufficient to perpetuate it in a family for many generations. In this
+fact the Jews possess an element of stability which is wholly
+independent of all considerations of creed and ritual. Few things are
+more curious than the effect of persecution on the Jewish element in
+Spain and Portugal. Tens of thousands of Jews in those countries were
+burned at the stake or driven into exile, but great numbers also
+conformed. They mixed in a few generations with the old Christian
+population, and Spain and Portugal, M. Leroy-Beaulieu truly says, are
+now among the countries in which the Jewish blood is most evidently
+and most widely diffused.
+
+Another consideration, which M. Leroy-Beaulieu has omitted to mention,
+but which appears to me to have much weight, is the condemnation of
+lending money at interest by the Church. This condemnation, which
+lasted many centuries, had two important consequences. One of them was
+that the Jews became almost the only moneylenders in Europe. The trade
+was deemed sinful for a Christian, but it was found to be a very
+necessary one; and the Jews (as some Catholic theologians observed)
+being already damned, were allowed to practise it. The other
+consequence was that on account of the stigma which the Church
+attached to moneylending, the amount of money to be lent was greatly
+diminished, or in other words, the rate of interest was enormously and
+artificially raised. At a time, therefore, when Catholic intolerance
+made it impossible for the Jews to mingle with and be absorbed in
+surrounding nations they acquired one of the greatest elements of
+power and stability that a race can possess--a monopoly of the most
+lucrative trade in the world.
+
+The physical characteristics of the race are very remarkable and they
+are especially displayed among the Eastern Jews, who still maintain
+scrupulously amid poverty and persecution the religious observances of
+their ancestors. It is now clearly shown that the Levitical code was
+in a high degree hygienic, and even anticipates some of the
+discoveries of modern physiology. Prescriptions about forbidden kinds
+of food and about the mode of cooking food, which only excited the
+ridicule of Voltaire, have a real hygienic value in the eyes of Claude
+Bernard and of Pasteur. The Jews have never adopted the Catholic
+notions about the sanctity of celibacy and virginity, but they lay
+great stress on the purity of marriage. Although they live chiefly in
+towns, illegitimate births are proportionately rarer among them than
+among either Protestants or Catholics. They have been as a rule
+singularly free from the kinds of vice that do most to enfeeble and
+corrode a race. They are distinguished for their domestic virtues,
+especially for care of their children, and they are nearly everywhere
+less addicted than Christian nations to intoxicating drinks. These
+things help to explain the curious fact that in nearly all countries
+the average duration of life is considerably longer among Jews than
+among Christians. This superiority is general, but, as M.
+Leroy-Beaulieu observes, it tends to diminish in Western countries
+where Jews, being freed from disabilities, are more assimilated to the
+surrounding populations. They now usually marry later than Christians;
+they have on the whole fewer children, but a proportionately larger
+number of Jewish than of Christian infants attain adult age. M.
+Leroy-Beaulieu mentions two curious facts which are less easy to
+explain. Still-born births are very rare among Jews, and there is
+among them a wholly abnormal preponderance of male births over female
+ones.
+
+It might be supposed from these facts that the Jews were a robust
+race, but no one who has come much in contact with them will share
+this delusion. Nothing is more conspicuous among them than their
+unhealthy colouring, their frail, bent, and feeble bodies. They
+develop early, but they have very little of the spring and buoyancy of
+youth and they have everywhere a low average of physical strength.
+Malformations and deformities are common among them; their nervous
+organisation is extremely sensitive, and though they are as a race
+distinguished for their sound, clear, and practical judgment, they are
+very liable to insanity and to other nervous and brain disorders.
+Physical beauty as well as physical strength is much rarer among them
+than among Christians.
+
+The causes of this inferiority may be easily explained. Life pursued
+during many generations in the crowded Ghetto; the sordid habits that
+grow out of extreme poverty and out of the assumption of the
+appearance of poverty, which is natural in a persecuted and plundered
+race, go far to explain it; but there is another and, I think, a more
+important cause which M. Leroy-Beaulieu has rather strangely
+neglected. Physical strength and beauty can be maintained at a high
+level in crowded town populations only by a constant influx from the
+country. The pure air and the healthy labour of the fields are their
+main source. This great school of health the Jews have never known.
+For many centuries it would have been impossible for them to have
+lived in peace as farmers or agricultural labourers among a Christian
+peasantry, and if they ever possessed any aptitude or taste for
+agricultural pursuits they have long since wholly lost it.
+
+Their moral like their physical characteristics present strange
+contrasts. No natural want of moral elevation or tenderness or grace
+can be ascribed to the nation that has produced both the Old Testament
+and the Gospels, and has most largely shaped and inspired the moral
+life of the civilised world. In Christian times no race has maintained
+its faith with a more devoted courage, and it has encountered and
+survived persecutions before which the persecutions of other creeds
+dwindle almost into insignificance. M. Leroy-Beaulieu quotes the
+statement of the grand Rabbi Lehmann, that it is a clearly attested
+fact that in two months of the year 1096 twelve thousand Jews, whose
+names have been preserved, were massacred in the towns of the Rhine
+alone, because they refused to accept a Christian baptism. The Spanish
+Jews who perished by one of the most excruciating deaths rather than
+forswear their faith may be numbered by thousands, and those who
+preferred exile and spoliation to apostasy, by hundreds of thousands.
+Even in our own sceptical and materialising age the conduct of the
+Russian Jews under the recent savage persecution shows that the old
+spirit is not extinct. In the face of the long and splendid roll of
+Jewish heroism, it is idle to dwell on the fact that in each great
+persecution some Jews have yielded to the fear of death and consented
+to perform the rites of a faith which they inwardly abhorred, or on
+the fact that a few Rabbis have under such circumstances justified
+these feigned conversions.
+
+Prolonged persecution, however, has had a profound influence on their
+character, and its influence in some respects has been very
+pernicious. Hatred naturally provokes hatred, and violent oppression
+against which there is no redress is naturally encountered by
+subterfuge and fraud. A race who were for centuries playing their part
+in life against overwhelming obstacles learned to avail themselves of
+every advantage. Adulation, servility, falsehood, and deception became
+common among them. They became at once hard, wily, and rapacious, and
+ready instruments in ignoble and oppressive callings. Shut out from
+open paths and honourable ambitions they haunted the obscurer byways
+of industry; they were to be found in many occupations which sharpen
+the intellect but blunt the moral sense, and they threw themselves
+passionately into the acquisition of wealth and of secret power.
+Exposed for generations, even in lands where they were not more
+seriously persecuted, to constant insult and contempt, they often lost
+their self-respect and learned to acquiesce tamely in what another
+race would resent. Slavish conditions produced, as they always do,
+slavish characteristics, and, as is always the case, those
+characteristics did not at once disappear when the conditions that
+produced them had altered.
+
+M. Leroy-Beaulieu has dwelt with much force on this subject, and he
+ascribes considerable weight to the fact that the Jews have been
+wholly outside the system of feudalism and chivalry in which the
+modern conception of honour was chiefly formed. Perhaps the Jew might
+retort with some justice, that he has had at least the compensating
+moral advantage of having derived no part of his notions of right and
+wrong from a Church in which such an institution as the Spanish
+Inquisition was deemed a holy thing.
+
+Defects of another kind have contributed largely to his unpopularity.
+Great as is the power of assimilation which the Jewish race possesses,
+the charm and grace of manner seem to have been among the qualities
+they most slowly and most imperfectly acquire. It is natural that men
+who have been excluded from honours but not from wealth should value
+money and the ostentatious display of riches more than their
+neighbours. In the professions in which the Jews chiefly excel, men
+rise most rapidly from low origin and culture to conspicuous wealth.
+Direct money-making has some tendency to materialise and lower the
+character, and Jews have been for generations prominent in occupations
+which do much to impair those delicacies of feeling on which the charm
+of manner largely depends. Besides this, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu truly
+remarks, though the oldest of the cultured races they are a race of
+_parvenus_ in the good society of Europe. In nearly all countries they
+have till very recently been excluded from the kind of society and
+from the kind of education in which the best manners are formed. The
+exaggerations of bad taste; the love of the loud, the gaudy, the
+ostentatious, and the meretricious; the awkwardness of men who are ill
+at ease in an unaccustomed sphere, who have not yet mastered the happy
+mean between arrogance and obsequiousness and who are therefore
+somewhat prone to both extremes, still frequently characterise them.
+Few persons who know Germany will doubt that the tone of manners of
+the German Jews has contributed quite as much as any other cause to
+their unpopularity.
+
+It is probable that these defects will gradually diminish, and it
+would be a grave error to regard the Jewish race as wholly devoted to
+material ends. The multitude of their martyrs is a sufficient answer
+to the charge, and no people cherish more strongly the ideals of their
+past and have more of the pride both of race and of creed. They have
+at all times, as M. Leroy-Beaulieu observes, been distinguished for
+their reverence for learning, and it is an undoubted fact that Jewish
+families and families mixed with Jewish blood have produced an amount
+and variety of ability that far exceed the average of men. The ability
+goes rather with the race than with the religion. Spinosa, Heine,
+Ricardo, and Disraeli--to quote but a few of the most illustrious
+names--were not believers in the synagogue. Some of the forms in which
+the Jews have most excelled are such as might have been expected from
+their past. It is natural that the descendants of the most nomadic
+and cosmopolitan of races should have been great masters of language
+and in the foremost rank of philologists, and it is not surprising
+that the descendants of the chief moneylenders and calculators of the
+world should have produced great financiers, and have shown a very
+eminent aptitude for mathematics. Medicine more than most professions
+depends on individual ability, and has been exercised independently of
+the favour of Churches and Governments, and in medicine the Jews were
+for a long period pre-eminent. Their marked taste and turn for music
+may appear more surprising. It is universally recognised and is
+sufficiently evident to anyone who will look at the faces of the chief
+orchestras of Europe. Besides a crowd of lesser names they have
+produced among composers Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, and Halevy, and among
+contemporary performers Rubinstein, Joachim, Hermann Levy, and Lucca.
+A Jewess is the most popular tragic actress on the contemporary stage,
+and another Jewess was probably the greatest tragic actress of the
+century. M. Leroy-Beaulieu notices that in painting and sculpture the
+Jews have been less conspicuous, and he attributes this to their
+horror of idolatry. I should rather ascribe it to the fact that
+European art in its best period was mainly devoted to depicting
+Christian subjects for Christian churches. At all events several
+considerable Jewish names may be cited in contemporary art, and the
+Dutch painter who bears the name of Israels is perhaps the greatest
+living master of the pathetic in painting. In Western Europe, wherever
+public life has been opened to them, Jews have thrown themselves into
+almost all the great movements of their time and have distinguished
+themselves in nearly all. Cremieux, who was a leading figure in the
+French Republic of 1848, was a Jew both by birth and by creed. David
+Manin and Leon Gambetta had Jewish blood in their veins. Lassalle and
+Marx, the chief names in German socialism, as well as great numbers of
+their followers belong to the same race, and more than one English
+example of political eminence will occur to the reader. In both German
+and Dutch literature Jewish names are frequent and they are nearly
+everywhere prominent in journalism. In the army they have been much
+less distinguished. Many Jews no doubt serve in the great continental
+armies with honour, but the Jew is naturally a pacific being, hating
+violence and recoiling with a peculiar horror from blood. The
+beneficence of the Jew was for a long time very naturally confined to
+his own race, but since the hand of persecution has been withdrawn,
+and wherever the Jews have been suffered to mingle freely with the
+Christian population, it has taken a wider range and Jewish names are
+conspicuous in some of the best forms of unsectarian philanthropy.
+
+It is the evident tendency of modern political life to split up into a
+number of distinct groups representing distinct interests or forms of
+thought. We find a Catholic party, a Nonconformist party, a Labour
+party, a Socialist party, a Temperance party, and many others. But in
+spite of the crusade that has arisen in so many countries against the
+Jews, we nowhere find a distinct and clearly defined Jewish party. The
+tendency of the race is rather to throw themselves ardently into
+existing movements, and their power of assimilation is one of their
+most remarkable gifts. As M. Leroy-Beaulieu shows by many
+illustrations, they are apt in most Western nations even to exaggerate
+the national characteristics, though they usually combine with them a
+certain flexibility of adaptation and a certain cosmopolitanism of
+view which is essentially their own.
+
+It was inevitable that with such tendencies the old rigidity of creed
+should be impaired and that the observances which completely severed
+the Jew from other people should be discarded. There can be little
+doubt that the dissolution of old beliefs which has been such a marked
+and ominous characteristic of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century has been even more common among the Western Jews than in
+Christian nations, and it appears to have spread quite as rapidly
+among the women as among the men. Many Jews have passed into complete
+religious indifference--into absolute and often very cynical negation.
+They have become, as Sheridan wittily said, like the blank page
+between the Old and the New Testament. Others have taken refuge in a
+kind of highly rationalised Judaism little different from pure Theism.
+Some of the most independent, scientific, and trenchant criticism of
+the Old Testament writings has proceeded from members of the race
+which was once distinguished for the most complete and superstitious
+worship of the letter of the law. Spinoza in his 'Tractatus
+Theologico-Politicus' led the way in this path, and in our own day I
+need only mention the writings of Salvador, Kalisch, and Darmesteter
+and the remarkable Hibbert Lectures of Mr. Montefiore.
+
+This movement, however, is chiefly confined to the Western Jews. The
+Oriental Jews have retained in a far greater measure their old creed
+and ritual, their old fanaticism and aspirations. To them Palestine is
+still the land of promise, and they still dream that it is destined to
+become once more a Jewish State. Few persons who consider the
+conditions of the East and the power of the Jewish race will
+pronounce the realisation of this dream to be impossible or even in a
+very high degree improbable. Perhaps the most formidable obstacle is
+the poverty of the land and the total absence among the Jews of
+agricultural tastes and aptitudes. One thing, however, may be safely
+predicted. If Palestine is ever again to become a Jewish land, this
+will be effected only through the wealth and energy of the Western
+Jews, and it is not those Jews who are likely to inhabit it.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[8] Mr. Lecky had made various notes with the intention of bringing this
+essay up to date, but failing health prevented him from accomplishing
+it.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+MADAME DE STAEL
+
+
+Among the many important works which have lately been published on the
+Continent, reconstructing the history of France during the struggle of
+the Revolution and during the periods that immediately preceded and
+followed it, scarcely any have been so comprehensive, and not many
+have been so valuable, as 'The History of the Life and Times of Madame
+de Stael,' by Lady Blennerhassett. The author--a Bavarian lady who was
+an intimate friend and favourite pupil of Dr. Doellinger--has brought
+to her task a knowledge, which is scarcely rivalled in its
+completeness, of the French, German, English, and Italian literatures
+relating to the period; and she has produced a work of which it is in
+one sense the merit, but in another the defect, that it sweeps over a
+far wider field than might be expected from its title. It is seldom, I
+think, a judicious thing to confuse the provinces of history and
+biography by turning the life of an individual into an elaborate
+history of his time; and in the few cases in which this method has
+been successfully pursued, the biographer has selected as his subject
+some man like Cromwell, or Frederick the Great, or Napoleon, who was
+indisputably the chief mover of his age. When figures of less
+prominence are chosen, both the history and the biography are apt to
+suffer. The true perspective, or relative magnitude, of events is
+impaired, and the book is almost sure to lose something of its
+artistic charm and of its popularity. Mr. Masson, as it seems to me,
+committed a mistake of this kind in his 'Life of Milton,' when he
+grouped around the great Puritan poet--who, however illustrious, was
+certainly not the central figure of his time--a full and valuable
+history of the Commonwealth, and of large sections of the reigns of
+Charles I. and Charles II.
+
+In like manner, a great part of the work of Lady Blennerhassett is not
+biography, but history, and history of a very high order. Madame de
+Stael was so closely connected in her own person, and still more
+through her father, with the early events of the French Revolution,
+that we accept with gratitude the admirable sketch of that period
+which Lady Blennerhassett has given us; but we should scarcely expect
+to find in a work primarily devoted to Madame de Stael full and
+masterly accounts of the Ministry of Turgot, of the rise and teaching
+of the Economists, of the rival influence of the writings of
+Montesquieu and Rousseau on the French political character, of the
+effect of English influence and American example in preparing the
+Revolution, and of the part played by Germans and Swedes in French
+politics. At the same time, the pictures of the social and
+intellectual life prevailing in the different countries with which
+Madame de Stael was connected, and the full accounts given of a crowd
+of persons with whom she came into casual contact, though in
+themselves both interesting and valuable, often tend to divert the
+reader from the main subject of the book. In truth, Lady
+Blennerhassett has not been able to resist the temptation of a very
+full mind to pour out all its knowledge, and, while possessing many
+rare and brilliant literary gifts, she appears to me to want that
+restraining sense of literary perspective which gives biography its
+true proportion and symmetry. This defect has, I fear, diminished the
+popularity of a most valuable book. In the original German, and in an
+excellent French translation which was revised by the author and which
+I especially commend to my readers, the work consists of three very
+substantial volumes.[9] A hasty reader will readily conclude that, in
+this short and crowded life, such a space is far more than should be
+allotted to a long-vanished figure which, though interesting and
+brilliant, was not of the first magnitude. But if he has the courage
+to persevere, he will soon discover that few modern books have lighted
+up in so many directions the political, social, moral, and
+intellectual history of a momentous period, and have exhibited at once
+so many kinds of talent and so wide a range of sympathies and
+knowledge. The complete competence, the firm, sober, and--if I may use
+the expression--masculine judgment with which Lady Blennerhassett has
+grasped the great political problems of the period of the Revolution,
+is not less conspicuous than the truly feminine delicacy of
+observation and touch with which she has delineated social life in
+many different countries, and painted the finer shades of many widely
+dissimilar characters.
+
+Anne Louise Germaine Necker was born in Paris on April 22, 1766. Her
+father was at that time known only as a Swiss banker of high character
+and reputation, who had amassed a vast fortune and had come to Paris
+for his private affairs; but about two years after the birth of his
+daughter he was appointed to represent the interests of Geneva at
+Paris, and when she was ten years old he rose, for the first time, to
+a leading place in the Ministry of France. Her mother had been the
+Mademoiselle Curchod whose charms and accomplishments had captivated
+Gibbon when he was a young man at Lausanne. Every reader of his
+autobiography will remember the famous passage in which he describes
+his engagement, the opposition of his father, and the resignation with
+which he 'sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a son.' M. d'Haussonville
+has published from the archives at Coppet some melancholy letters
+which show clearly that Gibbon exhibited more heartlessness and
+inflicted more suffering than might be gathered from his own stately
+narrative. But no lasting scar remained. After a few years of poverty
+and hardship, during which she was obliged to earn a livelihood as a
+schoolmistress, Mademoiselle Curchod found in Necker a husband who
+realised her fondest wishes; and when, soon after, she became the
+centre of a brilliant salon at Paris, her former lover, then in the
+zenith of his fame, was often among her guests. Madame Necker did not
+always abstain from slightly veiled allusions to the past, but it is
+pleasant to see that a warm and solid friendship seems to have grown
+up between Gibbon and both his host and hostess. A pretty anecdote is
+related of how, on one occasion, after he had left the house, they
+agreed in expressing the deep regret with which they looked forward to
+his approaching departure for England; when their little daughter, who
+was then just ten years old, gravely offered to prevent the
+catastrophe by marrying the illustrious, but by no means
+prepossessing, historian.
+
+It was a saying of Talleyrand that he who had not lived before 1789
+had never known the full charm of life. Germaine Necker grew up in the
+last bright flush of a society which had, perhaps, as many
+fascinations as any that the world has known. Her mother, however,
+though she occupied a prominent position in this brilliant world, was
+never altogether of it. She shared fully, indeed, its intellectual
+tastes, and had herself won some small place in literature. She threw
+herself ardently into its philanthropic movements, and especially into
+that for the reform of the hospitals. She formed a warm and true
+friendship with Buffon and Thomas. She corresponded with Voltaire, and
+attracted to her house most of the best writers of the age. But to the
+last she remained eminently and characteristically Swiss, and she
+never acquired the light touch, or the easy, pliant grace, of the true
+Parisian. She was a little cold, a little prim, a little pedantic, a
+little self-conscious. Neither her reserved manners nor her strong
+domestic tastes, nor the vein of Puritanism that ran through her
+opinions, harmonised with the lax and sceptical society around her,
+and it was no sacrifice to her to exchange the splendours and the
+gaieties of Paris for her peaceful retreat on the Lake of Geneva.
+
+In this, as in most respects, her daughter was very different. In her
+the Swiss element had altogether disappeared, and, as is often the
+case with the eminent child of eminent parents, her character shot out
+in directions wholly unlike both that of her father and that of her
+mother. She was not beautiful, though her dark and eminently lustrous
+eyes, beaming with intelligence, and her rich brown tint, gave some
+charm to her large and rather coarse features; while her massive
+shoulders, arms, and breast, her full lips and the firm grasp of her
+vigorous hand, indicated a strong, frank, ruling, and passionate
+nature, overflowing with life and with many forms of energy. Her
+education was somewhat fitfully conducted, but she threw herself
+eagerly into literary enthusiasms. At fifteen we find her annotating
+Montesquieu. Raynal and Richardson were among her idols, but, like
+most of the more ardent spirits of her generation, her ideas and
+character were moulded chiefly by the genius of Rousseau. Her first
+work of importance was an exposition of his doctrines, and his
+influence left deep traces on both 'Corinne' and 'Delphine.' Her
+strong sane judgment, however, her genuine humanity, and the
+moderating influence of her father, saved her from being swept away,
+like Madame Roland and most of the disciples of Rousseau, by the
+sanguinary torrent of revolutionary enthusiasm; and in times of wild
+passion and exaggeration she usually exhibited a singular soundness
+and sobriety of political judgment. She was sometimes mistaken, but on
+the whole it may well be doubted whether there is any other French
+writer or politician of the period of the Revolution whose
+contemporary judgments of men and events have been more frequently
+ratified by posterity.
+
+In this respect she was not of the school of Rousseau. In another and
+less admirable way she was curiously untouched by his spirit, for few
+superior intellects have been so openly, so utterly, insensible to the
+charms of nature. She once spoke of 'the infernal peace' of her Swiss
+home, and she candidly acknowledged that if it were not for respect
+for the opinions of others she would not open her window to look for
+the first time on the Bay of Naples, though she would gladly travel
+five hundred leagues to make the acquaintance of a man of talent. On
+the borders of the Lake of Geneva, with one of the fairest scenes on
+earth expanding before her, she was incessantly pining for 'le
+ruisseau de la Rue du Bac'--for the interest and the excitement of a
+society which had become the passion of her life.
+
+Her gifts of conversation were very wonderful, and she had a wide
+range of sympathies, keen insight into character, and great power of
+describing it by a few vivid words. She had, however, no reticence or
+reserve, she made many enemies by her unbounded frankness, and she
+often fatigued or overwhelmed by her exuberant animal spirits and by
+the torrent of her words. At the same time, unlike most great talkers,
+she possessed to a very eminent degree the gifts of learning from
+others, of grasping the characteristic features of their teaching, of
+awakening sympathies, of dispelling bashfulness, and of kindling
+latent intellect into a flame. Few women combined so remarkably a
+sound and moderate judgment with extreme vividness and impetuosity of
+emotion. She admired deeply, and she generally admired wisely; her
+first judgments and impulses were almost always generous; and,
+although she was subject to violent gusts of passion, she could be
+very patient with those she loved. Through her whole life she was the
+warmest and most self-sacrificing of friends, and her few antipathies
+were singularly devoid of rancour. One of those who knew her best
+pronounced her to be 'absolutely incapable of hatred.'
+
+She soon became the most attractive figure in the salon of Madame
+Necker, and as the health of her mother declined she became its
+central figure. Her rare accomplishments and her position as a great
+heiress naturally would have drawn many suitors around her, but in
+that age the determined Protestantism of her family was a formidable
+barrier. It appears from something that she wrote late in life to a
+German correspondent that, when a mere girl, she had come under the
+spell of Louis de Narbonne, who asked her hand, and with whom, in
+after years, she had relations which caused much scandal and which
+greatly coloured her political life. The story that her parents at one
+time contemplated a marriage between her and William Pitt, on the
+occasion of his visit to France in 1783, was discredited by Lord
+Stanhope; but M. d'Haussonville pronounces it to be quite true, though
+there is no clear evidence that Pitt was apprised of the wish of the
+Neckers. She was then only seventeen, and her vehement protest against
+an English marriage nipped the project in the bud. In 1786, however, a
+marriage was negotiated for her with the Swedish ambassador, the Baron
+de Stael, who was at that time a special favourite of Gustavus III. It
+was a marriage into which but little affection entered, and twelve
+years later it ended in a separation. There was afterward, it is true,
+a partial reconciliation, and she was present with her husband when he
+died, in 1802, on the way from Paris to Coppet.
+
+Her marriage gave her an independent position, and she mixed much in
+the politics of the early days of the Revolution. She corresponded
+regularly with the Swedish King, and formed intimate friendships with
+great numbers of the guiding politicians. The proudest moment of her
+life was in August 1788, when, amid a transport of transient
+enthusiasm and extravagant hopefulness, her father was for the second
+time called to the helm. Her devotion to him amounted almost to
+adoration, and she would never acknowledge, what the rest of the world
+soon perceived, that, though excellently adapted to be Minister in
+quiet, regular times, he had neither the daring nor the insight, nor
+the commanding power, that was needed to guide the bark of State
+through the fierce storms of the Revolution. She fully shared the
+enthusiasm with which the opening of the States General was received.
+She mentions that on that occasion she was watching the procession
+from a window with Madame de Montmorin, wife of the Minister of
+Foreign Affairs, and that as she expressed her delight, her companion
+said: 'You are wrong in rejoicing; great calamities will follow from
+this to France and to us.' The words were truly prophetic. Madame de
+Montmorin perished on the scaffold with one of her sons; the other was
+drowned. Her husband was murdered in prison during the massacre of the
+second of September. Her eldest daughter died in the prison hospital.
+Her youngest daughter withered away when not yet thirty,
+broken-hearted by the calamities of her family.
+
+Madame de Stael, too, soon discovered that no millennium was at hand.
+She was an eye-witness of the terrible scenes of the fifth and sixth
+of October, when Versailles was invaded by a half-famished mob, when
+the guards were cut down and beheaded, and when the royal family were
+brought captive to Paris. She clearly saw that all power was passing
+from the Government to the clubs, and that the mob violence which
+reigned was either instigated or deliberately connived at by the very
+men whose first duty was to repress it. 'These gentlemen,' she once
+said, 'are like the rainbow; they always appear when the storm is
+over.' Under her influence the Swedish Embassy became the chief centre
+in which the 'Constitutional Party' was organised. Narbonne and
+Talleyrand were then completely devoted to her. Segur, Choiseul, the
+Prince de Broglie, and other members of the party were constantly at
+her house; and at what were called her 'coalition dinners' she brought
+them in contact with leading men of other groups. She had a
+conspicuous talent for inspiring, encouraging, conciliating, and
+organising a party; and for some months she exercised a very real
+political influence. Her aim was a constitutional monarchy of the
+English type; but she came gradually to believe that a republic, or at
+least a change of Sovereigns, had become inevitable. She never wavered
+in her devotion to liberty, order, and justice; but on minor questions
+she always exhibited a spirit of compromise which was very rare in her
+age and in her country. 'The true line of conduct in politics,' she
+once said, 'is always to be ready to rally to the least obnoxious
+party among your adversaries, even though it is far from representing
+exactly your own point of view.' At the end of 1791 she had a moment
+of delicious triumph, when her favourite Narbonne became Minister of
+War. Marie Antoinette, who disliked her, clearly recognised her hand.
+'Count Louis de Narbonne,' she wrote to Fersen, 'has been Minister of
+War since yesterday. What a glory for Madame de Stael and what a
+pleasure for her to have the whole army at her disposal!'
+
+The triumphs of Madame de Stael, however, were very fleeting. Her
+father had fallen irretrievably, and in September 1790 he passed
+almost unnoticed out of the country where, but little more than a year
+before, he had been welcomed with such enthusiasm. The Ministry of
+Narbonne, to which she had attached her most ardent hopes, ended in
+four months, and before its conclusion her husband, whose views on
+French politics had been for some time diverging from those of his
+Sovereign, was recalled. He was not, however, replaced, and Madame de
+Stael remained alone in Paris till September 1792. Her position there
+was an extremely dangerous one. She had long been an object of
+incessant abuse in the Royalist press, and now the red waves of
+Jacobinism were rising higher and higher, surging fiercely around
+those to whom she was most attached. Nothing in her life is so
+admirable as the courage with which, in this period of the Revolution,
+she devoted herself to saving the lives of the proscribed. Her purse
+was always open, and she often risked not only her fortune, but her
+life. The royal family had always disliked her; but she was filled
+with horror at the fate that was impending over them, and she herself
+organised a plan for their escape, in which, if it had been accepted,
+she would have borne a leading part, at the imminent risk of her head;
+and she afterward wrote an earnest and eloquent pamphlet in the hope
+of saving the life of the Queen. Sometimes by interceding with those
+in power, sometimes by concealing fugitives in the Swedish Embassy,
+very often by large and timely gifts of money, she saved many. Her own
+life, at the time of the September massacres, was in extreme danger,
+and she at last fled to Switzerland. Coppet then became a great centre
+of refugees, and many of them owed their lives to her help. Among
+others, Narbonne appears to have owed his escape, in part at least, to
+her assistance, and she chiefly managed the escape of his daughter.
+She was for a long time completely under his charm; but he is said to
+have been irritated by her often tactless impetuosity, and especially
+by the manner in which public opinion regarded him as her creature,
+and he seems to have treated her with much ingratitude. There was no
+violent breach, but there was a separation, and a wound which was long
+and bitterly felt. Many years later, Madame de Stael, when praising
+the Prince de Ligne, said of him: 'He had the manners of Monsieur de
+Narbonne--and a heart.'
+
+A short visit to England, in 1793, the death of her mother in May
+1794, and the publication of her first purely political work,
+'Reflections on Peace, addressed to Mr. Pitt and to the French,' were
+the chief events of her life during the next few months. In this work
+she dwelt with much force on the absurdity of supposing that any
+foreign intervention could restore what the Revolution had destroyed,
+and she predicted that the inevitable effect of the prolongation or
+extension of the war would be to strengthen that militant Jacobinism
+which was now the greatest danger to Europe. In this year, too, she
+first came in contact with Benjamin Constant, and her acquaintance
+soon developed into a connection which gave her a new and powerful
+instrument for acting on French politics, but which also brought with
+it much suffering, many reproaches, and long and lasting discredit. In
+May 1795 we find her again in Paris, with her husband, who had once
+more been sent on a mission to France; again eagerly engaged in French
+politics; again largely occupied in defending the interests of her
+proscribed friends. Among others, Talleyrand appears to have owed his
+recall to her influence. As usual, she excited many antipathies, she
+was denounced in the Convention by Legendre for her political
+intrigues and especially for her efforts in favour of the emigrants,
+and she was obliged to leave Paris for about eighteen months. Her pen
+was at this time very active, and to this period belong her 'Essay on
+Novels' and her 'Treatise on the Passions.'
+
+The star of Bonaparte was now rapidly rising, and it profoundly
+affected the last years of her life. The pages in her 'Considerations
+on the French Revolution' in which she describes her first interview
+with him, after the peace of Campo Formio, are among the most graphic
+she ever wrote, though something of the shadow of the picture was, no
+doubt, drawn from later experience and antipathy. She was at first
+dazzled; she was at all times profoundly impressed by his genius, but
+she soon came to perceive that his nature was wholly unlike that of
+other men. She had seen, she said, men worthy of all respect, and she
+had seen men noted for their ferocity; but the impression produced on
+her by Bonaparte was generically different from that produced by
+either of these classes. She found that such epithets as 'good,'
+'violent,' 'gentle,' and 'cruel' could not be applied to him in their
+ordinary senses. He was in truth a being who stood self-centred, and
+apart from the sympathies, passions, and enthusiasms of his kind,
+habitually regarding men, not as fellow-creatures, but as mere
+counters in a game; a will of colossal strength; an intellect of
+clear, cold, transcendent power, solely governed by the imperturbable
+calculation of the strictest egotism, and never drawn aside by love or
+hatred, by pity or religion, or by attachment to any cause. It was
+impossible, she found, to exaggerate his contempt for human nature and
+his disbelief in the reality of human virtue. A perfectly honest man
+was the only kind of man he never could understand. Such a man
+perplexed and baffled his calculations, acting on them as the sign of
+the cross acts on the machinations of a demon. The superiority which
+so clearly shone in his conversation was not that of a mind cultivated
+by study and by society; it was the supreme insight into the
+circumstances of life possessed by a mighty hunter of men. There was
+something in him, she said, like a cold and trenchant sword, which at
+the same moment could wound and chill.
+
+Such was the estimate she formed of the man who, nearly at the same
+time, was presented by Talleyrand to the Directory as 'the pacificator
+of Europe,' as a hero 'who despised luxury and pomp--the wretched
+ambition of common souls--and who loved the poems of Ossian,
+especially because they detach men from the earth'! That two such
+different natures should come into collision was very natural.
+Bonaparte always hated superior women, and especially women who
+meddled in politics. He well knew that the circle of Madame de Stael
+was the centre of ideas about freedom and constitutional government
+irreconcilably opposed to his ambition, and that the world of good
+society and good taste, of independent thought and independent
+characters, in which she played so great a part, remained unsubdued
+and undazzled by his power. Benjamin Constant had been placed in 'the
+Tribunate,' and in the beginning of 1800 he made a speech there,
+indicating a desire to establish in that body an opposition like the
+opposition in the English Parliament. Bonaparte was furious at his
+attitude, and at once ascribed it to the inspiration of Madame de
+Stael. A year later the last work of her father appeared, and it
+contained an earnest warning against growing despotism in France and a
+strong argument for the establishment of a republican constitution.
+The sayings of Madame de Stael that were repeated from lip to lip, and
+the atmosphere of thought that grew up around her, irritated and
+disquieted Bonaparte. 'She is moving the minds of men,' he said, 'in a
+direction that does not suit me.' 'They pretend that she does not
+speak of politics or of me, but somehow it always happens that those
+who have been with her become less attached to me.' Soon her salon was
+emptied by an emphatic intimation that those who entered it would
+incur the displeasure of the First Consul. Official scribes were
+busily employed in depreciating her, and these measures were speedily
+followed by the long exile which darkened the later years of her life.
+
+It is impossible for me in this article to relate, even in outline,
+the story of this exile, and of her travels in England, Italy,
+Austria, Russia, and, above all, in Germany. Madame de Stael has
+herself described this period of her life in her 'Ten Years of Exile,'
+and all the details have been collected by Lady Blennerhassett with an
+industry that leaves nothing to be desired. A woman of a more heroic
+type would have borne with less repining an exclusion from Paris life
+which was mitigated by wealth, and fame, and abundant occupation, and
+a family that adored her, and troops of admiring friends. A woman who
+was less essentially noble would have assuredly accepted the overtures
+that were more than once made to her, and would have purchased her
+peace with Napoleon by burning a few grains of literary incense on his
+altar. But though, in a life of more than common vicissitude and
+temptation, Madame de Stael was betrayed into great weaknesses and
+into some serious faults, she never lost her sense of the dignity and
+integrity of literature, and her works are singularly free from
+unworthy flattery as well as from unworthy resentments and jealousies.
+The homage which Napoleon desired was never received, and in her great
+work on Italy and her still greater one on Germany there was no trace
+of his victories, influence, or animosities. 'In France,' he once
+said, 'there is a small literature and a great literature; the small
+literature is on my side, but the great literature is not for me.'
+
+The disfavour which thrust Madame de Stael out of political
+influence, and then drove her into exile, proved a blessing in
+disguise, for it turned her mind decisively from political intrigues
+to those forms of literature in which she was most fitted to excel.
+Her treatise on 'Literature,' which was published in 1800, was
+conceived upon a scale too large for her own knowledge, and though she
+herself attributed to it the great and general favour that she enjoyed
+for a time in Paris society, it has not taken an enduring place in
+French literature. 'Delphine,' the most personal, and also the most
+censured, of her novels, had a still wider success, and made a deeper
+and more lasting impression. It appeared in 1802, and it was followed
+by a long interval, during which she appears to have published nothing
+except a short but admirable notice of her father, who died in the
+spring of 1804; but in 1807 'Corinne' burst upon the world, and at
+once obtained a European fame equalled by that of no French novel
+since 'La Nouvelle Heloise.' In this great work of imagination she
+embodied, in a highly poetic form, the impressions she had derived
+from her journeys in England and Italy, and its immense and
+instantaneous success placed her on the very pinnacle of fame. It is
+worthy of notice that a bitter attack upon 'Corinne' appeared in 'Le
+Moniteur,' based chiefly upon the fact that its hero was an
+Englishman; and there is good reason to believe that this attack was
+from the pen of Napoleon himself.
+
+A book of larger scope and of more serious influence soon followed.
+Germany at this time presented the singular spectacle of a people who
+had been reduced to the lowest depths of political depression, but
+who, at the same time, could boast of a contemporary literature that
+was the first in the world. In France a translation of 'Werther' had
+attained great popularity; some of the plays of Schiller, the idylls
+of Gessner, and a few other German works were well known; but scarcely
+any Frenchman had a conception of the magnitude and importance of the
+intellectual activity which was growing up beyond the Rhine, or of the
+vast place which Goethe, Schiller, and Kant were destined to take in
+European thought. It was one of the chief pleasures and occupations of
+Madame de Stael, during her exile, to explore this almost unknown
+field. It would scarcely have been thought that she was well fitted
+for the task. She learned the language late in life, and her
+characteristically French mind seemed very little in harmony with
+either the strength or the weakness of the Teutonic intellect. There
+was nothing very profound, or very subtle, or very poetical in her
+nature, and she had all that instinctive dislike to the vague, the
+disproportioned, the exaggerated, and the ambiguous, to fantastic and
+far-fetched conjecture, and to imposing edifices of speculation based
+upon scanty or shadowy materials, that pre-eminently distinguishes the
+best French thought. Very wisely, however, she placed herself in
+direct communication with the great writers of Germany, and a wholly
+new world of thought and sentiment gradually opened upon her mind. It
+is not too much to say that it was her pen that first revealed to the
+Latin world the intellectual greatness of Germany. In England,
+Coleridge had already laboured in the same field, and his admirable
+translation of 'Wallenstein' had appeared as early as 1800; but it had
+been completely still-born, and in England also it was reserved for
+the great Frenchwoman to give the first considerable impulse to the
+study of German literature. For the history, the merits, and the
+defects of her work on Germany, I cannot do better than to refer to
+the admirable pages which Lady Blennerhassett has devoted to the
+subject. With the doubtful exception of 'Le Genie du Christianisme,'
+it was by far the most important French work which appeared during the
+reign of Napoleon. It is a characteristic fact that the whole of the
+first edition was confiscated by order of his Government. Happily the
+manuscript was saved, and about three years later it was printed in
+England.
+
+After some discreditable scenes, on which a recently published
+correspondence has thrown a painful though somewhat doubtful light,
+the connection of Madame de Stael with Benjamin Constant was broken.
+The two continued occasionally to correspond, and as late as 1815 we
+find her lending him a large sum of money; but their relations were
+never again what they had been, and on the side of Constant there
+appears to have been a large amount of positive malevolence. 'O
+Benjamin,' she wrote to him in one of her later letters, 'you have
+destroyed my life! For ten years not a day has passed that my heart
+has not suffered for you--and yet I loved you so much!' A strong
+affection, such as she had not found in her marriage with the Baron de
+Stael, was an imperious necessity of her existence, and after her
+breach with Constant she soon found an object in a young officer from
+Geneva named Rocca, who had returned to his native town badly wounded
+after brilliant service in Spain. When they first met, in 1810, Madame
+de Stael was forty-four and Rocca about twenty-three; but a genuine
+and honourable affection seems to have grown up on both sides, and in
+the following year they were married. Madame de Stael, however, either
+clinging to her name or dreading the ridicule of such a strangely
+assorted marriage, insisted upon its concealment, and Rocca generally
+passed in society as her lover. A child was born in 1812, but it was
+only after the death of Madame de Stael that the legitimacy of the
+connection was established. It proved much more productive of
+happiness than might have been expected, and greatly brightened her
+closing years. Nearly at the same time an important change passed over
+her religious views, and the vague deism of her youth deepened into a
+positive, definite, and earnest Christianity, but without mysticism
+and without intolerance. Some beautiful lines that are cited by Lady
+Blennerhassett very faithfully express the spirit of her belief: 'Il
+faut avoir soin, si l'on peut, que le declin de cette vie soit la
+jeunesse de l'autre. Se desinteresser de soi, sans cesser de
+s'interesser aux autres, met quelque chose de divin dans l'ame.'
+
+She lived to see the downfall of perhaps the only man she really
+hated, his return from Elba, his final defeat at Waterloo, and the
+restoration of the Bourbons. But, though she detested Napoleon and his
+system, these things gave her no pleasure. The spectacle of an invaded
+and a dismembered France aroused her strongest feelings of patriotism,
+and she loved liberty too truly and too ardently to rejoice in the
+influences that triumphed in 1815. Her last years were chiefly spent
+in the composition of her 'Considerations on the French Revolution,'
+in which she sums up the convictions of her life. It is one of her
+most valuable and most lasting books. The disproportioned prominence
+which is naturally assigned in it to Necker, and the manifest personal
+element in her antipathy to Napoleon, impair its weight, indeed, as a
+history; but few writers have criticised with more justice the
+successive stages of the Revolution, and few books of its generation
+are so rich in political wisdom. The concluding chapters, in which, in
+a strain of noble eloquence, she pleads the cause of moderate and
+constitutional freedom, show how steadily and how strongly, in an age
+of many disenchantments, she clung to the belief of her youth.
+
+The 'Considerations on the French Revolution' had a vast and an
+immediate success, and in a few days sixty thousand copies were sold.
+Madame de Stael, however, did not live to witness her triumph. In
+February 1817 she was struck down by a paralytic illness, and on July
+14, after a long period of complete prostration, she passed away
+tranquilly in her sleep. It was a peaceful ending to an agitated and
+chequered career. She had enjoyed much and suffered much. She had
+committed grave faults, and had met with her full share of
+disappointment and ingratitude; but few women have left such an
+enduring monument behind them, or have touched human life on so many
+sides and with so many sympathies.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] There is also an English, and somewhat abridged, translation.
+
+
+
+
+THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT PEEL
+
+
+There is probably no other English public man of the present century
+whose career has attracted in so large a measure the interest both of
+politicians and of men of letters as Sir Robert Peel. In addition to a
+crowd of industrious but not very distinguished compilers, it has been
+discussed with great skill by Guizot, by Lord Dalling, by Mr. Goldwin
+Smith, and by Mr. Spencer Walpole; and in that great literature of
+monographs which has grown up with such remarkable rapidity in England
+within the last decade, no less than three have been devoted to the
+life of Peel. The interest that attaches to him is, indeed, of a very
+peculiar character. He was almost wholly destitute of the power of
+imagination that is so conspicuous in the careers or speeches of
+Chatham and Burke, of Canning and Beaconsfield. Except during a few
+years that followed the Reform Bill of 1832, he never exhibited the
+spectacle of a leader struggling successfully against enormous odds.
+He was not one of those statesmen who see further than their
+contemporaries, and who, after years of failure and struggle, are
+proved by their ultimate triumph to have most truly read the
+tendencies of their age. Though he was three times Prime Minister of
+England, and though he was for a time deemed the most brilliant of
+party leaders, he left the great and powerful party which trusted him
+almost hopelessly shattered. Twice in his life he carried measures of
+transcendent importance which he had not only persistently opposed,
+but had been specially placed in power for the purpose of resisting.
+The most striking incidents in his career are incidents of failure
+rather than of success, and history has pronounced that, on the most
+important questions of his time, he was disastrously wrong. The long
+delay in the inevitable emancipation of the Catholics, which was
+largely due to him, and the circumstances under which he ultimately
+carried the measure, produced evils that are in full activity at the
+present hour. His persistent opposition to parliamentary reform
+contributed to bring England to the very verge of revolution; though
+when the Reform Bill had been carried he nobly retrieved his error by
+the frankness with which he accepted, and the skill with which he
+used, the new conditions of English politics. His abolition of the
+Corn Laws at the head of a Government which had been pledged to
+maintain them gave a great shock to public confidence, and for a long
+period most seriously dislocated the machinery of party government.
+But, in spite of all this, there are few statesmen who have carried so
+large a number of measures of great and acknowledged importance, who
+have impressed so deeply the sense of their superiority on the minds
+of their contemporaries, or who were followed to the grave by a more
+widespread and genuine regret.
+
+It is this contrast between the leading incidents of Peel's life and
+the impression which he made on the world that constitutes the great
+interest of his career. The explanation is not difficult to discover.
+It is the common story of extraordinary qualities balanced by
+striking defects. He was not a great statesman, but he was a
+supremely great administrator, a supremely great master of
+parliamentary management and of parliamentary legislation. He had
+little prescience; he often grossly misread the signs of the times, or
+only recognised them when it was too late; but when he was once
+convinced, he acted on his conviction with frankness and courage, and
+when a thing had to be done, no one could do it like him. As Disraeli
+said: 'In the course of time the method which was natural to Sir
+Robert Peel matured into a habit of such expertness that no one in the
+despatch of affairs ever adapted the means more fitly to the end.'[10]
+In the words of Sir Cornewall Lewis: 'For concocting, producing,
+explaining, and defending measures, he had no equal, or anything like
+an equal.'[11]
+
+In the interesting volumes which were published by Lord Mahon and Mr.
+Cardwell in 1856 we have Peel's own explanation of his conduct
+relating to the removal of the Catholic disabilities in 1829, and to
+the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846; but the publication of his
+confidential correspondence has been long delayed, and the volume
+before us only carries the work down to 1827. It has been edited by
+Mr. Parker with great care and accuracy, and with undeviating good
+sense and good taste, and it throws much curious light upon a corner
+of history which has been but little explored.
+
+Peel started in life with great advantages. The eldest son of a very
+wealthy manufacturer who had long occupied a respectable place in
+Parliament, and who was closely attached to the dominant party in the
+State, he was from his earliest youth destined by his father to be a
+statesman. Under such circumstances he was certain in the pre-Reform
+period to have not only all the advantages which the best school and
+university education could give, but also the still greater advantages
+of an early introduction into both parliamentary and official life;
+provided always that no aberration of character, or taste, or
+imagination, or opinion drew him aside from the plain path that lay
+before him. He grew up in an atmosphere of the best middle-class
+virtues. Decorum, good sense, industry, strict morality; a sober
+religious orthodoxy; much simplicity of life, preserved in the midst
+of great wealth; ideals which, if not very lofty, were at least
+eminently practical and perfectly honourable, prevailed around him,
+and their influence imbued his whole nature. He accepted cordially the
+destiny that was before him, and threw himself into it with untiring
+industry. His opinions changed during his life much more than his
+character, and the shy, sensitive, industrious, somewhat
+self-conscious, somewhat awkward Harrow boy, prefigured very
+faithfully the future statesman. He is described as wandering when a
+schoolboy by himself among the hedges, knocking down birds with
+stones, a practice in which he was very skilful, and which eventually
+developed into a strong passion for shooting. He was quiet,
+good-natured, studious, scarcely ever in scrapes, and it was not until
+the last year of his school life that he threw himself with any
+keenness into the amusements of his comrades. He had good natural
+abilities; but probably the one point in which he greatly exceeded the
+average of intelligent boys was his memory, which was of extraordinary
+retentiveness, and which he carefully cultivated. During a few months
+which elapsed between leaving Harrow and going to Oxford he constantly
+attended the House of Commons, under the Gallery; and he also
+attended some natural history lectures at the Royal Institution. His
+Oxford career was very successful. He is said to have worked before
+his degree examination for no less than eighteen hours, through the
+day and night. He gained a double-first, and in the first class of
+mathematics he stood alone. Such a success at once stamped him as a
+youth of extraordinary promise, and the impression it made was
+especially great because, the examination system having been very
+recently reorganised, he was the first Oxford man who had attained it.
+
+He was brought into Parliament in April 1809, almost immediately after
+he came of age, for the borough of Cashel. No special significance
+attaches to the fact of his having entered Parliament for an Irish
+constituency, for his father had simply bought the seat, and the young
+member appears to have never gone over to his constituents or held any
+communication with them.
+
+'When I sat for Cashel,' he afterwards wrote, 'and was not in office,
+having made those sacrifices which could then legally be made, but now
+cannot, I did not consider myself at all pledged to the support of
+Government.'[12] Perceval, who represented in its extreme form the
+Tory reaction that followed the Revolution, was then Prime Minister,
+and Peel at once took his place among his followers. He first spoke in
+seconding the Address in 1810, and in the partial judgment of his
+father his speech was considered, 'by men the best qualified to form a
+correct opinion of public speaking, the best first speech since that
+of Mr. Pitt.'[13]
+
+It was not, perhaps, an unmixed advantage to Peel that while he was
+still a mere boy his father had somewhat ostentatiously destined him
+to be one day a Tory statesman. Such an education could hardly fail to
+strengthen the self-consciousness which was never wanting in Peel's
+character, and to give a decided bias to his judgment. At the same
+time, the distinctive merits of his career would have probably never
+been fully developed without the early administrative training which
+his opinions made possible for him, and there is nothing in his early
+history to give the least countenance to the belief that his adherence
+to the extreme type of Tory politics imposed the slightest strain upon
+his judgment. His immediate interests and his sentiments appear at
+this time to have perfectly concurred. He came into Parliament with
+the party which was dominant, and with the section of the party which
+was most poor in able men. Had he adopted on the Catholic question the
+liberal opinions of Canning and Castlereagh, he must have held a
+position altogether subordinate to them; and the same causes that in
+the preceding Ministry had raised Perceval to be leader of the House
+of Commons over the heads of Castlereagh and Canning, marked out for
+Peel the future leadership of the party of resistance to concession.
+It has been said, on the authority of Sir Lawrence Peel, that his
+first appointment was that of private secretary to Lord Liverpool, but
+Mr. Parker has found no trace of this in the papers either of Peel or
+of Lord Liverpool. In 1810, however, when he was but just twenty-two,
+he entered administrative life as Under-Secretary of State for War and
+the Colonies, and he held that place till August 1812, when he
+obtained the far more important post of Chief Secretary for Ireland,
+and became for the next six years virtual governor of that country.
+
+It was a post requiring not only great administrative skill, but also
+great gifts of original statesmanship. During the last five years of
+the eighteenth century, and especially during the rebellion of 1798,
+religious passions in Ireland, which had for more than a generation
+been steadily subsiding, had been kindled into a flame, and the urgent
+necessity of settling the Catholic question had begun to press with
+irresistible force on the minds of the more intelligent statesmen.
+Pitt had intended to complete the Union by measures for admitting
+Catholics into Parliament, for commuting tithes, and for paying the
+Catholic clergy. Through the instrumentality of Lord Castlereagh
+assurances of the disposition of the Cabinet had been conveyed to the
+Catholic bishops and the leading Catholic laymen in 1799, which were
+sufficient to secure their active support for the Union and to prevent
+any serious opposition among the Catholic laity. The bishops met the
+wishes of the English Government by drawing up a series of
+resolutions, in which they declared their readiness to accept with
+gratitude an endowment for the priesthood, to confer upon the English
+Government a power of veto over the appointment of Catholic bishops
+which would prevent the introduction into that body of any disloyal
+men, and to certify to the Government the nomination of all Catholic
+parish priests, as well as the fact that they had taken the oath of
+allegiance. But the King had not been informed of the negotiations
+that had taken place, and it is well known how his uncompromising
+opposition produced the resignation of Pitt in 1801, how the agitation
+caused by the question threw the King into a temporary fit of
+insanity, and how Pitt at once promised that he would not move the
+question again during the reign. In the spring of 1804 Pitt resumed
+office, on the express understanding that he would not permit Catholic
+Emancipation; when the question was introduced in 1805 by Lord
+Grenville in the Lords, and by Fox in the Commons, it was defeated in
+both Houses by immense majorities, and Pitt declared that though he
+was still of opinion that there was no danger in the concession, yet,
+as long as the circumstances which prevented him from bringing it
+forward continued, he would be no party to agitating the question.
+
+In 1806 Pitt died, and Fox and Grenville were themselves in power, but
+the Catholics were again disappointed. The prejudice of the King, the
+feeling of the country, the recent vote of the House of Commons, the
+presence of Lord Sidmouth in the Ministry, proved insuperable
+obstacles, and Fox could only urge the Catholic leaders to postpone
+the question. Fox died in September 1806, and the Government presided
+over by Lord Grenville met a new Parliament in the following December.
+Grenville had been Pitt's colleague during the negotiations with the
+Catholics that preceded the Union; he had strongly urged upon Pitt the
+necessity of resigning in 1801, and he never forgave him for having so
+lightly abandoned the cause. Grenville did not attempt to carry
+emancipation, but he resolved to take at least one serious step in the
+direction of concession, by throwing open to the Catholics all the
+posts in the army and navy. An Irish Act of 1793 had enabled them to
+hold in Ireland commissions in the army, and to attain any rank except
+commander-in-chief, master-general of the ordnance, and general of the
+staff; but if the regiments in which they served were sent to England,
+they were disqualified by law from remaining in the service. The
+original Bill of Grenville's Government was intended to remove this
+anomaly, and assimilate the law in the two countries; but in the
+course of the discussions it was agreed that the Catholics should be
+freed from the exceptions to which they were subjected by the Irish
+Act, that all posts in the army and navy should be thrown open to men
+of all religious persuasions, subject only to the obligation of taking
+an oath which was prescribed, and that Catholic soldiers should be
+guaranteed by law the free exercise of their religion. The King had
+been informed of this, and was understood to have given a distinct,
+though a reluctant, assent; but a strong Protestant party, headed by
+Perceval, fiercely opposed it. The King withdrew his assent from the
+added clauses, and expressed his disapprobation of the whole measure.
+At last, after much discussion, the Ministers agreed for the present
+to withdraw their Bill, reserving to themselves by a Cabinet minute,
+which was submitted to the King, the right to renew it, or to propose
+any other measure on the subject which they desired. But the King was
+determined to push his victory to the end. He demanded from his
+Ministers a promise in writing that they would never again propose to
+him any measure connected with Catholic emancipation, and as the
+Ministers refused to give this unconstitutional pledge, the King
+dismissed them from office, and called the Duke of Portland to the
+head of affairs.
+
+It was the second time that the King had broken up a Ministry on the
+Catholic question, and his conduct was especially significant, as his
+refusal to grant military promotion to Catholics was announced in the
+midst of a great war, and at a time when thousands of Catholics were
+fighting in his armies. It at once appeared that there were two
+entirely distinct schools of Tories. Pitt, to the very close of his
+life, had declared that his opinions on the Catholic question were
+unchanged, though he would not force them against the inclination of
+the King; and his views were adopted by Canning, Castlereagh, and
+Wellesley. Perceval, on the other hand, emphatically declared that he
+'could not conceive a time or any change of circumstances which could
+render further concession to the Catholics consistent with the safety
+of the State.'[14] With the exception of Eldon, scarcely any man of
+real ability adopted this view until Peel entered Parliament as the
+follower of Perceval. It is sufficiently evident from this fact how
+little truth there is in the theory that attributes Peel's early
+Toryism to a blind admiration for Pitt.
+
+The party of the King triumphed. Parliament was dissolved on the 'No
+Popery' cry, and on the first great party division that followed the
+election the Ministers in the House of Commons had a majority of 195.
+Canning and Castlereagh, though they had no sympathy with that cry,
+availed themselves of the current that ran so strongly against the
+Whigs. In the Ministry of the Duke of Portland they held the seals for
+the Foreign and War Departments, but the leadership of the Commons and
+the virtual leadership of the Ministry was given to Perceval, who,
+though entirely without brilliant parts, exhibited unexpected talents,
+both as a practical debater and as a manager of men, and who had the
+advantage of representing fully the dominant party. Several
+circumstances, however, other than a conviction of the danger of the
+Catholic claims, contributed to the triumph of the anti-Catholic
+party. The Whigs, already broken by their policy towards France in the
+first stages of the Revolution and of the war, had become still more
+unpopular through their opposition to the seizure of the Danish fleet
+and to the Peninsular War. They were divided among themselves, for
+there was little sympathy between the more aristocratic Whigs, who
+were represented by Grenville and Lord Howick, and the more Radical
+party of Sir F. Burdett and Whitbread. A strong personal as well as
+political dislike already existed between Howick and Canning, and
+prevented their hearty co-operation on the one great question on which
+they were agreed. Above all, there was a general conviction among
+statesmen that the King's mind was trembling on the verge of insanity,
+and that a renewal of the Catholic complications of 1801 would produce
+a catastrophe.
+
+The question was debated in both the Lords and Commons in 1808. In the
+former it was lost by a majority of 87, and in the latter by a
+majority of 153. Grattan on this occasion introduced the Catholic
+petition in a speech of consummate power; but both Castlereagh and
+Canning opposed the reception of the petition, on the ground that the
+time was unsuited for the agitation of the question; and the spirit of
+the ruling part of the Ministry was sufficiently shown by the
+reduction of the Maynooth grant from 13,000_l._ to 9,250_l._ When the
+Portland Government was broken up in September 1809 by the quarrel,
+duel, and resignation of Canning and Castlereagh, Perceval became the
+head of the new Ministry, Lord Wellesley occupying the place of
+Canning, and Lord Hawkesbury that of Castlereagh; and an intensely
+anti-Catholic ministry continued to the death of Perceval. In 1809 the
+Catholic question was not introduced into Parliament. In the spring of
+1810 it was introduced into both Houses, but was defeated by
+majorities of 86 and 104; but in October 1810 an event occurred which
+profoundly changed the aspect of affairs. The King's insanity broke
+out anew in a form which gave little hope of recovery, and the Prince
+of Wales was appointed Regent. For a year the regency was subject to
+restrictions similar to those which had been adopted in 1788, but on
+February 1, 1812, these restrictions were to cease, and the Regent was
+to enter into full fruition of the royal power.
+
+The hopes of the Catholics were now raised to the highest point. With
+the confirmed insanity of George III. the most serious of all the
+obstacles to their claims was removed. During the year of the
+restricted regency, while there was still some chance of the recovery
+of the King, the Prince of Wales declined to remove the existing
+Ministry from office, though even this decision was not taken without
+some hesitation and some negotiations with the Whigs. The Catholics,
+however, fully expected that the royal influence would now be exerted
+in their favour, and that the Whig Ministry would speedily come. The
+Prince of Wales had long been in close connection with the Whigs. As
+early as 1797 he had expressed a desire to go over to Ireland as
+Lord-Lieutenant, carrying with him a policy of conciliation to the
+Catholics. In 1805, when Fox and Grenville had introduced the Catholic
+question into the Imperial Parliament, the Prince, while stating that
+considerations of obvious delicacy prevented him from taking an
+immediate and open part in its favour, had given the Whig leaders the
+fullest authority to assure the Catholics of Ireland that he would
+never forsake their interests, the 'most distinct and authentic
+pledge' of his wish to relieve them from the disabilities of which
+they complained, and to exert himself in their favour as soon as he
+was constitutionally able to do so. It is easy therefore to imagine
+the consternation and the indignation with which, in 1812, the
+Catholics found that the Prince Regent had changed his principles and
+his policy; that, after a short and perhaps insincere negotiation with
+the Whigs, he had resolved to maintain in power a Ministry which was
+constructed for the main purpose of maintaining the Catholic
+disabilities; and that his own opinions were rapidly verging towards
+this policy.
+
+The situation in Ireland was becoming very dangerous. For some years
+after the Union a great apathy prevailed, and there is no reasonable
+doubt that, if events in England had been favourable, Catholic
+emancipation would have met with no serious opposition in Ireland, and
+could have been carried with every reasonable limitation and
+safeguard. The most competent English officials calculated that at
+least sixty-four of the hundred Irish representatives would vote for
+it, and that a decided preponderance of Irish Protestant opinion was
+in its favour. On the other hand, the Catholic bishops and aristocracy
+had fully accepted the policy of an endowment for the priests and a
+veto on the appointment of bishops, and the most Conservative elements
+in the Catholic body still exercised an ascendancy over their
+co-religionists. The question of the veto had been mentioned in the
+Commons, by Sir J. Hippisley, in 1805, and in 1808 Grattan and
+Ponsonby formally announced, on the authority of the Catholic bishops,
+their readiness to accept it. A letter from Bishop Milner was read to
+the House, which very clearly stated their position:
+
+'The Catholic prelates of Ireland,' he wrote, 'are willing to give a
+direct negative power to his Majesty's Government with respect to the
+nomination of their titular bishoprics, in such manner that when they
+have among themselves resolved who is the fittest person for the
+vacant see, they will transmit his name to his Majesty's Ministers;
+and if the latter should object to that name, they will transmit
+another and another, until a name is presented to which no objection
+is made; and (which is never likely to be the case) should the Pope
+refuse to give those essentially necessary spiritual powers, of which
+he is the depository, to the person so presented by the Catholic
+bishops and so approved by the Government, they will continue to
+propose names till one occurs which is agreeable to both
+parties--namely, the Crown and Apostolic See.'
+
+The prelates also engaged to nominate no persons who had not
+previously taken the oath of allegiance.[15] But a democratic party
+had now arisen among the Catholics, which utterly repudiated the
+restrictions of the veto, which sought emancipation by violent and
+democratic agitation, and which was rapidly drawing the most dangerous
+elements in the country into its channel. The bishops, pushed on by
+the strong force that was behind them, speedily retraced their steps
+and passed resolutions against the restrictions they had accepted, and
+there were evident signs that the Catholic body was passing away from
+the guidance of Grattan and of the gentry. This was not surprising in
+a country where many elements of anarchy subsisted; and the democratic
+party had already found in O'Connell a leader of consummate skill, and
+of untiring industry, energy, and ambition. But the chief cause of the
+great change that was passing over the Irish Catholics was to be
+found in the disappointment of their hopes in 1801, in 1804, in 1806,
+and 1812; in the desertion of their cause by Pitt; in the proved
+impotence of the Whigs; in the failure of 'the securities' even to
+mitigate the hostility of Perceval and his followers; in the profound
+consternation and exasperation that were produced by the attitude of
+the Regent. The formation of the General Committee of Catholic
+Delegates was speedily followed by its suppression under the
+Convention Act. But the influence of O'Connell was rapidly growing;
+there were already ominous signs of a possible agitation for the
+repeal of the Union, and the indignation of the Catholics was
+significantly shown by the famous 'witchery resolutions,' which were
+unanimously carried by the aggregate meeting of the Catholics in the
+June of 1812, reflecting on the influence which Lady Hertford was
+believed to exercise over the Prince. After calling for the 'total and
+unqualified repeal of the penal laws which aggrieve the Catholics,'
+they proceeded to use the following language: 'That from authentic
+documents now before us we hear, with deep disappointment and anguish,
+how cruelly the promised boon of Catholic freedom has been interrupted
+by the fatal witchery of an unworthy secret influence.... To this
+impure source we trace but too distinctly our baffled hopes and
+protracted servitude.' Such language was not calculated to conciliate
+the Prince, and he was only confirmed in his hostility to the
+Catholics. As early as September 1813 the Duke of Richmond wrote to
+Peel: 'I was delighted to find H.R.H. as steady a Protestant as the
+Attorney-General.'
+
+The commencement, however, of what was virtually a new reign had given
+a new activity to the question. It was brought forward in different
+forms in the first months of 1812 by Lord Wellesley and Lord
+Donoughmore in one House, and by Lord Morpeth and Grattan in the
+other; and although it was still defeated, the diminished majorities,
+the evident signs of an increased Catholic party in the country, and
+the language of some of the most distinguished men in Parliament,
+clearly indicated the progress of the measure. Canning especially now
+strenuously urged that the time had come when the Catholic question
+must be fully dealt with. The assassination of Perceval on May 11,
+1812, again changed the situation and led to a long series of feeble
+and abortive negotiations. An attempt was made to continue the
+existing Ministry under the lead of Lord Liverpool, with the addition
+of Canning and Lord Wellesley; but these statesmen declined the offer,
+on the ground that the other Ministers refused to carry Catholic
+emancipation, and Lord Wellesley on the additional ground of their
+languor in prosecuting the Spanish war. The Regent then authorised
+Lord Wellesley to construct a Ministry, with the assistance of
+Canning, and an offer was made to Lords Grey and Grenville to join it,
+promising an immediate consideration of the Catholic claims with a
+view to a conciliatory settlement; while, on the other hand, attempts
+were made to retain the services of the leading members of Perceval's
+Ministry. But the Whig leaders refused to take part in a coalition
+Ministry, in which they would probably be outvoted, and the former
+Cabinet was reconstructed, under the leadership of Lord Liverpool, but
+on the principle of leaving the Catholic question an open one.
+Liverpool himself was opposed to concession, but his opposition was by
+no means of the unqualified kind which had been shown by Perceval; and
+a large proportion of his colleagues, including Castlereagh, who led
+the House of Commons, were in favour of Catholic emancipation. If
+Canning had consented to join the Ministry, Lord Wellesley would
+probably have been Lord-Lieutenant in Ireland, and under these
+circumstances the Catholic side could scarcely have failed to acquire
+a decisive preponderance. If, on the other hand, Castlereagh had
+followed the example of Canning, and refused to take part in a
+Ministry which declined to settle the Catholic question, or if the
+Whigs had consented to co-operate with Canning, the settlement of this
+great question could scarcely have been deferred. Unfortunately, none
+of these things happened. Castlereagh remained the leader of the
+House. Canning refused to follow his leadership, and two years later
+accepted the embassy to Lisbon. The Whig leaders stood aloof from all
+Ministerial combinations. The Duke of Richmond, who was violently
+anti-Catholic, continued to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; the post of
+Chief Secretary was given to Peel, and Ireland was destined to undergo
+fifteen more years of demoralising and disorganising agitation before
+the Catholic question was settled.
+
+Canning, however, as an independent member, brought forward a
+resolution pledging the House to an early consideration of the laws
+affecting his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, with a view to their
+final conciliatory adjustment, and the conditions of the question had
+so profoundly changed that it was carried by a majority of 129; while
+a similar motion by Lord Wellesley in the House of Lords was met by
+the previous question, which was carried by a majority of only one.
+
+Peel, though he had come into Parliament as a special follower of
+Perceval, had not yet pledged himself decisively against the
+Catholics. He had voted silently against Canning's motion in June, and
+although he had spoken against a previous motion of Grattan, he had
+done so mainly on the ground that the time was not opportune, and had
+expressly guarded himself against giving any positive pledge. He was
+now, however, obliged to take a more prominent part, and for the next
+six years he was the chief support of the anti-Catholic party in
+Parliament. His part was a very difficult one, for he had to encounter
+Grattan, Plunket, Canning, and the Whig leaders, and he had scarcely
+any real supporters. Saurin, the Attorney-General, it is true, was
+strongly opposed to all concession. He was a lawyer of high character
+and attainments, of Huguenot descent and strong Huguenot principles,
+and he had borne a distinguished part in opposition to the Union; but
+Saurin refused to go to London. Bushe, who was Solicitor-General,
+leaned to the Catholic side; and, to the great indignation and
+consternation of the Government, Wellesley Pole, who had preceded Peel
+as Chief Secretary and who was the brother of Lord Wellesley, now
+pronounced himself strongly in Parliament in favour of the Catholics.
+This speech was entirely unexpected, for Pole had hitherto been
+regarded as a staunch adherent of the Protestant party, and as late as
+the last day of 1811 he had sent a memorandum on the Catholic question
+to the Secretary of State in England, which was intended to be laid
+before the Cabinet, and which maintained the impossibility of safely
+satisfying the Catholic claims, and the expediency of the Prince
+Regent's taking a decided part against them. A general election had
+taken place in September, and it is evident from the letters of Lord
+Liverpool and Peel that they at this time looked upon Canning and his
+followers with even more hostility than the regular Opposition.
+
+In the new Parliament the Catholic question at once assumed a great
+prominence. A motion for the immediate consideration of the laws
+affecting the Catholics was introduced by Grattan, supported by
+Castlereagh, opposed by Peel, and ultimately carried by a majority of
+40. A resolution of Grattan's for removing laws imposing civil and
+military disabilities on the Catholics, with such regulations and
+exceptions as might provide for the security of the Protestant
+succession and of the Established Church, was next introduced. Peel
+opposed it bitterly, but was beaten by a majority of 67.
+
+'We were terribly beaten,' he wrote to his Under-Secretary, 'but we
+are sad cowards, I am afraid; at least, we are shamefully used. Poor
+Duigenan could not get a hearing, and the general impression seemed
+against the Protestants. We will fight them out, however, to the last.
+I am sure it is better than to give way.' 'Your defence of the
+Protestant cause,' wrote Saurin, 'was not only by far the ablest and
+best, but the only one which did not seem to strengthen the cause of
+the adversary by some concession of principle. I really fear the
+Protestant cause is lost in the Commons. There can be no rally now but
+on the securities.'[16]
+
+Grattan at once brought in a Bill in accordance with the terms of the
+Resolution that had been carried; but the Protestant party now rallied
+around a motion of Sir John Hippisley, for a committee to inquire into
+the state and tenets of the Roman Catholics, and the laws affecting
+them. Canning pointed out with great force that a committee of inquiry
+was exactly what the Protestant party had for so many years
+strenuously resisted; but, as Peel wrote to the Duke of Richmond,
+there was no inconsistency in their conduct: 'When the question was
+whether we should consider the claims of the Catholics and the laws
+affecting them, or should resist their claims, we voted for resistance
+without inquiry; the question now is, whether we shall consider or
+concede, and we prefer inquiry to concession.'[17]
+
+The motion for delay, however, was defeated by 187 to 235, and the
+second reading of Grattan's Bill was carried by 245 to 203. But a
+sudden change now occurred in the prospects of the cause. Canning and
+Castlereagh, with the full assent of Grattan, introduced clauses for
+the securities which had been before intimated, giving the Crown a
+control over the nomination of the Catholic bishops. But the bishops
+unanimously condemned the proposal, and the large majority of the
+Catholic Board supported them. It became evident that the Bill before
+Parliament would fail to satisfy the Catholics, and after a long
+discussion the clause admitting Catholics to Parliament was rejected
+by 251 to 247.
+
+Peel had triumphed. The profound division which had broken out among
+the supporters of Catholic emancipation threw back for many years a
+cause which had been almost gained, though in 1817 an Act was passed
+without opposition throwing open to the Catholics the military and
+naval positions which Grenville had vainly attempted to open in 1807.
+Few things could have been eventually more disastrous both to Ireland
+and to the Empire than the defeat of the influence represented by
+Grattan and by the Catholic gentry, and the growing ascendancy of
+O'Connell and the democratic and sacerdotal party in Irish popular
+politics. Grattan had long predicted that, if concession was not
+speedily and wisely made, population in Ireland would drift away from
+the guiding and moderating influence of property; that seditious and
+anarchical men would gain an ascendancy which would make the whole
+problem of Irish Government incalculably difficult; that a priesthood
+unconnected with the English Government would lead to a 'Catholic
+laity discorporated from the people of England.' In the Irish
+Parliament the strong bias of Conservatism in his policy had been
+repeatedly displayed, and it was equally apparent in the Imperial
+Parliament. In 1807 he had supported the Insurrection Act, in
+opposition to many of his friends, on the ground that there was a real
+and dangerous French party in Ireland, which the common law was
+insufficient to suppress. In 1814 he expressed his full approval of
+the proclamation suppressing the Catholic Board. He steadily and
+earnestly maintained that, although it was vitally necessary that
+Catholic emancipation should be speedily carried, it should be
+accompanied by measures for securing, as far as possible, the loyalty
+of the higher Catholic clergy, and uniting them in interest and
+sentiment with the British Government. He looked with bitter hostility
+on the rise and policy of O'Connell. He accused him of 'setting afloat
+the bad passions of the people,' making grievances instruments of
+power without any honest wish to redress them, treating politics as a
+trade to serve a desperate and interested purpose.
+
+But the influence of Grattan was now manifestly declining, and Peel
+watched the decline with a short-sighted and not very generous
+pleasure. In Parliament, though numbers were against the Catholics,
+the overwhelming preponderance of ability was still in favour of the
+principle of emancipation, and it was in leading the anti-Catholic
+party that Peel chiefly acquired his almost unrivalled parliamentary
+skill. He had, indeed, all the qualities of a great debater: courage,
+fluency, self-possession, complete command of every subject he
+treated, unfailing lucidity both in statement and reasoning; admirable
+skill in marshalling and disentangling great masses of facts, in
+meeting, evading, or retorting arguments, and detecting the weak
+points of the case of an opponent, in veiling, by plausible language,
+extreme or unpalatable views, in extricating himself by subtle
+distinctions and qualifications from embarrassing situations. He can
+scarcely, it is true, be called a great orator. His style was formal,
+cumbrous, extremely verbose, without sparkle and without fire. He had
+little or no power of moving the passions, nothing of the flexibility
+that can adapt itself to very different audiences, nothing of the
+philosophic insight that can impart a perennial interest to transient
+discussions. But few men have ever understood the House of Commons
+like him, or have possessed in so high a degree the qualities that are
+most fitted to command and influence it. The great mass of
+anti-Catholic sentiment in the country rallied around him as its most
+powerful champion, and in 1817 he attained one of the chief objects of
+his ambition in being elected member for Oxford University. It is well
+known that his older and more brilliant rival had long aspired to this
+honour. It was mainly through the Catholic question that Canning
+missed and Peel won the prize.
+
+The nickname 'Orange Peel,' which was given to him in Ireland, was
+not wholly deserved. His letters abundantly show that he had no
+sympathy with the ribbons, the anniversaries, the party tunes, the
+insulting processions and insulting language of the Orangemen; and,
+although he believed that in Ireland anti-Catholicism and loyalty were
+very closely connected, he viewed with much dislike the growth of any
+political confederacies unconnected with the Government. Declamation
+and boastfulness and needless provocation were, indeed, wholly alien
+to his nature; and even when defending extreme causes he rarely or
+never used the language of a fanatic. He resisted Catholic concession
+mainly on the ground that the admission of the Catholics to political
+power would prove incompatible with the existence of the Established
+Church in Ireland, with the security of property in a country where
+property was mainly in Protestant hands, and ultimately with the
+connection between the two countries. His arguments were not based on
+religion, but on political expediency; but it was an expediency which
+he believed to be permanent.
+
+'I see,' he wrote to the Duke of Richmond, 'one of the papers reports
+me as having said that I was not an advocate for perpetual exclusion.
+It might be inferred that I objected only to the time of discussing
+the question. That is not the case.... There are certain anomalies in
+the system which I would wish to remove, but the main principles of it
+I would retain untouched.... At no time, and under no circumstances,
+so long as the Catholic admits the supremacy in spirituals of a
+foreign earthly potentate, and will not tell us what supremacy in
+spirituals means--so long as he will not give us voluntarily the
+security which every despotic Sovereign in Europe has by the
+concession of the Pope himself--will I consent to admit them.'[18]
+
+The letters before us show clearly that his political sympathy was
+with Saurin, with Duigenan, with Lord Eldon, and even with Lord
+Norbury. O'Connell early perceived in Peel his most dangerous
+opponent, and a strong personal enmity, which was as much due to
+profound differences of character as to differences of policy, grew up
+between them. A scurrilous attack of O'Connell on Peel in 1815 was
+followed by a challenge, and a duel was prevented only by the arrest
+of O'Connell. The antipathy between the two men was never mitigated.
+O'Connell said of Peel that 'his smile was like the silver plate on a
+coffin.' Peel, in his confidential letters, expressed the utmost
+dislike and contempt for the character of O'Connell, and when he was
+at length compelled by the Clare election to concede Catholic
+emancipation, his feeling towards him was significantly and
+characteristically shown. He enumerated in a brilliant passage the men
+to whom the triumph of Catholic emancipation was really due. He spoke
+of Fox and Grattan, of Plunket and of Canning, but he made no mention
+of O'Connell.
+
+The administrative side of Peel's Chief Secretaryship is much more
+creditable to him than the political side. The vivid picture which his
+letters present of the manner in which Ireland was governed more than
+fifteen years after the Union will probably strike the reader with
+some surprise, when he remembers that the Union had extinguished about
+seventy small boroughs, and had at the same time greatly diminished
+the importance of the Irish representatives, and therefore the
+necessities for corruption. Peel noticed that while 'the pension list
+of Great Britain was limited to 90,000_l._ per annum, the pension list
+of Ireland may amount to 80,000_l._ a year; and he found almost all
+Irish patronage still employed for political purposes, and almost
+every office honeycombed with abuses and peculations. A few extracts
+will give the reader some notion of the nature and extent of the evil,
+and of the efforts of Peel to reduce it:--
+
+'How is it possible,' he wrote, 'to propose that a shilling should be
+granted to a general officer on the staff in Ireland when sixpence is
+granted in England? This is called a modification in official phrase,
+but it ought to be called doubling the allowance. Set your face
+steadily against all increase of salary, all extra allowances, all
+plausible claims for additional emolument. Economy must be the order
+of the day--rigid economy.'[19] 'When English members hear that the
+sheriff appoints the grand jury, that the grand jury tax the county,
+that the sheriff has a considerable influence at elections, and that
+the sheriff is appointed openly on the recommendation of the member
+supporting the Government, they are startled not a little.... I know
+that this is a most convenient patronage to the Government, but I know
+also that I cannot hint in the House of Commons at such a source of
+patronage, and I confess I have great doubts on the legitimacy of
+it.... After Lord Redesdale's declaration ... that the mode of
+appointing sheriffs "poisons the sources of justice," and witnessing
+the general feeling among the English against making the nomination of
+a most important officer in the execution of justice dependent on the
+will of the county member, I thought it highly expedient to give a
+positive assurance that the Government would revert to the ancient
+and legal practice of appointing sheriffs in Ireland.... With a pure
+Bench--and time will, I hope, purify it--the change would be an
+essential change for the better.'[20] 'Foster says that the abuses
+discovered in the office [of Clerk of the Pleas] are enormous, that
+the amount of fees exacted from suitors is not less than 30,000_l._
+per annum, of which the principal clerk did not receive more than
+one-third. A Mr. Pollock, the first deputy, is in receipt of 8,000_l._
+or 9,000_l._ a year as his own share of the profits; other deputies
+and persons unnecessarily employed have profits amounting to 1,200_l._
+or 1,400_l._ a year each. Foster thinks that every possible difficulty
+will be thrown in the way of an early decision in the Irish Courts....
+In the meantime, the Chief Baron is receiving the enormous profits
+arising from these enormous abuses.'[21]
+
+The practice of buying and selling public offices, and the practice of
+dividing the salaries of a single office between a principal and
+deputies, still continued; but Peel did his utmost to eradicate them.
+If it were permitted in one case, he said, 'every officer in every
+department who purchased on corrupt terms and is now living may claim
+a right to sell the office so purchased.'
+
+'With respect to a payment out of the salary to R., I can have no
+scruple in giving you my opinion that it would not be right. I have
+never been, and cannot conscientiously be, a party to an arrangement
+of that kind, because I think this is quite clear, that if the salary
+of the office is disproportionate to the labour of it, and can bear to
+be taxed to the amount of 200_l._, the public should benefit, and the
+emoluments of the office be reduced.'[22]
+
+One of Peel's first tasks was to conduct a general election, and he
+had ample opportunities of judging how these things were managed in
+Ireland. A law known as Curwen's Act had been recently passed,
+condemning to a heavy fine in the event of failure, and to the loss of
+his seat in the event of success, any person giving, or promising to
+give, or consenting to give either money or office for a seat in
+Parliament. The law was not a little embarrassing to Peel, as his own
+seat of Cashel had been purchased, and he thought it safer to transfer
+himself to the English seat of Chippenham, where his return was
+managed by his father without any intervention on his own part. At the
+same time, the elections in Ireland went on much as if Curwen's Act
+had never passed.
+
+'I am placed in a delicate situation enough here,' he wrote to his
+friend Croker: 'bound to secure the Government interests, if possible,
+from dilapidation, but still more bound to faint with horror at the
+mention of money transactions, to threaten the unfortunate culprits
+with impeachment if they hint at an impure return, and yet to prevent
+those strongholds, Cashel, Mallow, and Tralee, from surrendering to
+the enemies who besiege them.'
+
+Croker himself furnished an admirable illustration of the manner in
+which these principles were carried out. 'I find the borough' [Down],
+he writes, 'extremely well disposed to me. Of the respectable and
+steady people I have a decided majority, not less than twenty; but
+there are sixty-two persons who are extremely doubtful.... I have the
+greatest repugnance to bribery, ... but my agent informs me that many
+voters will require money.... The return absolutely depends upon
+pounds sterling. The best computation which my agents can make is
+that a sum of 2,000_l._ will be necessary. The natural expenses will
+be 500_l._ These, I think, I am bound to make good. But with regard to
+the money for votes, that I expect from Government.'
+
+Peel replied that he could not answer for the Government in England,
+and that the Irish Government possessed no funds for this purpose; he
+would himself have been ready to send Croker '1,000_l._ as a private
+concern between ourselves with no reference whatever to Government';
+but he had it not. 'If you think proper,' he added, 'to take the
+chance whether it [the Government] will assist you, you can promise.'
+For about six years Peel was constantly receiving from Croker requests
+for places, in order to discharge 'debts of gratitude' incurred at
+this election; and in 1816 we find the Government very nearly beaten
+in the House of Commons in an attempt to raise Croker's own salary.
+
+'Could you tell me,' writes Lord Palmerston to Peel, 'whether you
+think there is any probability of a contest for the county of Sligo at
+the next election? I could at the present moment make from 280 to 290
+voters by giving leases to tenants who are now holding at will. If
+there is any chance of their being of use next year, I will do so
+forthwith, and register them in time. If not, I should perhaps
+postpone giving twenty-one years' leases till matters look a little
+more propitious to the payment of rents.'
+
+'Lord Lorton wrote yesterday to his agent to make all the freeholders
+he can on his small Queen's County property. He says he is sorry he
+can't make more than twenty, but that those shall go against Pole.'
+
+A few illustrations of the minor details of patronage may be added.
+One gentleman called upon Peel about an election in Clare, but 'said
+that he would make no promise of his interest unless he received a
+pledge from me that his two brothers should be provided for--one in
+the Church, and the other advanced in the profession of the law.'
+
+Lord C. 'wanted, long since, to make terms with me for his support in
+Cork, ... and wished to be one of a committee for superintending the
+patronage of the county.'
+
+'When G. wants a baronetcy, he is very rich; and when he wants a
+place, he is very poor. I think we may fairly turn the tables on him,
+and when he asks to be a baronet, make his poverty the objection, and
+his wealth when he asks for an office.'
+
+'Pole is constantly pressing K., of the Navigation Board, for
+promotion.... I am told he entirely neglects his duty. Pole readily
+admits his hopeless stupidity and unfitness for office.'
+
+'I do not think your son,' Peel wrote to his Under-Secretary, 'can
+make a more inefficient member of the Board of Stamps than Mr. T. has
+done. I am perfectly ready, therefore, to acquiesce in the exchange.'
+'I make a great sacrifice,' he wrote to Lord Whitworth, 'when I say
+that I doubt whether O.'s habits would qualify him for such practical
+duties as the Collector of Belfast at least ought to perform. Belfast
+is so flourishing a town, and contributes so much to the revenue, that
+I fear the Collectorship of it is too prominent a situation to place
+in it a young man ... we must admit to be a ruined man by gambling.
+Considering how careless he has been of his own money, perhaps some
+office not connected with the collection of the public money ... would
+be more suited to him.... What do you think of the following
+arrangement? Make J. collector for this very bad and very good reason,
+that he is the most inefficient Commissioner, and therefore the public
+service will suffer least from his appointment. Make Colonel H. a
+Commissioner. He will be about as inefficient as J. Make R.M. junior,
+the most inefficient of the three, Surveyor of Lands, _vice_ H., which
+(though he will lose 200_l._ a year) will greatly oblige his father,
+the member; and, lastly, fulfil your good intentions towards O. by
+making him a Commissioner of Accounts, _vice_ M.'
+
+Many other characteristic pictures pass before us. There were officers
+of the revenue who were recommended to 'the marked favour' of the
+Government because they had shown what Peel somewhat rashly called
+'the common honesty' of refusing bribes. There was an official who
+scandalously connived at an abuse of justice by which innocent women
+were condemned to transportation, though taking measures that the
+Government should indirectly hear of the transaction. There were
+shameful abuses in the sale of the office of gaoler, shameful frauds
+in the collection of taxes, in the Customs, in the barrack charges.
+
+'My most decided opinion,' Peel wrote about one of these culprits, 'is
+in favour of his dismissal. I am quite tired of, and disgusted with,
+the shameful corruptions which every Irish inquiry brings to
+light.'[23]
+
+Much trouble was given by newspapers which were subsidised by the
+Government, and at the same time conducted in a manner which no honest
+Government could approve of.[24] Another evil is disclosed in the
+following very creditable letter written by Peel to one of his
+successors:
+
+'I found in Ireland that every official man, not content with the
+favour of Government to himself, thought he had a right to quarter his
+family on the patronage of Government. I took the course that you have
+done in order to enable me to resist with effect such extravagant
+pretensions. I determined never to gratify any private wish of my own
+by the smallest Irish appointment. There is nothing half so disgusting
+as the personal monopoly of honours and offices by those to whom the
+distribution of them is entrusted.'[25]
+
+In the Irish Pension List there had been enormous abuses, but Peel
+took credit for having effectually stopped them. 'No member of
+Parliament,' he wrote, 'has benefited by it. No vote has been
+influenced by it.... I do not think there are any three years in the
+whole period of the Irish history during which so honest a use has
+been made of it.'[26]
+
+As might have been expected, blunders arising from extreme
+inefficiency were very numerous. In one case, by negligent drafting,
+the Insurrection Bill was made to extend to three instead of two
+years, while a simple mistake in one of the Revenue Bills was believed
+to have cost the Revenue not less than 40,000_l._[27]
+
+In all this dreary field the great administrative ability of Peel and
+the essential integrity of his character produced much real
+improvement, though it is very possible to exaggerate his merits. No
+one who has read the Hardwicke and Colchester papers will question
+that some of his predecessors, and especially the Chancellor, Lord
+Redesdale, had laboured with at least equal earnestness to purify
+Irish administration; and the energy with which Lord Redesdale,
+though out of office, still recurred to the subject, was extremely
+displeasing to Peel.[28] His own patronage, as we have already seen,
+was by no means ideal, and he was very anxious to stifle parliamentary
+inquiries.
+
+'I believe,' he wrote, 'an honest, despotic government would be by far
+the fittest government for Ireland'; but as this could not be attained
+he wished no essential alteration. 'I think the present system on
+which the government of Ireland is conducted is the best, but I am
+terribly afraid that Englishmen, who know nothing of Ireland, would
+not concur with me if they inquired into detail. It is very difficult
+to manage even the most limited inquiry. How could we prevent the
+introduction of tithes, magistracy, the Catholic question itself?'[29]
+
+Whatever might be the case in the future, he believed that in the
+present it was impossible for the Irish Government to receive adequate
+support unless it made up its mind to purchase it. 'It would be good
+policy,' he says in one of his letters, 'to direct the channel of
+patronage as plentifully as we can towards those who are adhering to
+us on these pressing questions of army establishments and property
+tax.' He refused in very lofty tones applications for peerages as
+rewards for political support; but the merit of this refusal belongs
+mainly to Lord Liverpool, who, at the beginning of the Chief
+Secretaryship, took on this subject a very firm and honourable line,
+both in England and Ireland, and maintained it at the sacrifice of
+many votes. For Irish honours unaccompanied by endowments there appear
+to have been few applicants. Peel disliked the bestowal of
+ecclesiastical dignities as rewards for political services; but if he
+did not practise it quite as much as his predecessors, this appears to
+have been much more due to nature than to policy.
+
+'There is nothing so extraordinary,' he wrote, 'in natural history as
+the longevity of all bishops, priests, and deacons in Ireland. During
+the last five years there has been literally no Church preferment to
+dispose of, to the infinite disappointment of many expectants.'
+
+In the higher legal appointments, however, while insisting that
+'attachment to the Government on principle' was very material, Peel
+cordially agreed with Saurin that it was vitally necessary to select
+men 'for character, and not for politics or connection'; and he added,
+that those were not likely to be the least fit for high office who
+were too proud to solicit it. 'It is a species of pride which
+occasions very little practical inconvenience in Ireland.'
+
+His letters show clearly the terrible evils of Irish life. He speaks
+of 'the enormous and overgrown population,' with no employment except
+agriculture; of a poverty so extreme that in many districts widespread
+starvation was averted only by prompt Government intervention; of
+'that infernal curse, the forty shilling freeholds'; of the evil
+system of employing the military in distraining for rent and in the
+collection of tithes; of juries, through fear or sympathy, acquitting
+prisoners in the face of the clearest evidence; of the gross perjury
+in the law courts; of the almost universal disaffection of the lower
+orders, fostered by a seditious press; of the growing spirit of
+animosity in the north of Ireland between the lower orders of
+Protestants and Catholics, which was breaking out in constant riots,
+and had already cost many lives. This last evil, it might be truly
+said, was very largely due to the policy of his own party, who had
+protracted through so many years the Catholic question, which ought
+to have been settled at the Union. There was extreme and chronic
+ignorance, poverty, and anarchy; the payment of tithes was constantly
+resisted; and a failure of the potato crop, and a sudden and terrible
+fall in the price of agricultural products after the peace, added
+enormously to the difficulties of the situation. It is remarkable,
+indeed, that there appears to have been in 1816 and 1817 less
+disturbance of the public peace in Ireland than in England; Peel found
+it even possible to reduce the military establishments, and in Dublin
+extreme distress was borne with remarkable patience; but in many parts
+of the country crimes of combination were frequent, and almost
+incredibly savage. Peel mentions one case of a family of eight persons
+who were deliberately burnt in their house by a party of armed men,
+because the owner of the house had prosecuted to conviction three men,
+on a capital charge, at the Louth assizes. In another case a farmer,
+who had shot two men who attacked his house, was himself shot dead on
+a Sunday morning, after Mass, at the chapel door, in the presence of
+hundreds of men, not one of whom attempted to arrest the culprit.
+
+These things filled Peel with a not unnatural horror, and his letters
+showed clearly his intense dislike both of the Irish character and of
+the Irish religion.[30] By far the most valuable contribution he made
+to the improvement of Ireland during his Chief Secretaryship was the
+formation, in 1814, of an efficient police force, which has ever since
+been popularly associated with his name, and which was the nucleus
+from which the present admirable constabulary force was developed in
+1822 and in 1835. 'We ought to be crucified,' he wrote, 'if we make
+the measure a job, and select our constables from the servants of our
+parliamentary friends.' He attempted also, though without much
+success, to institute a system of popular education on a perfectly
+unsectarian basis, and with Catholics among the commissioners.[31] He
+appears to have met with little encouragement, and at least one
+Catholic bishop lost no time in cursing 'these nefarious deistical
+schools'; but some schools were established, and Peel has the merit of
+being one of the earliest advocates of a general system of unsectarian
+national education for Ireland, which many years after was
+accomplished. His measures for the relief of distress appear to have
+been skilful and judicious, supporting and stimulating, but not
+superseding private benevolence.[32] For the rest, he relied chiefly
+on Insurrection Acts strengthening the Executive and giving a greater
+efficiency to the administration of justice, and on strong protective
+legislation encouraging the corn and the manufactures of Ireland.
+
+'I have always,' he wrote, 'been, and always shall be, as strong an
+advocate for giving that preference to the productions of Ireland,
+natural or artificial, which will best promote the industry of the
+people, as I am for instructing the lower orders.'[33]
+
+To the tithe system he would do nothing, and this is one of the fatal
+blots on his reputation as a statesman. There was no single source of
+crime, agitation, and disaffection in Ireland which was so prolific as
+this, and there was no subject on which the wisest statesmen had been
+more agreed than on the supreme importance of meeting this evil by a
+judicious system of commutation. Pitt had clearly expressed his
+opinion of the necessity of such a commutation to the Duke of Rutland
+as early as 1786, and it was one of the measures which he intended to
+have followed the Union. Grattan had brought schemes of commutation in
+three successive years before the Irish Parliament. Lord Loughborough,
+who was the chief cause of the failure of Catholic emancipation after
+the Union, had himself drawn up a Tithe Commutation Bill. Lord
+Redesdale, who represented the extreme Toryism of the ministry of
+Addington, strongly urged the absolute necessity of speedy legislation
+on the subject. The Duke of Bedford, in 1807, dwelt on the importance
+of commuting tithes into a land-tax, and ultimately into land. Parnell
+and Grattan had brought the subject before the Imperial Parliament in
+1810, and it was again and again insisted on by the Whig writers, and
+nowhere more strongly than in Sydney Smith's admirable letters to
+Peter Plymley and in some of the pages of the 'Edinburgh Review.' But
+nothing was done till the evil had become intolerable, and had brought
+the country to a state of anarchy and demoralisation that can scarcely
+be exaggerated. The connection of Peel with the question of Irish
+tithes is a very remarkable one. The Tithe Commutation Act, which was
+carried by a Whig Government in 1838, is one of the few instances of
+perfectly successful legislation in Irish history, and it is well
+known that the chief credit of this measure does not belong to the
+Ministers who carried it. It was the very measure which Sir Robert
+Peel had introduced in 1835, which the Whig party when in opposition
+defeated by connecting it with the Appropriation clause, and which the
+Whig party when in power were compelled to carry without that clause.
+But if the chief credit of the final settlement of this momentous
+question justly belongs to Peel, it must not be forgotten that in the
+eleven years during which, as Chief Secretary or as Home Secretary, he
+was directly responsible for the government of Ireland, he had allowed
+this monster curse to grow and strengthen without making any serious
+effort to mitigate it.
+
+Peel was Chief Secretary during the concluding part of the viceroyalty
+of the Duke of Richmond, during the whole of that of Lord Whitworth,
+and during part of that of Lord Talbot. He had grown very tired of his
+position, but agreed to postpone his departure till after a general
+election, and he at last left Ireland, as he says, with 'undiminished
+and unqualified satisfaction,' in August 1818. He remained out of
+office until January 1822; but the interval was not spent in idleness,
+and in 1819 he took the leading part in the great Act for resuming
+cash payments, which, as it has been truly said, attaches to his name
+'the same meed of praise which he had quoted as inscribed on the tomb
+of Queen Elizabeth: "Moneta in justum valorem redacta."' It is one of
+his greatest legislative achievements; it is also the first of that
+series of recantations which forms one of the most distinctive
+features of his career, for it was based upon the policy which Horner
+had advocated in 1811, and against which Peel had then voted. He still
+took, on the Catholic question, the leading part in opposition to
+emancipation, declaring his determination to offer 'a most sincere and
+uncompromising,' though he now feared unavailing, resistance to
+Catholic concession. The last time the question was brought forward,
+by Grattan, was in 1819, and he was defeated by a majority of only
+two. In 1821, after the death of Grattan, and in a new Parliament,
+Plunket carried a Bill for Catholic emancipation successfully through
+all its stages in the House of Commons, though it was afterwards
+rejected in the Lords. In the ensuing session a similar fate befel a
+Bill of Canning's to relieve Catholic peers of their disabilities.
+Some considerable change, however, was introduced into the spirit of
+the Irish Government by the appointment of Lord Wellesley, who was in
+favour of the Catholics, to the viceroyalty. One of its most important
+results was the removal of Saurin from the office of Attorney-General
+and the appointment of Plunket in his place. Lord Wellesley described
+this measure to Lady Blessington as the removal of 'an old Orangeman'
+who, though 'Attorney-General by title, had really been
+Lord-Lieutenant for fifteen years'; but it is evident from the letters
+of Peel that his warm sympathies, both personal and political, were
+with Saurin.
+
+The accession of George IV. to the throne in the beginning of 1820
+brought to a crisis the quarrel between the new King and his wife, and
+led to the resignation of Canning in the last days of the year, and
+Lord Liverpool then tried to induce Peel to enter the Cabinet in the
+vacant post of President of the Board of Control. Peel, however,
+refused the office, declaring that he differed from some of the
+proceedings of the Ministry about the Queen. In the summer of 1821 he
+again declined a similar offer, chiefly, as it appears, on the ground
+of uncertain health and of a dislike to official life which his recent
+marriage had produced. But when Lord Sidmouth resigned the Home
+Office, Peel proved less inflexible, and on January 17, 1822, he
+accepted the seals, which he held till 1827. In August Castlereagh,
+or, as he now was, Lord Londonderry, committed suicide. Lord
+Liverpool saw the necessity of recalling Canning to the Cabinet as
+Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Canning would accept the post only as
+leader of the House of Commons. The King hated Canning, and would
+gladly have excluded him altogether from the Ministry, and Eldon and
+the Duke of Newcastle greatly desired that the leadership of the House
+of Commons should be given to Peel. Canning, however, who had been
+sixteen years longer in Parliament than Peel, had both the right and
+the power to insist upon the leadership, and Peel acquiesced in his
+claim with honourable frankness. Except on the Catholic question they
+appear to have cordially agreed, and something of the success of
+Canning's brilliant foreign policy is due to the loyalty with which he
+was supported by Peel in the Cabinet and at Court.
+
+Space will not permit us to relate at length the history of Peel's
+conduct as home Minister. The Catholic question was rapidly advancing
+to a crisis, and the system of a divided Ministry in which it was an
+open question, and in which the leading Ministers took opposite sides,
+was becoming plainly impossible. Ireland was again in a state of
+anarchy bordering on civil war, and the foundation, in 1823, of the
+Catholic Association by O'Connell and Sheil gave a new impulse to the
+agitation. The Duke of Wellington, who knew the country well and was
+not liable to panic, predicted that the new association if it
+continued would lead to civil war, and declared that the organisation
+of the disaffected in Ireland was much more perfect than in 1798.[34]
+At the same time the long-protracted and increasing violence of the
+conflict had aroused fierce Orange passions both in the North and in
+Dublin, while in England the King was embarrassing even his
+'anti-Catholic' Ministers by the vehemence of his hostility to
+concession. He described Peel as 'the King's Protestant Minister' and
+Lord Wellesley as an 'enemy in the camp.' He assured Peel that,
+whether the Cabinet wished it or not, he would never consent to give
+letters of precedence to a Roman Catholic barrister, and he wrote Peel
+a formal letter in which he said, 'the sentiments of the King upon
+Catholic emancipation are those of his revered and excellent father;
+from those sentiments the King never can and never will deviate.'[35]
+
+Peel, while maintaining his unflinching hostility to important
+concessions, tried to moderate all parties. He implored the King to
+make no public declaration. He wrote to Ireland strongly discouraging
+the violence of the Orangemen and urging that 'in this age of liberal
+doctrine, when prescription is no longer even a presumption in favour
+of what is established, it will be a work of desperate difficulty to
+contend against "emancipation," as they call it, unless we can fight
+with the advantage on our side of great discretion, forbearance, and
+moderation on the part of the Irish Protestants.' He recurred to his
+old idea of establishing a system of unsectarian national education,
+and he readily abandoned the corrupt and proselytising charter
+schools. He supported a measure of Lord Nugent, which Lord Eldon
+succeeded in defeating in the Lords, for extending to the English
+Catholics such privileges as were already possessed by Catholics in
+Ireland, and he fully approved of a letter written on behalf of the
+Cabinet to the Lord-Lieutenant urging 'that a disposition should be
+manifested to admit the Roman Catholics of Ireland to a fair
+proportion of the emoluments and honours to which they are eligible by
+law,' but without issuing patents of precedence.[36]
+
+On matters unconnected with the Catholic question his administration
+was skilful and, on the whole, enlightened; and in 1823 he introduced
+the first of a series of important measures diminishing the enormous
+number of capital offences that disgraced the English criminal code,
+and, at the same time, doing much to simplify and consolidate that
+code. In this, as in most respects, there was little original in his
+legislation. He followed, at some distance, in the steps of Romilly
+and Mackintosh, and he left very much to be done, which was chiefly
+accomplished during the Whig ascendancy that followed the Reform Bill
+of 1832. It appears, from some remarkable letters in this volume,
+that, before Peel took up the question of criminal reform, George IV.
+was exceedingly sensible of the enormity of executing very young men
+for secondary offences, and that he was continually pressing on his
+Ministers a more merciful administration of the law. He sometimes
+found Peel by no means ready to yield. In one case Peel invoked the
+aid of the Cabinet to overrule the wish of the King, who desired to
+save two culprits from the gallows; and, in another case, he
+threatened to resign his office if the King persisted in commuting the
+sentence of a youth who had been found guilty of uttering forged
+notes.[37] But Peel had at least the merit of recognising an
+intolerable abuse, and his legislation on the subject was skilfully
+framed and still more skilfully introduced and carried. In his
+patronage in this, as in later periods of his life, he cared much more
+than most English Ministers for the interests of science, literature,
+and art. He was by no means indifferent to the opportunities his
+position gave him of advancing his own family and friends; but he
+never, in his English patronage, forgot the character of those whom he
+recommended for promotion, and he brought forward or assisted many men
+of ability and learning with whom he had no connection and no
+political sympathy. The letters in this volume between Peel and his
+very intimate Oxford friend Dr. Lloyd are especially interesting and
+characteristic. They are in general very honourable to Peel; but Mr.
+Parker is much too indulgent when he describes the intensely worldly
+letters in which Dr. Lloyd urged his own merits and his claims to the
+bishopric of Oxford as merely 'frank, and free from affectation of the
+traditional _nolo episcopari_.' Both Peel and Lord Liverpool appear to
+have had a much stronger sense than most of their predecessors of the
+responsibilities attaching to Church patronage and of the duty of
+administering it in the public interest, and in this respect they were
+broadly distinguished from Lord Eldon.
+
+'It is really a cruel thing,' Lord Liverpool wrote to Peel, 'that the
+patronage of the Crown as to Church matters should be divided between
+the Minister and the Chancellor, and that all the public claims should
+fall upon the former. The Chancellor has nine livings to the
+Minister's one. With respect to these he does occasionally attend to
+local claims, but he has besides four cathedrals, and to no one of
+these cathedrals has any man of distinguished learning or merit been
+promoted.'
+
+In the beginning of 1825 the Irish Government, having without
+consulting Peel undertaken a foolish prosecution of O'Connell for a
+not very dangerous speech, received a heavy rebuff, for the Grand
+Jury threw out the Bill, and the prosecution of an Orange leader was
+equally unsuccessful. A Bill was about the same time brought in and
+carried, suppressing the new association; but it could not suppress
+the spirit which it had aroused. O'Connell, however, was thoroughly
+alarmed at the state of the country, and as far as possible from
+desiring a rebellion, and he was at this time in a very conciliatory
+mood. He was perfectly ready to accept an endowment for the
+priesthood, which would attach them to the Government, and also a
+considerable raising of the Irish franchise. This was the last
+occasion on which his party and the Catholic gentry very cordially
+concurred, and it was the last occasion on which the Catholic question
+could have been settled on a basis that would have given real strength
+to the Empire. A Relief Bill passed through all its stages in the
+Commons by considerable majorities, and it was followed by a Bill for
+raising the qualifications of Irish electors, and by a resolution for
+endowing the priesthood. O'Connell fully believed that Catholic
+emancipation would definitely pass in this session,[38] and he
+appeared to have excellent reasons for his belief. In Ireland it
+generally prevailed, and it exercised an immediate pacifying
+influence. Lord Fingall and other Catholic noblemen, in presenting an
+address at this time to the King, were able to say 'the whole of
+Ireland reposes in profound tranquillity, and the law, without the aid
+of any extraordinary power, everywhere receives voluntary obedience.'
+It was afterwards stated by Lord George Bentinck that Peel had changed
+his opinions about Catholic emancipation in 1825, and had communicated
+this change to Lord Liverpool. The letters before us, however,
+conclusively prove that if Peel was shaken, it was not about the
+merits of emancipation, but about the practicability of resisting it.
+Having been four times defeated in the Commons on the Catholic
+question, he tendered his resignation, and Lord Liverpool at once
+declared that without his assistance he could not continue the
+struggle. Peel was the only Minister in the House of Commons opposed
+to the Catholic cause, differing on the question from all his
+colleagues in the House. If he had resigned, and if Lord Liverpool had
+followed his example, there is good reason to believe that a
+Government might have been formed which would have carried the measure
+safely and speedily with the securities that had been accepted. Most
+unfortunately for the Empire, the 'Protestant' party persuaded Peel to
+withdraw his resignation in order to avert this surrender. In the
+House of Lords the Duke of York, who was the heir-presumptive to the
+throne, stood up and declared his unalterable opposition to the
+Catholic claims, 'whatever might be his situation in life, so help him
+God,' and the Lords rejected the Bill by a majority of 48.
+
+The conscientious views of George III. obtained some measure of
+respect even from those who believed them to be most unfounded; but no
+halo of sanctity dignified the scruples of George IV. or of the Duke
+of York. The Irish Catholics, exasperated at the present
+disappointment of their hopes, and at the prospect of another hostile
+King, flung themselves into a furious agitation, and in a few months
+all the progress which had been made towards pacifying the country was
+undone, while in England Peel had to meet a terrible commercial
+crisis. Seventy county banks stopped in less than a week. In dealing
+with questions of commerce and currency Peel was always in his
+element, and his measures appear to have been wise and skilful. A
+general election took place, and he was again returned by the
+University of Oxford as the uncompromising opponent of Catholic
+emancipation. In England the anti-Catholic party gained some seats,
+and the increasing violence in Ireland had produced some reaction. In
+Ireland it was soon apparent that what Grattan had feared had come to
+pass, and that the tie which had hitherto attached the people to their
+landlords was completely broken. The priests everywhere appeared at
+the head of their people, and it was at once seen that a new and
+terrible power was dominating Irish politics. In Waterford, where the
+Beresfords had long been omnipotent, they were totally defeated, and
+Leslie Foster sent Peel a vivid description of his own defeat in the
+Louth election. At the outset of the contest, upwards of five-sixths
+of the votes were promised to him; but the whole priesthood turned
+themselves into electioneering agents against him. In every chapel
+there were political sermons; the priests menaced all who voted for
+him with eternal damnation; they were present at every polling-booth
+to overawe their parishioners; and their efforts were seconded by
+savage mobs who waylaid and beat all opponents, and forced multitudes
+of Protestants, by threats of assassination or of the burning of their
+houses, to vote against their promises and their convictions. 'In the
+county town the studied violence and intimidation were such that it
+was only by locking up my voters in enclosed yards that their lives
+were preserved.' By these means the election was won. What, asked
+Foster, will be the end of this? 'The landlords are exasperated to the
+utmost, the priests swaggering in their triumph, the tenantry sullen
+and insolent. Men who, a month ago, were all civility and submission
+now hardly suppress their curses when a gentleman passes by. The text
+of every village orator is, "Boys, you have put down three lords;
+stick to your priests, and you will carry all before you."'
+
+The letters of Goulburn, the Chief Secretary, show that the picture
+was not overcharged.
+
+'Never,' he wrote, 'were Roman Catholic and Protestant so decidedly
+opposed. Never did the former act with so general a concert, or place
+themselves so completely under the command of the priesthood.' 'The
+priests exercise on all matters a dominion perfectly uncontrolled and
+uncontrollable. In many parts of the country their sermons are purely
+political, and the altars in the several chapels are the rostra from
+which they declaim on the subject of Roman Catholic grievances, exhort
+to the collection of rent, or denounce their Protestant neighbours in
+a mode perfectly intelligible and effective, but not within the grasp
+of the law. In several towns no Roman Catholic will now deal with a
+Protestant shop-keeper, in consequence of the priest's interdiction,
+and this species of interference, stirring up enmity on one hand and
+feelings of resentment on the other, is mainly conducive to outrage
+and disorder.... The first vacancy on the Roman Catholic bench is to
+be supplied by Dr. England from America, a man of all others most
+decidedly hostile to British interests and the most active in
+fomenting the discord of this country.... With such leaders it is
+reasonable to anticipate the worst. It is impossible to detail in a
+letter the various modes in which the Roman Catholic priesthood now
+interfere in every transaction of every description, how they rule the
+mob, the gentry, and the magistracy, and how they impede the
+administration of justice.' Their power is greater than any other in
+the State, 'and they love to display it, and omit no opportunity of
+taunting their adversaries.' 'The state of society here is so
+disorganised, and the Government has so inferior an authority to other
+powers acting on the people, that the opinion formed to-day may be
+quite changed to-morrow.'[39]
+
+The election of 1826 virtually carried Catholic emancipation, for it
+reduced Ireland to a state in which it was impossible long to resist
+it. Clear-sighted men had no difficulty in perceiving that the policy
+of Peel had failed to avert it, though it had succeeded in making
+impossible the securities which Grattan and the wisest men of his
+generation had pronounced indispensable for its safe working, in
+kindling religious hatreds as intense as in the darkest period of the
+eighteenth century, in breaking down that healthy relation and
+subordination of classes on which beyond all other things the future
+well-being of Ireland depended. Peel was not wholly blind to what was
+happening. 'A darker cloud than ever,' he wrote, 'seems to me to
+impend over Ireland, that is if one of the remaining bonds of society,
+the friendly connection between landlord and tenant, is
+dissolved.'[40] He still persuaded himself, however, that the
+political power of the priests was transient, and that a reaction
+would set in that might destroy it. The defeat of the Catholic
+question in the new Parliament by a majority of four encouraged him in
+his resistance. In January 1827 the death of the Duke of York removed
+one serious obstacle to the Catholic cause, and six weeks later Lord
+Liverpool, who had so long held together the divided Ministry, was
+struck down by apoplexy. Peel would gladly have continued in his
+present position if a peer of real weight who held his opinions on the
+Catholic question was appointed to the vacant place. But there was no
+such peer, except Wellington, to be found, and under Wellington
+Canning refused to serve. Canning had, indeed, now fully resolved to
+be at the head of the Administration, and Peel refused to serve under
+him.
+
+With his opinions on the Catholic question it is impossible to blame
+him, and the letters which passed between the two statesmen are very
+honourable to both, and show clearly that in spite of great divergence
+of opinion, character, and interests, each could recognise the good
+faith of the other. In a letter written to one of his brothers Peel
+describes his position with complete frankness:
+
+'I am content with my position in the Government, and willing to
+retain it--willing to see Mr. Canning leader of the House of Commons,
+as he has been. But giving him credit for honesty and sincerity, if he
+is at the head of the Government, and has all the patronage of the
+Government, he must exert himself as an honest man to carry the
+Catholic question; and to the carrying of that question, to the
+preparation for its being carried, I never can be a party. Still less
+can I be a party to it for the sake of office.'
+
+These words were written little more than a year before Peel
+undertook, as Minister of the Crown, to introduce a measure of
+Catholic emancipation. But if they do little credit to his prescience,
+no one can mistake the accent of sincerity in what follows:
+
+'I do not choose to see new lights on the Catholic question precisely
+at that conjuncture when the Duke of York has been laid in his grave
+and Lord Liverpool struck dumb by the palsy. Would any man, woman, or
+child believe that after nineteen years' stubborn unbelief I was
+converted, at the very moment Mr. Canning was Prime Minister, out of
+pure conscience and the force of truth?'[41]
+
+With the resignation of Peel and the other anti-Catholic members of
+Lord Liverpool's Government, and the formation of the short Canning
+Ministry, this instalment of Peel's letters comes to an end.[42] We
+rejoice that the publication of this very interesting correspondence
+has been entrusted to an editor who is at once so competent and so
+judicious.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] _Life of Lord George Bentinck_, p. 304.
+
+[11] Lewis's _Letters_, p. 226.
+
+[12] _Private Correspondence of Sir R. Peel, 1788-1827_. Ed. by C.S.
+Parker, M.P., 1891, p. 24.
+
+[13] _Ibid._ p. 27.
+
+[14] _Hansard_, First Ser. xxi. 663.
+
+[15] Butler's _Hist. Memoirs_, ii. 177.
+
+[16] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 80.
+
+[17] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 83.
+
+[18] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 76.
+
+[19] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 217, 218.
+
+[20] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 222-224.
+
+[21] _Ibid._ p. 212.
+
+[22] _Ibid._ p. 284.
+
+[23] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 282.
+
+[24] _Ibid._ pp. 114-116, 211, 218.
+
+[25] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 60.
+
+[26] _Ibid._ p. 275.
+
+[27] _Ibid._ p. 96.
+
+[28] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 211.
+
+[29] _Ibid._ pp. 215, 219, 220.
+
+[30] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 207, 231, 235, 236.
+
+[31] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 87-92.
+
+[32] _Ibid._ pp. 244, 265.
+
+[33] _Ibid._ pp. 167, 233.
+
+[34] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 348.
+
+[35] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 349, 358, 359, 370-371.
+
+[36] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 358.
+
+[37] _Ibid._ pp. 315-317.
+
+[38] Fitzpatrick's _Correspondence of O'Connell_, i. p. 108.
+
+[39] _Peel Correspondence_, pp. 416, 418, 419, 422.
+
+[40] _Ibid._ pp. 413, 420.
+
+[41] _Peel Correspondence_, p. 485.
+
+[42] Two more volumes have been published since this Essay was
+written.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD HENRY, FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY
+
+
+The time has not yet arrived for the publication of a full life of the
+late Lord Derby, but in submitting to the public a collection of his
+more important speeches outside Parliament, a short sketch of the
+chief features of his life and character may not be out of place.
+
+Edward Henry, fifteenth Earl of Derby, was born July 21, 1826, and was
+educated at Rugby, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a
+First Class in classics. In March 1848 he unsuccessfully contested
+Lancaster, and soon after started for a long and instructive journey
+in America and the West Indies. During his absence from England he was
+elected Member for Lynn Regis upon the death of Lord George Bentinck
+in September 1848, and he held this seat without interruption till his
+accession to the earldom in October 1869. His first speech in the
+House of Commons was delivered on May 31, 1850, on the sugar duties.
+The effect on the West Indies of the abolition of the preferential
+duty on sugar was a subject which he had specially studied during his
+journey, and he had published a pamphlet upon it. Sir Robert Peel
+greatly praised his maiden speech, and Greville describes the great
+impression which it made--an impression which a further knowledge of
+the speaker speedily confirmed.
+
+The appearance in Parliament of the eldest son of one of the most
+brilliant party leaders of the age could scarcely fail to be a
+considerable political event, and it was soon found that the new
+member was not only a man of rare ability, but was also in nearly all
+respects very unlike his illustrious father. Never was there a more
+striking instance of that strange freak of heredity by which an able
+son is sometimes much less the continuation than the complement of an
+able father, exhibiting in strongly contrasted lights both opposite
+qualities and opposite defects. The fourteenth Earl was a great
+orator. He was one of the greatest debaters who have ever lived. He
+was a party leader of extraordinary power, delighting in political
+conflict; throwing into it much of the fire and passion which he
+displayed in his sporting contests; little fitted to conciliate
+opponents, but eminently fitted to win the enthusiastic loyalty of his
+followers, to rally a dispirited minority, to lead a party attack. His
+keen and rapid judgment; his perfect command of pure and lucid
+English; his unfailing readiness in argument, invective, sarcasm, and
+repartee; his indomitable courage, and the somewhat imperious dignity
+of his manner, all marked him out for the position which he held. If
+there was some truth in the common taunt that he was more a party
+leader than a statesman, it must at least be remembered that he has
+identified his name with several important measures, and that during
+most of his career he was in a hopeless minority. His enemies accused
+him of rashness, arrogance, and some superficiality, both of thought
+and knowledge. They alleged that he carried too much of the sporting
+spirit into politics; that his naturally excellent judgment was often
+deflected by the passions of the fray; that he was accustomed to
+judge measures more by their party advantages than by their intrinsic
+merits, and to care more for an immediate triumph than for ultimate
+results.
+
+His son was made in a very different mould. Though like most able and
+clear-headed men he acquired by much practice a respectable facility
+in purely extemporaneous argument, he was never a great debater. His
+speeches were very carefully prepared, and they possessed conspicuous
+merits of form as well as of matter, but they were not the speeches of
+a brilliant orator. No one could reason more clearly, more powerfully,
+or more persuasively. He was a supreme master of terse, luminous,
+weighty, and accurate English. He had much skill in bringing into
+vivid relief the salient points of an obscure and complicated subject,
+condensing an argument into a phrase, and illustrating it by graphic
+felicities of language that clung to the memory. But he hated
+rhetoric. His enunciation was faulty and unimpressive. He appealed
+solely to the reason, and never to passion or to prejudice, and he had
+nothing of the fire and temperament of a party orator. Very few
+politicians mastered so thoroughly the subjects with which they dealt.
+No politician of his time retained so remarkably, amid party
+conflicts, the power of judging questions from all their sides; of
+balancing judicially opposing considerations; of looking beyond the
+passions and interests of the hour; of realising the points of view of
+those to whom he was opposed. Declamation, clap-trap, evasion,
+ambiguities of thought and expression, empty plausibilities, unfair,
+partial, and exaggerated statements, were all essentially repugnant to
+that clear and sceptical intellect, to that sound, cautious, practical
+judgment. His business talents were very great, and they were
+assiduously cultivated. His appetite for work was insatiable. No one
+knew better how to administer a great department or preside over a
+Parliamentary Committee, or arbitrate in a difficult controversy, or
+give wise and timely advice to an inexperienced organisation. It was
+in these fields that his influence was, perhaps, most deeply felt. His
+success in them did not depend merely on his unflagging industry and
+his excellent judgment, it was also largely due to his eminently
+conciliatory character. The uniform courtesy which he displayed to men
+of all ranks and opinions is happily no rare thing among his class,
+but everyone who was brought in contact with Lord Derby soon felt that
+he was in the presence of one who tried to understand his position, to
+estimate his arguments at their full worth, to find some common ground
+of agreement. If it were possible in a bitter controversy to arrive at
+reasonable compromise, Lord Derby was most likely to effect it. He had
+a curious talent of making speeches with which everyone must agree,
+and which at the same time were never commonplace. Their secret lay in
+the habit of mind that led him always to seek out the common grounds
+of principle or fact that underlie every controversy, and which in the
+heat of the conflict the disputants had often failed to recognise.
+
+It was not difficult to forecast the place which a statesman of this
+kind was likely to fill in English politics. He was plainly wanting in
+many of the qualities of a party leader, and in most of the qualities
+of a parliamentary gladiator, and he was not likely to succeed in all
+forms of statesmanship. He would certainly not prove
+
+    A daring pilot in extremity,
+    Pleased with the danger when the waves went high.
+
+
+
+His clear perception of the objections to any course, combined with a
+very deep sense of responsibility, not unfrequently enfeebled his will
+in moments when bold and decisive action was required, and there were
+times when the love of compromise which was so useful an element in
+his character seemed to his best friends too closely allied to
+weakness. But he probably saved every party with which he acted from
+many mistakes. He brought to every Government which he joined a very
+eminent administrative capacity. He defended every policy that he
+espoused with a persuasive reasoning that few men could equal. He was
+a supremely skilful detector of false weights and of false measures.
+Every fad, every new-born enthusiasm, every crude ill-digested theory,
+found in him the calmest and most penetrating of critics, and he
+inspired the great body of moderate men of all parties with a deep
+confidence in his patriotism and in his judgment.
+
+His political position was marked out by the fact that his father had
+recently broken away from the Whig connection which had hitherto been
+that of his family, and was now the leader of the Conservative party.
+The son naturally took his place under his father's banner, but I much
+question whether he would have done so if no family influence had
+interfered. It was not that he at any time changed considerably his
+views. As Macaulay has truly said--while the extremes of the two
+English parties are separated by a wide chasm, there is a frontier
+line where they almost blend; and Lord Derby when a Conservative
+always represented the Liberal, and when a Liberal the Conservative
+wing of his party. But his mind had much of the Whig character; his
+judgment was very independent; and on Church questions especially he
+was never fully in harmony with his party. He was appointed
+Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his father's first
+short Ministry in March 1852, at a time when he was travelling in
+India, and he left office with his father in December of the same
+year. In 1853 he made a remarkable speech on Indian affairs, in some
+degree foreshadowing the Indian policy which he was afterwards
+destined to take such a large part in carrying into effect. During the
+next few years he spoke frequently on Indian and Colonial questions,
+on questions connected with education, factories, and other
+working-class interests, and he supported--often in opposition to the
+majority of his party--a large number of reforms which have since been
+accomplished. He advocated the introduction of competitive
+examinations, first of all into the Diplomatic, and then into most
+branches of the Civil Service. He spoke against the system of purchase
+in the army, and served on a Royal Commission on the subject. He
+supported a motion for securing to married women their property and
+earnings. He took a decided part in opposition to Church rates. He
+voted for the emancipation of the Jews. He voted and spoke in favour
+of the Maynooth grant. He was an early advocate of the opening of
+museums on Sundays, and of a conscience clause to be enforced in all
+schools receiving State assistance. He supported the establishment of
+the Divorce Court, and clearly showed that preference for social as
+distinguished from political questions which he retained through his
+whole life. He delighted in placing himself in touch with working men.
+Mechanics' institutes, free libraries, almost every movement for the
+education and improvement of the working class, found in him a steady
+friend. He once wrote to Lord Shaftesbury: 'We are both public men
+deeply interested in the condition of the working class, and for my
+own part I would rather look back on services such as you have
+performed for that class than receive the highest honours in the
+employment of the State.' On working-class questions he was often
+accused of Radicalism, but it was Radicalism of the old school, which
+relied mainly for reform on spontaneous effort, on moral improvement,
+and extended education, and was very jealous of State interference,
+compulsion, and control. He had a great admiration for Mill's
+writings, and especially for his treatise on Liberty, which he
+described as 'one of the wisest books of our time.' Mill fully
+reciprocated the feeling. He once spoke of Lord Stanley as 'one of the
+very few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions
+ought to be founded on principles.'
+
+'Our party,' wrote Lord Malmesbury in 1853, 'are angry with Disraeli,
+which is constantly the case, and they are also displeased with Lord
+Stanley, suspecting him to be coquetting with the Manchester party.'
+Greville, nearly at the same time, expressed his belief that Lord
+Stanley was taking 'a wise and liberal line,' and that he was 'pretty
+sure to act a conspicuous part.' In November 1855 there was a critical
+moment in his career, when Lord Palmerston, on the death of Sir
+William Molesworth, offered Lord Stanley the post of Secretary of
+State for the Colonies. He at once went down to Knowsley to consult
+his father, who put a strong veto on the proposal, and the offer was
+refused, but in terms which showed that it had been far from
+unacceptable. It is probable that the refusal was a wise one, for
+although on many home questions Lord Stanley would have found himself
+more in harmony with moderate Liberals than with his own party, he
+would certainly have dissented from Lord Palmerston's foreign policy.
+During the Crimean war he seems to have sympathised with the views of
+Bright and Cobden. He took an active part in an able but now nearly
+forgotten Tory paper called 'The Press,' which was opposed to the war,
+and his extreme horror of war and of every policy which could possibly
+lead to war was one of his strongest characteristics. Responsibility
+in office never weighed lightly upon him, but responsibility for
+measures which led or might lead to bloodshed was more than he could
+bear.
+
+At the time when this offer of Lord Palmerston was made, Lord Stanley
+was little more than twenty-nine. Greville considered that he had
+acted wisely in refusing, and he has given us an interesting account
+of the light in which the young statesman then appeared to experienced
+political judges. 'His position and abilities,' he said, 'are certain
+before long to make him conspicuous, and to enable him to play a very
+considerable part. He is exceedingly ambitious, of an independent turn
+of mind, very industrious, and has acquired a vast amount of
+information. Not long ago Disraeli gave me an account of him and of
+his curious opinions--exceedingly curious in a man in his condition of
+life and with his prospects. Last night Lord Strangford (George
+Smythe) talked to me about him, expressed the highest opinion of his
+capacity and acquirements, and confirmed what Disraeli had told me of
+his notions and views even more, for he says that he is a real and
+sincere democrat, and that he would like if he could to prove his
+sincerity by divesting himself of his aristocratic character, and even
+of the wealth he is heir to. How far this may be true I know not....
+Nothing appears to me certain but that he will play a considerable
+part for good or for evil, but I cannot pretend to guess what it will
+be. At present he seems to be more allied with Bright than with any
+other public man, and as his disposition about the war and its
+continuance is very much that of Bright it would have been difficult
+for him to take office with Palmerston.'
+
+Lord Stanley had not long to wait for high office. His father formed
+his second Administration in February 1858, and Lord Stanley was made
+Colonial Secretary. He appears to have accepted the office with some
+reluctance, and only because Sir E. Bulwer, for whom it was at first
+intended, found that he could not secure his re-election. The
+Government was a very weak one, and it opened with the worst
+prospects. It was a Government in a minority. Its very existence
+depended on the dissensions between Lord Palmerston and Lord John
+Russell, and its first steps met with little favour either in the
+House or in the country. The Indian Mutiny was now nearly suppressed,
+and Lord Palmerston shortly before quitting office had pledged the
+House of Commons to the policy of withdrawing the Government of India
+from the East India Company and placing it directly under the Crown.
+To carry this policy into effect was the first task of the new
+Government. They introduced an Indian Bill which they were compelled
+to withdraw, and then substituted for it a new Bill founded on
+resolutions which were carried through the House of Commons. In May
+the Government almost fell on account of the indiscreet publication of
+a despatch of Lord Ellenborough, condemning a Proclamation of the
+Governor-General, Lord Canning. A vote of censure was moved and would
+certainly have been carried if Lord Ellenborough had not saved his
+colleagues by resigning. He was President of the Board of Control, the
+Office which then directed Indian affairs, and Lord Stanley took his
+place, piloted the Indian Bill successfully through the House of
+Commons, and when the measure became law, was the first Secretary of
+State for India, and undertook the very important and responsible task
+of beginning the new system of Indian Government.
+
+'The Times' noticed the singular good fortune of Lord Derby in being
+able at this very critical moment to place his eldest son in one of
+the most important Cabinet offices in his Ministry without incurring
+from any side the smallest imputation of nepotism, and the skill and
+success of the new administration of the India Office was speedily and
+generally recognised. Greville tells us that Lord Stanley 'gained
+golden opinions and great popularity at the India House'; and he gives
+a striking instance of the firmness with which he maintained the full
+authority of the new Council over Indian affairs. He adds: 'I was
+prepared to hear of his ability, his indefatigable industry, and his
+business qualities; but I was surprised to hear so much of his
+courtesy, affability, patience, and candour; that he is neither
+dictatorial nor conceited, always ready to listen to other people's
+opinions and advice, and never fancying that he knows better than
+anyone else. I afterwards told Jonathan Peel what I had heard and he
+confirmed the truth of this report and said he was the same in the
+Cabinet.' 'Lord Stanley,' Greville said, 'is so completely _the man_
+of the present day, and in all human probability is destined to play
+so important and conspicuous a part in political life, that the time
+may come when any details, however minute, of his early career will be
+deemed worthy of recollection.' It is a characteristic fact that Lord
+Stanley offered a seat on the Indian Council to John Stuart Mill,
+which, however, that great writer declined.
+
+The disturbance in European politics which culminated in the French
+declaration of war against Austria contributed to weaken still further
+the feeble Ministry of Lord Derby. The Reform Bill caused profound
+divisions in its ranks. Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley resigned, and the
+Government Bill was defeated in the spring of 1859. Lord Malmesbury
+mentions that in the Cabinet divisions on that question Lord Stanley
+supported the more democratic view, and that on one occasion he
+threatened to resign if the measure were not made more liberal. He
+defended the Bill in an elaborate speech, advocating such an
+introduction of the working class to the franchise as would give them
+a considerable but not a preponderating power. A general election
+followed, and the Government gained several seats, but not sufficient
+to give it a majority. The different fractions of the Opposition drew
+together; on June 11 a vote of want of confidence was carried by a
+majority of 13, and Lord Derby immediately resigned.
+
+In opposition Lord Stanley devoted himself chiefly to the class of
+questions that had occupied him before his accession to office. He
+served on the long Cambridge University Commission, and supported the
+admission of Nonconformists to Fellowships. He was also warmly in
+favour of the measure which made it possible for clergymen to free
+themselves from their Orders and to adopt other professions. He
+presided over the Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army
+and over the Commission on Patents. Like Disraeli, he displayed during
+the American Civil War a reticence and reserve which contrasted very
+favourably with the rash language of other leaders.
+
+In 1862 a curious episode occurred which showed at least the
+widespread reputation that he had acquired. Prince Alfred having
+refused the throne of Greece, the idea was for a short time
+entertained of offering it to Lord Stanley. 'If he accepts,' Disraeli
+wrote to his friend Mrs. Willyams, 'I shall lose a powerful friend and
+colleague. It is a dazzling adventure for the house of Stanley, but
+they are not an imaginative race, and I fancy they will prefer
+Knowsley to the Parthenon and Lancashire to the Attic Plains.' 'The
+Greeks really want to make my friend Lord Stanley their king. This
+beats any novel; but he will not. Had I his youth I would not
+hesitate, even with the earldom of Derby in the distance.'
+
+It does not appear that this proposal ever took a very serious form,
+and if it had been made there is little doubt that Disraeli formed a
+just forecast of what would have been the result. The death of Lord
+Palmerston on October 18, 1865, gave a new turn to the political
+kaleidoscope: Lord Russell became Prime Minister; the policy of reform
+was pushed into the forefront, and the Reform Bill of 1866 speedily
+produced a secession in the Liberal ranks and led to the downfall of
+the Ministry. The feature of the Bill which specially lent itself to
+attack was that it dealt solely with reduction of the franchise,
+leaving the question of the distribution of seats to subsequent
+legislation, and an amendment was moved by Lord Grosvenor to the
+effect that no Bill for the reduction of the franchise should be
+discussed till the whole scheme was before the House. This amendment
+was seconded by Lord Stanley in a speech which Lord Malmesbury
+pronounced to be 'the finest and most statesmanlike speech he ever
+made.' In June the Government were beaten by a small majority on an
+amendment of Lord Dunkellin substituting rating for rental; a few days
+later Lord Russell resigned and Lord Derby for the third time became
+Prime Minister.
+
+As on the two former occasions he was in a minority, though the
+temporary secession of a portion of the Liberal party gave him a
+precarious power. Once more, too, he took office amid the convulsions
+of a European war, for the war of Prussia and Italy with Austria had
+just begun. In the new Ministry Lord Stanley was Secretary for Foreign
+Affairs. In his election address he gave the keynote of his policy by
+insisting in the strongest terms that England should observe a strict
+neutrality in European controversies. Her vast Indian and Colonial
+Empire, he said, made her a world apart and threw upon her duties and
+responsibilities that taxed all her energies. She had duties also to
+her poorer classes at home, whose condition was not what we could
+desire; and by simply existing as a free, prosperous, and
+self-governed nation, we should do more for the real freedom of Europe
+than by any policy of meddling or war.
+
+As far as his own department was concerned Lord Stanley's
+administration during this short Ministry was both eminently
+consistent and eminently successful. It is true that this pacific
+Minister made the Abyssinian war for the release of some imprisoned
+British subjects, but he only did this after every peaceful effort to
+procure their release had proved abortive, and it was almost
+universally recognised that there was no honourable alternative open
+to him. During his ministry the Luxemburg question brought France and
+Prussia to the very verge of war. It fell to the task of Lord Stanley
+to mediate between them, and he did so with a success which certainly
+adjourned, though it could not ultimately avert, the great catastrophe
+that burst upon Europe in 1870. No success could have been more
+gratifying to him, and he was fond of repeating the saying of Canning
+that 'If a war must come sooner or later, for my part I prefer that it
+should come later than sooner.' Lord Russell bore an ungrudging
+testimony to the 'tact and discretion' Lord Stanley displayed in this
+negotiation. In the same spirit he refused to take part in a
+conference of European Powers which the French Emperor desired to
+convene to settle the Roman question, declaring that this question was
+one with which England should in no way meddle, and that a conference
+would be useless and dangerous unless a basis were laid down before.
+He refused to interfere in any way with the Cretan rebellion, and with
+the impending disputes between Turkey and Greece. His abstention on
+this question was blamed by some, but it met with the full approbation
+of his great opponent, Lord Russell, who declared that 'he had acted
+with much prudence and discretion.' He laid the foundation also of the
+settlement of the long outstanding difficulty with America by
+proposing to refer the Alabama question to arbitration, and he
+negotiated a treaty on the subject, which, however, the Senate refused
+to ratify.
+
+In all this he was very consistent. The same consistency cannot be
+claimed for his support of a Reform Bill far more Radical than that
+which his party had so recently rejected. In my own judgment it is
+impossible to defend with success the conduct of the Derby Ministry on
+this question, and although Lord Stanley took only a subsidiary part
+in it, he cannot escape his share of the responsibility. The
+difficulty of the position of the eldest son of the Prime Minister who
+was taking this 'leap in the dark' was very great, and it must be
+remembered that he had long been identified with the more democratic
+wing of his party. After the great agitation that followed the
+downfall of the Russell Ministry, he probably regarded a democratic
+measure as inevitable, and it was the character of his mind to be very
+ready to accept what he considered the inevitable, and to endeavour by
+timely compromise to mitigate its effects. Lord Derby's health was now
+completely broken, and on February 24, 1868, he resigned office, and
+Disraeli became Prime Minister.
+
+Mr. Gladstone soon re-united the sundered sections of the Opposition
+by raising the question of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church.
+The resolutions asserting the expediency of this policy were
+introduced into the House of Commons in April. Lord Stanley was put
+forward as the principal opponent. His amendment expressed no opinion
+about the merits of the proposed policy, but simply affirmed that it
+was a question which ought to be reserved for a new Parliament which
+was soon to be elected under an altered franchise. In his speech he
+disclaimed any wish to maintain that the Irish Church Establishment
+was what it ought to be, but urged that in the condition of Ireland a
+merely destructive measure would do nothing but harm, that it would
+serve no good purpose to attack the Establishment without laying down
+the lines of a definite, constructive ecclesiastical policy, and that
+it was absurd to launch such a question in the last session of an
+expiring Parliament. The more ardent spirits of the Tory party
+strongly censured the ambiguity of this defence, and the Government
+were beaten by majorities of 56 and 60. The House of Commons was
+dissolved in the autumn and a large Liberal majority returned.
+Disraeli at once resigned without waiting for the assembling of
+Parliament.
+
+In October 1869 the death of Lord Derby terminated the career of his
+son in the House of Commons, and the following year added very greatly
+to the happiness of his life by his marriage with the Dowager
+Marchioness of Salisbury. His attitude in opposition is clearly shown
+in his published speeches. He had no wish to see the Conservative
+party again in office till they possessed an assured and homogeneous
+majority, and he maintained that it should be their main object to
+strengthen the influence of the more moderate section in the
+Government. He believed that by habitually pursuing this policy they
+would best prevent revolutionary changes, mitigate by wise compromises
+measures which they did not wholly approve, secure the continuance of
+the harmony of classes, on which more than on any other condition the
+prosperity of England depends, and gradually strengthen their own hold
+on the confidence of the country. It was also his earnest desire that
+English politics should be turned as much as possible from a policy of
+organic change to a policy of administrative reform. He considered it
+a great evil that public men had acquired the habit of continually
+tampering with the existing legislative machinery instead of wisely
+using it for the benefit of the whole nation. The party system, as he
+always thought, had falsified the perspective of English politics,
+bringing into the foreground comparatively unimportant questions which
+were well suited to rally parties and win majorities; thrusting into
+the background others which were immeasurably more important, but
+which were less available for party purposes. What Carlyle called 'The
+Condition of England Question' was always in his thoughts. No one
+would accuse him of under-rating the evils of war, but he questioned
+whether the most sanguinary battle which had ever been fought carried
+off nearly as many human beings as die in England every year from
+purely preventible causes. He threw the whole force of his clear and
+penetrating intellect into such questions as sanitary reform, the
+regulation of mines, the promotion of education and especially
+technical education, the organisation of charities, the treatment of
+juvenile offenders, the diffusion of wise methods of encouraging
+saving among the poor. The overcrowding of the great cities, and the
+vast masses of insanitary dwellings, seemed to him one of the most
+pressing dangers of the time, and he was a prominent member of nearly
+every important company and association in England for improving the
+houses of artisans. He had no puritanism in his nature and was very
+anxious, by the establishment of free libraries and people's parks,
+and Sunday opening of museums, to extend the range of innocent
+pleasure. 'Men die,' he once said, 'for want of cheerfulness, as
+plants die for want of light.' He did not believe in the repression of
+drunkenness by coercive legislation like the Local Veto Bill, but he
+believed that its true root lay in overcrowding, ignorance, insanitary
+conditions of life, the want of innocent means of enjoyment, excessive
+hours of labour. 'When you have to deal with men in masses,' he said,
+'the connection between vice and disease is very close. With a low
+average of popular health you will have a low average of national
+morality and probably also of national intellect. Drunkenness and
+vice of other kinds will flourish on such a soil, and you cannot get
+healthy brains to grow on unhealthy bodies. Cleanliness and
+self-respect grow together, and it is no paradox to affirm that you
+tend to purify men's thoughts and feelings when you purify the air
+they breathe.' He supported liberally the movement for establishing
+coffee-houses, and he looked with great hope to the co-operative
+movement as averting or mitigating industrial conflicts. 'The subject
+of co-operation,' he said, 'is in my judgment more important as
+regards the future of England than nine-tenths of those which are
+discussed in Parliament, and around which political controversies
+gather.' As the possessor of one of the largest properties in England
+he was excellently informed on all agricultural questions, and he
+exercised a great influence upon them. Among other services he
+dispelled many misrepresentations by obtaining an accurate return of
+the numbers of owners of land in the United Kingdom, and of the
+quantity of land which they owned.
+
+With the single exception of Lord Shaftesbury, I believe no
+conspicuous English public man devoted so much time and labour as Lord
+Derby to the class of questions I have described. He brought to their
+discussion an almost unrivalled fulness of knowledge. His purse was
+liberally opened in such causes, and the speeches in which he examined
+what Government can do and what it cannot do for the material
+well-being of the poor, are in my judgment among the most valuable
+contributions to political thought that have been furnished by any
+English statesman during the present century.
+
+The election of 1874, bringing the Conservative party again into
+power, called him to other fields, and he became for the second time
+Foreign Secretary under Disraeli, and was soon involved in that
+Eastern Question which led to his severance from the Conservative
+party. It would answer no good purpose in a short sketch like the
+present to rake up the still smouldering ashes of that controversy.
+The time will come when it will be reviewed in the calm light of
+history, and with the assistance of materials that are not now before
+the public. I shall here content myself with a mere sketch. In the
+earlier stages of their foreign policy the Government appear to have
+been perfectly agreed. Lord Derby fully concurred in the purchase of
+the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal, which was one of the most
+successful strokes of policy of the Government, though he defended it
+on somewhat more prosaic grounds than some of its supporters, and was
+careful to explain that it was essentially a measure of self-defence,
+and not connected with any project for the dismemberment of Turkey or
+the establishment of an English protectorate in Egypt. When the
+insurrection broke out in 1875 in Herzegovina and Bosnia, neither Lord
+Derby nor any of his colleagues believed it to be more than a mere
+passing disturbance. But the feebleness manifested by the Turkish army
+in suppressing the insurrection, and the partial bankruptcy of the
+Government at Constantinople, contributed with many elements of race
+and religious dissension, with foreign intrigue and local
+misgovernment, to aggravate the sore, and the movement soon acquired
+the dimensions of a great European danger. In sending an English
+Consul in conjunction with the Consuls of the other Powers to the
+scene of insurrection, in order, if possible, to arrive at a
+mediation; in the acceptance of the Andrassy Note, by which the three
+Imperial Powers laid down the reforms which they considered urgently
+necessary; in the rejection of the Berlin Memorandum, on the ground
+that the Porte could not or would not carry out its demands, and that
+it would almost certainly lead to an armed intervention; and finally,
+in sending the British fleet to Besika Bay for the purpose of
+protecting English and Christian interests at Constantinople, at a
+time when that city was in a state of almost complete anarchy, the
+Government were fully agreed, and they carried with them an immense
+majority in Parliament and in the country. For some time, also, the
+country seemed to approve of the policy which Lord Derby uniformly
+avowed and steadily observed, of maintaining a strict neutrality in
+the contest that was raging; doing all that could be done by advice,
+remonstrance, mediation, and moral influence to induce the Porte to
+carry out internal reforms; warning the Turkish Government in clear
+terms that under the circumstances of the case they must not look for
+any military assistance from England, but at the same time
+discouraging as much as possible the active interference of other
+Powers in the affairs of Turkey, and abstaining rigidly from any step
+that would involve the use of force or the chance of war unless some
+serious English interest was affected. He believed that the integrity
+of the Turkish Empire was a vital English interest, and that any
+attempt to substitute a Slavonic for a Turkish Empire would bring upon
+Europe calamities the extent of which it was impossible to exaggerate
+or to foresee. Russia and Austria would at once come into collision;
+England would almost certainly be drawn into the war, and all the
+fierce elements of race hatred and religious fanaticism would be let
+loose.
+
+For a time most English politicians seem to have agreed with him, and
+his one great object was to bring about an armistice, a mediation, and
+a peace. But the popular agitation which arose in England on the
+subject of the Bulgarian atrocities in the summer and autumn of 1876
+added enormously to his difficulties, and the danger was the greater
+because some skilful party management was blended with much genuine
+philanthropy. The speeches addressed by Lord Derby to the successive
+deputations that came to him, give the best explanation and defence of
+his position during this critical period, and the interruptions to
+which he had to reply give a vivid picture of the state of feeling
+that had arisen. The Crimean war was now deplored as a calamity, if
+not a crime. The Turks were described on high political authority as
+'the one great anti-human specimen of humanity.' The Ministers were
+accused of complicity in the Bulgarian massacres; they were urged to
+cast neutrality to the wind; to adopt a policy of armed coercion in
+Turkey; even to assist Russia in driving the Turks out of
+Constantinople. It had become, as Lord Derby sarcastically said, a
+very unpopular thing for an English Minister to talk of English
+interests in connection with the Eastern Question--almost dangerous
+for any man at a public meeting to express in plain terms his doubt of
+the disinterested philanthropy of Russia.
+
+Lord Derby had at this time to encounter much unpopularity. He was
+accused of an undue leaning towards the Turkish Government, and an
+inadequate sympathy with the Christian populations, and it was alleged
+that if he had acted in firm concert with the other Powers in coercing
+the Porte--if he had not proclaimed so loudly and constantly his
+determination to abstain from all active interference and
+compulsion--his remonstrances would have had more effect, and he might
+have averted or restricted the calamities that had occurred. But a
+great change soon took place. The first object of the Government was
+to prevent the Turkish disturbance from leading to a European war, and
+in this object they failed. On April 24, 1877, Russia, in spite of
+English remonstrances, declared war against Turkey. On the same day a
+Russian army crossed the Pruth, and the Eastern Question entered into
+a new and dangerous phase.
+
+To a statesman like Lord Derby, who maintained that war, unless it is
+a necessity, is a crime; that the maintenance of peace is beyond all
+comparison the greatest of British interests, the months that followed
+were extremely trying. His first object was to limit the war, and to
+safeguard English interests, and for this purpose he drew up on May 6,
+1877, a Note defining the English interests that were vital in the
+East. He warned the Russian Government that an attempt by Russia to
+blockade the Suez Canal, an attack on Egypt, a Russian occupation of
+Constantinople, or an alteration of the existing arrangements for the
+navigation of the Bosphorus or the Dardanelles might compel England to
+abandon her neutrality. Russia accepted these conditions, and for some
+time there appeared every prospect of limiting the war. But in the
+beginning of 1878 a period of extreme danger undoubtedly arrived.
+Plevna had fallen. The Turkish resistance had collapsed. A Russian
+army, flushed with victory, had advanced to near Constantinople. The
+treaty of San Stephano was signed; which in the opinion of most
+European statesmen placed Turkey at the feet of Russia, and Russia at
+first refused to submit its terms to a conference of European Powers.
+Public feeling in England now ran strongly in a direction almost
+opposite to that in which it had been running eighteen months before,
+and the nation was extremely alarmed at the danger of Constantinople
+becoming speedily and irremediably a Russian port. On the other hand,
+the national and military pride of the conquering Power was aroused,
+and it was felt that a single false step, a single imprudent menace,
+might lead to war.
+
+It was one of those moments in which men's judgments are largely
+affected by their temperaments, and it soon became evident that the
+Cabinet was seriously divided. Disraeli had now become Lord
+Beaconsfield, and sat with his Foreign Secretary in the House of
+Lords. With his character it was inevitable that he should meet the
+danger by a bold, decisive, and even aggressive, policy. It was no
+less natural that Lord Derby should have persistently leaned towards
+the side of caution and shrunk from any measure that could cut short
+negotiation and diminish the chances of peace. The order given that
+the British Fleet should enter the Dardanelles, first produced the
+inevitable schism, and Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon resigned. The
+order was countermanded, and Lord Derby, for a short time, resumed his
+post. He acquiesced, but with great reluctance, in the vote of credit
+for six millions which was at once brought before the House of
+Commons, but he was soon convinced that measures he did not approve of
+were impending, and when orders were given for calling out the
+reserves he definitely resigned.
+
+He announced his resignation on March 28, 1878, in terms of much
+dignity and moderation. He believed, he said, that his colleagues
+desired peace as truly as himself, and he did not maintain that their
+later measures led inevitably to war, but he considered that they were
+neither necessary nor 'prudent in the interests of European peace.'
+He agreed that the terms of the treaty should be submitted to a
+European Congress, in which England should take part. On minor matters
+he thought it his duty to waive his own opinion, but he could not do
+so on a question involving the momentous issue of peace or war. The
+threat involved in the last act of the Government, he said, in a later
+speech, would make it more difficult for Russia to modify her policy,
+and he believed that without a threat such a modification of the
+treaty of San Stephano could be obtained as would make it acceptable.
+He had been accused of indecision and even of cowardice. For his own
+part he thought it needed more courage to stand up in his place to
+express views which he knew to be unpopular among the great body of
+his friends, than to sit at a desk in Downing Street and issue orders
+which would bring no danger or unpopularity to himself, but might
+bring about a European war.
+
+The short speech in which Lord Beaconsfield accepted the resignation,
+and dwelt on the long friendship, personal as well as political, that
+bound him to Lord Derby, seems to me a perfect model of good feeling
+and good taste. Unfortunately the example of the Prime Minister was
+not followed, and words used in a later debate went far to make the
+breach irrevocable.
+
+Lord Derby for a short time maintained a neutral position, but the
+foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield was in the highest degree
+distasteful to him. A wave of Chauvinism was passing over England,
+which was utterly opposed to his views, and he believed that a section
+of the Conservative party encouraged it in order to divert the
+thoughts of men from internal reforms. He objected to the acquisition
+of Cyprus, to some of the responsibilities assumed by England under
+the treaty of Berlin, and very strongly to the Afghan war; and in the
+beginning of 1880 he formally attached himself to the Liberal party,
+on the ground of his objections to the foreign policy of the
+Government. His speeches in his new capacity differed very little from
+those which he had formerly delivered, but he said that he had learnt
+to see more clearly the uselessness of attempting to resist popular
+ideas, and to think 'more highly of the moderation, the fairness, and
+the general justice with which masses of men, including all conditions
+of life, are disposed to use their power.' He thought that England
+should mix herself as little as possible with 'the sanguinary muddle'
+of European diplomacy; that she should avoid increasing her
+responsibilities; that she should take stringent measures to reduce
+her debt; that she should pay much more attention than she was
+accustomed to do to the condition of her own poorer population; and
+that it should be the object of her statesmen to meet every great
+popular demand by wise and equitable compromise. One of the greatest
+dangers, he said, that could befall the country, would be 'a state of
+things in which the comparatively harmless antagonism of parties would
+be replaced by the far more serious and dangerous war of classes. From
+that danger more than from any other it is the business of a
+well-considered Liberalism to protect us.'
+
+In 1882 he accepted the Colonial Office from Mr. Gladstone, and held
+it until the fall of the Government in the summer of 1885. His
+ministry was not a very eventful one, and it was marked by that steady
+adherence to a middle line which had always characterised him. He
+congratulated the country that the indifference to our colonies which
+had prevailed during his youth had passed away, but he was by no means
+favourable to extensions of the Empire. 'We have quite black men
+enough,' he was accustomed to say; and he believed that any increase
+of our responsibilities was likely to endanger the Empire, and to
+divert the energies of politicians from pressing home questions. He
+did not condemn the policy which led to the occupation of Egypt by
+England, but he declared that even if it was inevitable it was a
+misfortune, and that we ought to 'see that we do not on any pretext,
+however plausible, get that Egyptian millstone tied permanently round
+our necks.' He was very sceptical about Imperial Federation, and
+entirely incredulous about the possibility of an Imperial Zollverein.
+He deplored the protectionism of the colonies, but was himself a
+strict free-trader of the school of Cobden, and utterly opposed to any
+attempt to negotiate treaties with the colonies on a basis of
+preferential tariffs. On the other hand, he showed himself quite ready
+to favour Confederation in Australia, and he accepted gratefully
+Australian help in the Soudan, but he was much alarmed by tendencies
+in some colonies which might lead to complications with foreign
+Powers, and he incurred considerable unpopularity in Australia by
+refusing to consent to the annexation by Queensland of New Guinea.
+
+There is, however, one incident in the colonial administration of Lord
+Derby on which it is necessary to dwell at somewhat greater length,
+for subsequent events have given it an unfortunate prominence and it
+has thrown some discredit on his statesmanship. I allude, of course,
+to the convention with the Transvaal in 1884. In the preceding
+convention, which had been signed in August 1881, complete
+self-government had been granted by England to the Transvaal 'subject
+to the suzerainty of her Majesty' and her successors, and also to a
+large number of carefully specified reservations and limitations. They
+comprised the complete control of the external relations of the
+Transvaal, including the conclusion of treaties and the conduct of
+diplomatic intercourse with foreign Powers, which could only be
+carried on through her Majesty's officers; the right of moving British
+troops in case of necessity through the Transvaal; a power of veto
+over all legislation affecting the interests of the native population.
+A number of articles prohibited slavery in the new State; protected
+with much detail the interests of the native population; secured
+complete religious liberty; established the right of all persons other
+than natives who conformed themselves to the laws of the State, to
+enter, travel, and reside in any part of the Transvaal, to acquire
+property and to carry on their business without being subject to any
+other taxation than that which was imposed on the citizens of the
+Transvaal; and placed British imports and exports on the same plane as
+those of the most-favoured nations. The limits of the new State were
+carefully defined and a British Resident was established in the
+Transvaal to superintend the carrying out of these provisions. There
+was no express provision in the convention for the political
+privileges of the English residents in the Transvaal, but the
+Government appear to have relied on a not very explicit verbal
+assurance given to the British Commissioners by President Kruger in
+May 1881. Asked about the rights of British subjects to complete free
+trade throughout the Transvaal, President Kruger answered that before
+the annexation 'they were on the same footing as the burghers'; that
+'there was not the slightest difference in accordance with the Sand
+River convention'; that this state of things would be continued and
+that 'there would be equal protection for everybody.' Sir Evelyn Wood
+then added, 'and equal privileges?' 'We make no difference,' answered
+President Kruger, 'so far as burgher rights are concerned. There may
+perhaps be some slight difference in the case of a young person who
+has just come into the country.' It was subsequently explained that
+the words 'young person' did not refer to age, but to the time of
+residence in the Republic--according to the old Transvaal
+Constitution, a year's residence in the Republic was necessary for
+naturalisation. With this assurance the Government of 1881 appears to
+have been content. They believed in words expressly sanctioned by Mr.
+Gladstone, that the concession of limited independence to the
+Transvaal by the convention of 1881 would 'provide for the full
+liberty and equal treatment of the entire white population, guard the
+interests of the natives, and promote harmony and good-will among the
+various races in South Africa.'[43] As a matter of fact, the only
+change in the political position of the English residents in the
+Transvaal was that the period of naturalisation was extended from one
+to five years--a change which appears to have produced little or no
+commotion in the Republic.
+
+The convention of 1881 was, however, extremely unpopular among a large
+section of the Boer population. Complete independence was their avowed
+object, and in order to attain it their first task was to abolish the
+suzerainty of Great Britain. Almost immediately after the convention
+was signed, the limitations of the Transvaal established by the
+convention were flagrantly disregarded by Transvaal filibusters, who
+proceeded with the tacit and even with the avowed countenance of their
+Government to place new sections of native territory under the
+exclusive protectorate of the Transvaal Government;[44] and a
+deputation, headed by President Kruger, came to England in 1883 for
+the purpose of negotiating with the Colonial Office for the abolition
+of the chief articles of the convention of 1881. They avowed with
+complete frankness that absolute independence would alone satisfy
+them, and that their desire was to revert to the Sand River convention
+of 1852, by which this independence had been recognised. This demand
+was absolutely rejected by the Imperial Government, but Lord Derby
+attempted to meet the objections of the Transvaal leaders by
+substituting for the articles of the convention of 1881 new articles
+in several respects more favourable to the pretensions of the Boers.
+
+He, in the first place, made a sentimental concession to which it is
+probable he attached little importance, but which was regarded by the
+Boer population as a considerable step towards the achievement of
+their independence. The term 'Transvaal State,' which was accepted in
+the convention of 1881 as the designation of the new State, was
+dropped and the old title of 'South African Republic' was revived and
+recognised. The question of suzerainty was dealt with in a somewhat
+ambiguous fashion. The new convention purported only to substitute new
+articles in the place of those of the preceding convention; and it was
+afterwards argued that the old preamble, which asserted at once the
+internal independence of the Transvaal and the suzerainty of Great
+Britain, remained in force. In fact, however, this preamble was
+neither reprinted nor replaced in the new convention, and the term
+'suzerainty,' which occurred in the original draft of the document,
+was deliberately expunged--it is said by Lord Derby himself. He
+considered the term wholly wanting in the precision which is desirable
+in a treaty arrangement, that it was capable of many different degrees
+of extension, and that the fact of the paramountcy of Great Britain
+over the new State might be sufficiently established without the use
+of an ambiguous word which excited the most bitter hostility in the
+Transvaal. His own words in defending his conduct in the House of
+Lords are perfectly clear. 'The word suzerainty,' he said, 'is a very
+vague word, and I do not think it is capable of any precise legal
+definition. Whatever we may understand by it, I think it is not very
+easy to define. But I apprehend whether you call it a protectorate, or
+a suzerainty, or the recognition of England as a paramount Power, the
+fact is that a certain controlling power is retained when the State
+which exercises this suzerainty has a right to veto any negotiation
+into which the dependent State may enter with foreign Powers. Whatever
+suzerainty meant in the convention of Pretoria (1881), the condition
+of things which it implies still remains; although the word is not
+actually employed, we have kept the substance. We have abstained from
+using the word because it was not capable of legal definition, and
+because it seemed to be a word which was likely to lead to
+misconception and misunderstanding.'
+
+The articles of the previous convention relating to slavery, to native
+rights, to free trade, to religious liberty, to the rights of
+residence of foreigners in the Transvaal, reappear in the new
+convention, and the limits of the State were somewhat more fully
+defined, but the controlling power of Great Britain over the foreign
+policy of the Transvaal, though clearly reasserted, was somewhat
+limited in its scope. It was provided that the South African Republic
+should conclude no treaty or engagement with any State or nation other
+than the Orange Free State, or with any native tribe to the eastward
+or westward of the Republic, until the same had been approved by the
+Queen; that every such treaty should be at once submitted to her
+Majesty's Government for her consent, but that this consent should be
+presumed to have been granted if no notification to the contrary was
+received within six months. The desire of the Transvaal authorities to
+be recognised as representing an independent sovereign power was thus
+distinctly rejected, and the English Government positively refused a
+proposal to admit foreign arbitration in cases of dispute between
+England and the Transvaal.
+
+This convention has been severely censured by later writers on the
+ground of the insufficiency and ambiguity of its assertion of the
+paramount authority of Great Britain over the Transvaal, and of its
+failure to do anything to supply the great deficiency in the preceding
+convention by an article securing political equality for the British
+population within it. A few years later, when an immense English
+immigration had taken place, not only with the consent but at the
+express invitation of the Transvaal Government; when the English
+element formed a large majority of the inhabitants of the State; when
+they paid an enormous preponderance of its taxation, and were the
+chief agents in developing its wealth and raising it from the position
+of a very poor pastoral community into that of a great and wealthy
+State, the Transvaal Government proceeded to impose upon the new
+emigrants disqualifications and disabilities which were utterly
+unknown when England conceded self-government to 'the inhabitants of
+the Transvaal.' They completely deprived the vast majority of
+political power or local self-government, and surrounded them at every
+turn with the most irritating disabilities. The Transvaal became the
+one part of South Africa where one white race was held in a position
+of inferiority to another. At a time when perfect equality was enjoyed
+by the Dutch population in our own colonies, the political
+disqualification of the English race was made the very corner-stone of
+the policy of the Transvaal Government. An annual revenue greatly in
+excess of what was required for its internal government was raised
+almost entirely from the taxation of an unrepresented class, to whom
+the prosperity of the State was mainly due, and it was employed in
+accumulating a great armament which could only be intended for use
+against England and for maintaining the subjection of an English
+population.
+
+This was the position to which the paramount Power in South Africa,
+the Power which of its own free will had conceded a limited
+independence to the Transvaal, found itself reduced. And yet it was
+possible for the Boer Government to maintain that there was nothing in
+all this legislation which was inconsistent with the terms of the
+convention of 1884.
+
+I do not think that the justice of this criticism can be wholly
+denied. The Transvaal authorities had already given clear intimation
+of their desire to emancipate themselves from all British control, and
+especially of their determination to disregard the limitations which
+had been imposed on the expansion of their State. There is, however,
+one very material fact to be remembered in judging the policy of Lord
+Derby. At the time of the convention of 1884 the English population in
+the Transvaal was a small, scattered, and powerless minority, and as
+their numbers were far too scanty to make them a danger to the State,
+there was not much reason to believe that the Transvaal authorities
+would repudiate their own assurances and subject them to oppressive
+disabilities. It was not until two years after the convention that the
+vast gold-mines of the Transvaal were discovered and all the
+conditions of the South African problem fundamentally changed. The
+gigantic immigration that ensued reversed the proportion between the
+two races. The revenue and the expenditure of the State multiplied
+more than fifteen fold in little more than ten years.[45] The
+Transvaal became the most powerful and wealthy State in South Africa,
+and the great preponderance of the Outlander element in numbers,
+wealth, energy, and industry rendered a conflict of races almost
+inevitable. No statesman could have foreseen this change, and a
+convention that might have allayed discontent if the gold-mines had
+never been discovered, proved wholly inefficient to meet it.
+
+Though in a politician of the stamp of Lord Derby the change from a very
+liberal conservatism to a very conservative liberalism involved little
+real modification of opinion, it necessarily involved some change of
+attitude, and on some questions he spoke with a freedom which would have
+been impossible as a member of the Conservative party. On Church
+questions, for example, while strongly maintaining that the country was
+not ripe for the disestablishment of the Church in England, he declared
+that in his opinion the exclusive alliance of one religious denomination
+among many with the State could not be permanently maintained side by
+side with a democratic representation--that disestablishment and at
+least partial disendowment must ultimately come; that if the
+representatives of Scotland desired the disestablishment of their
+Church, it was not for Englishmen to oppose them; and that Wales had a
+strong claim to be separately dealt with. 'The Welsh people constitute
+in many respects a distinct nationality, and I do not see why we should
+refuse to Welsh loyalty what we have granted to Irish sedition.' On the
+subject of endowments indeed as early as 1875 his view was that of most
+moderate Liberals. 'To my mind, so far as right is concerned, the
+Legislature may do what it chooses in regard to any endowment, without
+injustice, provided only that the rights of living individuals are
+respected. How far it is politic to use that power is another matter....
+Respect the founder's object, but use your own discretion as to the
+means. If you don't do the first, you will have no new endowments. If
+you neglect the last, those which you have will be of no use.'[46] He
+maintained that the question of local government had in England become
+one of pressing importance, and that the administration of county
+affairs must be put into the hands of elective bodies. He would give
+those local parliaments very large power--but he most urgently insisted
+on the importance of one restriction. The new bodies must not be given
+an unlimited power of mortgaging the future. The gradual reduction of
+the National Debt had been for some years one of the chief aims of
+enlightened politicians, but all that had been done in this direction
+would be undone if, side by side with the National Debt, there grew up a
+municipal debt of perhaps equal amount. In this tendency to municipal
+extravagance he saw one of the gravest menaces to property. 'The growth
+of Socialism throughout Europe has followed very closely on the gigantic
+increase of national indebtedness during the present century, and men
+who begin to feel the pressure intolerable are apt to raise questions,
+more easily stated than solved, as to the right of any State to impose
+burdens in perpetuity for the benefit of one generation.' He urged that
+every local body which contracted a debt should be under a statutory
+obligation to provide for its repayment in fifty or sixty years at
+latest.
+
+The growth of municipal indebtedness; the excessive tendency to
+increase the functions of the State; the disaffection of Ireland and
+the contingency of an isolated and disloyal body of some eighty Irish
+representatives offering their services to any party which would
+consent to carry out their designs, appeared to Lord Derby the chief
+dangers of English domestic politics. The last danger was very
+speedily realised, and the sudden conversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home
+Rule produced one more change in the attitude of Lord Derby. On this
+question he had never flinched or wavered, and he at once took his
+place in the front rank of the Liberal Unionists, whom for some time
+he led in the House of Lords. I do not know that the Unionist case has
+ever been more powerfully put forward than in his speeches on the
+subject, and the eminently judicial character of his mind, and his
+entire freedom from all mere party bias, gave a special weight to his
+advocacy. With this exception he took little part in party politics
+during the last years of his life, but he devoted himself largely to
+social questions, and among other things served with great assiduity
+and ability on the Labour Commission. His last speech was delivered at
+Manchester on the unveiling of the statue of Mr. Bright in October
+1891. His last public work was that of presiding over the Labour
+Commission in May 1892. In the preceding year an attack of influenza,
+followed by a relapse, had shattered a health which had hitherto been
+robust. Other complications ensued, and he passed away at Knowsley on
+April 21, 1893, in his sixty-seventh year.
+
+The foregoing sketch will, I hope, have given a sufficient idea of his
+public character. Few men have made a greater sacrifice of ambition to
+a conscientious conviction than he did, when, rather than support a
+measure which might lead to war, he abandoned the Conservative
+Ministry in 1878. He was then the fully recognised successor of Lord
+Beaconsfield, and if he had adopted a different course he would in a
+short time have been, beyond all doubt, Prime Minister of England. On
+the whole, however, the severance from old friends cost him, I
+believe, far more than the sacrifice of his political prospects.
+Whatever he may have been in his youth, he was certainly not in mature
+life an ambitious man. With the great position he held in England the
+world had little to offer him, and the self-knowledge which was not
+the least of his many remarkable gifts showed him that party conflict
+was not the sphere in which Nature intended him to move. With many of
+the qualities of the highest statesmanship he wanted some necessary
+ingredients of a great statesman. He wanted the power of appealing to
+the imagination and moving the passions. He wanted more decision of
+character, more power of initiative, more capacity of bearing lightly
+the weight of a great responsibility. His belief that the House of
+Lords must always ultimately yield to the House of Commons aggravated
+a weakness of resolution which was deeply rooted in his nature. There
+were moments when his inveterate moderation tended to exasperate, and
+he was accused, not altogether without reason, of sometimes making
+admirable speeches, pointing out in the clearest terms all the evils
+and dangers of a measure, and then concluding by exhorting the House
+of Lords to vote for it, introducing mitigating amendments in
+Committee. The measures he treated in this way usually, as he had
+predicted, became law, but this was not the attitude of a great
+leader. During a considerable part of his career, like a very large
+proportion of moderate men in England, he was in the embarrassing
+position of agreeing substantially with the home policy of one party
+and with the foreign policy of the other. After the death of Lord
+Palmerston an element of passion was infused into public life which
+was very uncongenial to his temperament, and English politics passed
+into phases in which caution, character, judgment, and knowledge were
+less prized than brilliant strokes that appealed to the popular
+imagination, clever coalitions, a skilful barter of principles for
+votes. In spheres governed by such methods Lord Derby was very useful,
+but he was not likely to play a foremost part.
+
+To few men who have taken a conspicuous part in active politics was
+the excitement of such an existence so little necessary. Happy in his
+domestic life and in a companionship and sympathy which were
+all-sufficient to him, he was not less happy in the wide range of his
+interests and duties. The administration of his vast estate would have
+been more than sufficient to tax the energies of most men, and it
+was, I believe, universally acknowledged that it was admirably
+administered. In the everyday affairs of practical life he had no
+indecision, and he judged swiftly with the clearest of judgments.
+Nothing about him was more remarkable than the apparent ease and the
+absence of all hurry and confusion with which he could deal with many
+different forms of work. His study in its perfect neatness was more
+like a lady's boudoir than the workshop of a very busy man. _Ohne
+Hast, ohne Rast_, might have been his motto. He had much belief in the
+future of English land, and was not, I think, at all exempt from the
+great English landlord's foible of adding field to field. In the long
+period of agricultural depression it was easy for a rich man to do so.
+'In my experience,' he used to say, 'in nine cases out of ten it is
+Naboth who comes to Ahab and begs him to buy his vineyard.' Certainly
+no one had reason to complain, for there were few better or more
+popular landlords than Lord Derby. In many long walks with him through
+his property I was always struck with the evident pleasure with which
+he was welcomed by his people, the fulness of knowledge and the
+kindness of interest with which he inquired into the circumstances of
+every tenant. It is characteristic of him that only two days before
+his death he was giving instructions for building a hospital for the
+sick poor of Knowsley. I have known few men in whom the desire to make
+everyone about them happy was so strongly and so clearly marked. He
+was fond of looking minutely into the circumstances of men of
+different classes, and comparing their wants with their means, often
+with somewhat whimsical results. There was a tradesman who made
+regularly 5_l._ a week; who was accustomed every week to devote 2_l._
+to his household expenses, to lay by 2_l._, and to employ the
+remainder in getting drunk. He was, Lord Derby thought, the only man
+he had ever known who satisfied all his wants with 40 per cent. of his
+income, who always laid by 40 per cent., and who expended 20 per cent.
+on his pleasures.
+
+Outside his property Lord Derby had strong county interests. With
+perhaps the exception of Birmingham there is no part of England where
+a distinctive local patriotism is so intensely developed as in
+Lancashire, and Lord Derby in tastes and character was pre-eminently a
+Lancashire man, very proud of the greatness, and deeply concerned in
+the interests, of his county. In all the vicissitudes of his career,
+Liverpool, I believe, never wavered in its attachment to him. He
+contributed to the many charitable and philanthropic works with which
+he was concerned not only much money, but also--what in so rich a man
+was far more meritorious--an extraordinary amount of time and patient
+supervision. Among the many offices he accepted, was president of the
+Literary Fund for dispensing charity to needy authors, and on the
+committee of that charity I had, during many years, ample opportunity
+of observing how far he was from treating a presidential position as a
+sinecure. The regularity of his attendance, the constant attention he
+paid to every detail of the charity; the infinite pains which he would
+bestow upon obscure cases of distress, marked him out as a model
+president, and many of those whom our rules did not allow us to help
+were assisted by his bounty. He contributed with a large but
+discriminating generosity to many causes that were conspicuous in the
+eyes of the world, but his special bias was towards unostentatious
+and unobserved benevolence, and crowds of obscure men in obscure
+positions were assisted by him.
+
+Those who did not know him, and those who had come in merely casual
+contact with him, sometimes formed a false impression of his
+character. He had a great deal of natural shyness. He had very little
+of the gift of small talk. On occasions of mere show and in
+uncongenial atmospheres he was apt to be awkward and embarrassed, and
+when walking by himself he was extremely absent and quite capable of
+brushing against his oldest friend with a complete unconsciousness of
+his presence. These traits sometimes gave rise to natural
+misinterpretations, which a fuller knowledge always dispelled. No one
+who knew Lord Derby could fail to feel that his nature was one of the
+most genuine and transparent simplicity, singularly free from all
+tinge of arrogance, superciliousness, and acrimony. His personal
+tastes were exceedingly simple, and there was not a particle of
+ostentation in his character. He delighted in a quiet country life and
+had a strong sense of natural beauty. In his youth he had been an
+ardent mountaineer, and in later life he had few greater pleasures
+than to watch the growth of his plantations. He calculated that he had
+planted in his lifetime about two million of trees.
+
+He was among the best-read men I have ever known. His private library
+was one of the finest in England, and he took a keen interest in it. A
+love of sumptuous, large-paper editions was indeed one of the very few
+luxuries in which from mere personal taste he greatly indulged. Like
+all men of literary tastes he had his limitations. German was a closed
+book to him. Theology and metaphysics were conspicuous by their
+absence. He was certainly not drawn to the mystical, the
+unintelligible, or the morbid, either in imaginative or speculative
+literature, and although he was a great lover and great buyer of
+water-colour pictures, I do not think he had much real sense or
+knowledge of art. But he had read very extensively and with great
+profit and discrimination in many widely different fields, and his
+memory was unusually retentive. He was an excellent literary critic,
+and if clear thought and accurate knowledge were what he most valued,
+it would be a complete mistake to suppose that he was insensible to
+the poetic and imaginative side of literature. He could repeat long
+passages from 'Childe Harold,' and I can well remember the delight
+which he took in the picturesque narrative of Mr. Froude, and in the
+fiery verses of Sir Alfred Lyall.
+
+He was one of the kindest and most gracious of hosts, and his genuine
+unforced good nature and good humour drew to him many whose tastes and
+sympathies were widely different from his own. Nature certainly never
+intended him for a sportsman, but he preserved game extensively and
+until the last years of his life usually went out with his guests. 'I
+rather like shooting,' he once said to me, 'it prevents the necessity
+of general conversation.' Among kindred spirits, however, his own
+conversation was eminently attractive. His wide knowledge both of
+books and men, his vast range of political anecdote, his experience of
+so many statesmen and offices and departments of life, made it
+singularly instructive. He was a very shrewd, and at the same time a
+very kind, judge of character; and he had a power, which is certainly
+not common, of fully appreciating merits that are allied with great
+and manifest defects. He had much quaint, dry humour, and a great
+happiness of expression; and one always felt that his opinions were
+genuinely thought out--that they were voices and not echoes. His
+private conversation had the quality that I have noticed in his
+public speeches, of grasping at once the essential elements of a
+question and disencumbering it from accessories and details. It is one
+of the qualities that add most to the charm of conversation, and, with
+the exception of Lord Russell, I do not think I have met with anyone
+who possessed it to a greater degree than Lord Derby. He delighted in
+long walks with one or two friends, and he might be seen to great
+advantage in some small dining-clubs which play a larger part than is
+generally recognised in the best English social life of our time. He
+had been a member of Grillion's for thirty-seven years, but the
+society to which he was most attached was, I think, 'The Club' which
+was founded by Johnson and Reynolds. During the nineteen years of
+which I can speak from personal experience, he was an almost constant
+attendant, and certainly no other member enjoyed a greater popularity
+in it, or contributed more largely to its charm.
+
+He hated cant of all kinds, and had a great distrust of ostentatious
+professions of lofty motives. He disliked, I think greatly, the habit
+of dragging sacred names into party speeches, and attributing every
+party manoeuvre to a solemn sense of duty. Language of this kind
+will never be found in his speeches, but I have known few men who were
+governed through life more steadily though more unobtrusively by a
+sense of duty. He always tried to look facts in the face, and to
+promote in the many spheres which he could influence the real
+happiness of men. There have been statesmen among his contemporaries
+of greater power and of more brilliant achievement. There has been, I
+believe, no statesman of sounder judgment and more disinterested
+patriotism; there have been very few whose departure has left a void
+in so many spheres.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[43] See, on this subject, Cook's _Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal
+War_, pp. 260-265.
+
+[44] See Westlake's _L'Angleterre et les Republiques Boers_, pp. 30-31.
+
+[45] See the table of revenue and expenditure in Fitzpatrick's
+_Transvaal from Within_, p. 71.
+
+[46] Inaugural address at Edinburgh University.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY REEVE, C.B., F.S.A., D.C.L.
+
+
+Although it has never been the custom of the 'Edinburgh Review' to
+withdraw the veil of anonymity from its writers and its
+administration, it would be mere affectation to suffer it to appear
+before the public without some allusion to the great editor whom we
+have just lost,[47] and who for forty years has watched with
+indefatigable care over its pages.
+
+The career of Mr. Henry Reeve is perhaps the most striking
+illustration in our time of how little in English life influence is
+measured by notoriety. To the outer world his name was but little
+known. He is remembered as the translator of Tocqueville, as the
+editor of the 'Greville Memoirs,' as the author of a not quite
+forgotten book on Royal and Republican France, showing much knowledge
+of French literature and politics; as the holder during fifty years of
+the respectable, but not very prominent, post of Registrar of the
+Privy Council. To those who have a more intimate knowledge of the
+political and literary life of England, it is well known that during
+nearly the whole of his long life he was a powerful and living force
+in English literature; that few men of his time have filled a larger
+place in some of the most select circles of English social life; and
+that he exercised during many years a political influence such as
+rarely falls to the lot of any Englishman outside Parliament, or even
+outside the Cabinet.
+
+He was born at Norwich in 1813, and brought up in a highly cultivated,
+and even brilliant, literary circle. His father, Dr. Reeve, was one of
+the earliest contributors to the 'Edinburgh Review.' The Austins, the
+Opies, the Taylors, and the Aldersons were closely related to him, and
+he is said to have been indebted to his gifted aunt, Sarah Austin, for
+his appointment in the Privy Council. The family income was not large,
+and a great part of Mr. Reeve's education took place on the Continent,
+chiefly at Geneva and Munich. He went with excellent introductions,
+and the years he spent abroad were abundantly fruitful. He learned
+German so well that he was at one time a contributor to a German
+periodical. He was one of the rare Englishmen who spoke French almost
+like a Frenchman, and at a very early age he formed friendships with
+several eminent French writers. His translation of the 'Democracy in
+America,' by Tocqueville, which appeared in 1835, strengthened his
+hold on French society. Two years later he obtained the appointment in
+the Privy Council, which he held until 1887. It was in this office
+that he became the colleague and fast friend of Charles Greville, who
+on his death-bed entrusted him with the publication of his 'Memoirs.'
+
+Mr. Reeve had now obtained an assured income and a steady occupation,
+but it was far from satisfying his desire for work. He became a
+contributor, and very soon a leading contributor, to the 'Times,'
+while his close and confidential intercourse with Mr. Delane gave him
+a considerable voice in its management. The penny newspaper was still
+unborn, and the 'Times' at this period was the undisputed monarch of
+the Press, and exercised an influence over public opinion, both in
+England and on the Continent, such as no existing paper can be said
+to possess. It is, we believe, no exaggeration to say that for the
+space of fifteen years nearly every article that appeared in its
+columns on foreign politics was written by Mr. Reeve, and the period
+during which he wrote for it included the year 1848, when foreign
+politics had the most transcendent importance.
+
+The great political influence which he at this time exercised
+naturally drew him into close connection with many of the chief
+statesmen of his time. With Lord Clarendon especially his friendship
+was close and confidential, and he received from that statesman almost
+weekly letters during his viceroyalty in Ireland and during others of
+the more critical periods of his career. In France, Mr. Reeve's
+connections were scarcely less numerous than in England. Guizot,
+Thiers, Cousin, Tocqueville, Villemain, Circourt--in fact, nearly all
+the leading figures in French literature and politics during the reign
+of Louis Philippe were among his friends or correspondents. He was at
+all times singularly international in his sympathies and friendships,
+and he appears to have been more than once made the channel of
+confidential communications between English and French statesmen.
+
+It was a task for which he was eminently suited. The qualities which
+most impressed all who came into close communication with him were the
+strength, swiftness, and soundness of his judgment, and his unfailing
+tact and discretion in dealing with delicate questions. He was
+eminently a man of the world, and had quite as much knowledge of men
+as of books. Probably few men of his time have been so frequently and
+so variously consulted. He always spoke with confidence and authority,
+and his clear, keen-cut, decisive sentences, a certain stateliness of
+manner which did not so much claim as assume ascendancy, and a
+somewhat elaborate formality of courtesy which was very efficacious in
+repelling intruders, sometimes concealed from strangers the softer
+side of his character. But those who knew him well soon learnt to
+recognise the genuine kindliness of his nature, his remarkable skill
+in avoiding friction, and the rare steadiness of his friendships.
+
+One great source of his influence was the just belief in his complete
+independence and disinterestedness. For a very able man his ambition
+was singularly moderate. As he once said, he had made it his object
+throughout life only to aim at things which were well within his
+power. He had very little respect for the judgment of the multitude,
+and he cared nothing for notoriety and not much for dignities. A
+moderate competence, congenial work, a sphere of wide and genuine
+influence, a close and intimate friendship with a large proportion of
+the guiding spirits of his time, were the things he really valued, and
+all these he fully attained. He had great conversational powers, which
+never degenerated into monologue, a singularly equable, happy, and
+sanguine temperament, and a keen delight in cultivated society. These
+characteristics showed conspicuously in two small and very select
+dining-clubs which have included most of the distinguished English
+statesmen and men of letters of the century. He became a member of the
+Literary Society in 1857 and of Dr. Johnson's Club in 1861, and it is
+a remarkable evidence of the appreciation of his social tact that both
+bodies speedily selected him as their treasurer. He held that position
+in 'The Club' from 1868 till within a year of his death, when failing
+health and absence from London obliged him to relinquish it. The
+French Institute elected him 'Correspondant' in 1863 and Associated
+Member in 1888, in which latter dignity he succeeded Sir Henry Maine.
+In 1869 the University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree
+of D.C.L.
+
+It was in 1855, on the death of Sir George Cornewall Lewis, that he
+assumed the editorship of the 'Edinburgh Review' which he retained
+till the day of his death. Both on the political and the literary side
+he was in full harmony with its traditions. His rare and minute
+knowledge of recent English and foreign political history; his vast
+fund of political anecdote; his personal acquaintance with so many of
+the chief actors on the political scene, both in England and France,
+gave a great weight and authority to his judgments, and his mind was
+essentially of the Whig cast. He was a genuine Liberal of the school
+of Russell, Palmerston, Clarendon, and Cornewall Lewis. It was a sober
+and tolerant Liberalism, rooted in the traditions of the past, and
+deeply attached to the historical elements in the Constitution. The
+dislike and distrust with which he had always viewed the progress of
+democracy deepened with age, and it was his firm conviction that it
+could never become the permanent basis of good government. Like most
+men of his type of thought and character, he was strongly repelled by
+the later career of Mr. Gladstone, and the Home Rule policy at last
+severed him definitely from the bulk of the Liberal party. From this
+time the present Duke of Devonshire was the leader of his party.
+
+His literary judgments had much analogy to his political ones. His
+leanings were all towards the old standards of thought and style. He
+had been formed in the school of Macaulay and Milman, and of the great
+French writers under Louis Philippe. Sober thought, clear reasoning,
+solid scholarship, a transparent, vivid, and restrained style were the
+literary qualities he most appreciated. He was a great purist,
+inexorably hostile to a new word. In philosophy he was a devoted
+disciple of Kant, and his decided orthodoxy in religious belief
+affected many of his judgments. He could not appreciate Carlyle; he
+looked with much distrust on Darwinism and the philosophy of Herbert
+Spencer and he had very little patience with some of the moral and
+intellectual extravagances of modern literature. But, according to his
+own standards and in the wide range of his own subjects, his literary
+judgment was eminently sound, and he was quick and generous in
+recognising rising eminence. In at least one case the first
+considerable recognition of a prominent historian was an article in
+the 'Edinburgh Review' from his pen.
+
+He had a strong sense of the responsibility of an editor, and
+especially of the editor of a Review of unsigned articles. No article
+appeared which he did not carefully consider. His powerful
+individuality was deeply stamped upon the Review, and he carefully
+maintained its unity and consistency of sentiments. It was one of the
+chief occupations and pleasures of his closing days, and the very last
+letter he dictated referred to it.
+
+Time, as might be expected, had greatly thinned the circle of his
+friends. Of the France which he knew so well scarcely anything
+remained, but his old friend and senior Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire
+visited him at Christ Church, and he kept up to the end a warm
+friendship with the Duc d'Aumale. He spent his eightieth birthday at
+Chantilly, and until the very last year of his life he was never
+absent when the Duke dined at 'The Club.' In Lord Derby he lost the
+statesman with whom in his later years he was most closely connected
+by private friendship and political sympathy, while the death of Lady
+Stanley of Alderley deprived him of an attached and lifelong friend.
+
+Growing infirmities prevented him in his latter days from mixing much
+in general society in London, but his life was brightened by all that
+loving companionship could give; his mental powers were unfaded, and
+he could still enjoy the society of younger friends. He looked forward
+to the end with a perfect and a most characteristic calm, without fear
+and without regret. It was the placid close of a long, dignified, and
+useful life.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[47] Mr. Reeve died October 21, 1895.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D., DEAN OF ST. PAUL'S.
+
+
+The great prominence which the High Church movement has assumed in the
+ecclesiastical history of England during the second and third quarters
+of the nineteenth century, and the extraordinary success with which it
+has permeated the Established Church by its influence, have led some
+writers to exaggerate not a little the place which it occupied in the
+general intellectual development of the time. In the universities, it
+is true, it long exercised an extraordinary influence, and Mr.
+Gladstone, who was by far the most remarkable layman whom it
+profoundly influenced, was accustomed to say that for at least a
+generation almost the whole of the best intellect of Oxford was
+controlled by it. It possessed in Newman a writer of most striking and
+undoubted genius. In an age remarkable for brilliancy of style he was
+one of the greatest masters of English prose. His power of drawing
+subtle distinctions and pursuing long trains of subtle reasoning made
+him one of the most skilful of controversialists, and he had a great
+insight into spiritual cravings and an admirable gift of interpreting
+and appealing to many forms of religious emotion. But though he was a
+man of rare, delicate, and most seductive genius, we have sometimes
+doubted whether any of his books are destined to take a permanent and
+considerable place in English literature. He was not a great scholar,
+or an original and independent thinker. Dealing with questions
+inseparably connected with historical evidence, he had neither the
+judicial spirit nor the firm grasp of a real historian, and he had
+very little skill in measuring probabilities and degrees of evidence.
+He had a manifest incapacity, which was quite as much moral as
+intellectual, for looking facts in the face and pursuing trains of
+thought to unwelcome conclusions. He often took refuge from them in
+clouds of casuistry. The scepticism which was a marked feature of his
+intellect allied itself closely with credulity, for it was directed
+against reason itself; and though he has expressed in admirable
+language many true and beautiful thoughts, the glamour of his style
+too often concealed much weakness and uncertainty of judgment and much
+sophistry in argument.
+
+Many of those who co-operated with him were men of great learning and
+distinguished ability. No one will question the patristic knowledge of
+Pusey, the metaphysical acumen of Ward, the genuine vein of religious
+poetry in Keble and Faber, the wide accomplishments and scholarly
+criticism of Church. But on the whole the broad stream of English
+thought has gone in other directions. In politics the Oxford movement
+had brilliant representatives in Gladstone and Selborne, but the ideal
+of the relations of Church and State and the ideal of education to
+which the Oxford school aspired, have been absolutely discarded. The
+universities have been secularised. The Irish Established Church,
+which it was one of the first objects of the party to defend, has been
+abolished by Gladstone himself, and although the English Established
+Church retains its hold on the affections of the nation, it is
+defended by its most skilful supporters on very different grounds and
+by very different arguments from those which were put forward by the
+Oxford divines. Among the foremost names in lay literature during the
+fifty years we are considering, it is curious to observe how few were
+even touched by the movement. Froude is an exception, but he speedily
+repudiated it. The mediaeval sympathies that were sometimes shown by
+Ruskin sprang from a wholly different source. Macaulay, Carlyle,
+Hallam, Grote, Mill, Buckle, Tennyson, Browning, and the great
+novelists, from Dickens to George Eliot, all wrote very much as they
+might have written if the movement had never existed. An unusual
+proportion of the best intellect of England passed into the fields of
+physical science, and the methods of reasoning and habits of thought
+which they inculcated were wholly out of harmony with the school of
+Newman, while both geology and Darwinism have made serious incursions
+into long-cherished beliefs. Even in the Church itself, though the
+High Church movement was stronger than any other, great deductions
+have to be made. The school of independent Biblical criticism, which
+in various degrees has come to be generally accepted, certainly owed
+nothing to it, and several of the most illustrious Churchmen of this
+period were wholly alien to it. Thirlwall and Merivale were
+conspicuous examples, but they devoted themselves chiefly to great
+works of secular history. Arnold--who was one of the strongest
+personal influences of his age, and whose influence was both
+perpetuated and widened by Dean Stanley--and Whately, who was one of
+the most independent and original thinkers of the nineteenth century,
+were strongly antagonistic. In the field of ecclesiastical history it
+might have been expected that a school which was at once so scholarly
+and so wedded to tradition would have been pre-eminent, but no
+ecclesiastical histories which England has produced can, on the whole,
+be placed on as high a level as those which were written by the great
+Broad Church divine whose name stands at the head of this article.
+
+Milman was, indeed, a man well deserving of commemoration on account
+of the works which he produced, yet it is perhaps not too much to say
+that to those among whom he lived the man seemed even greater than his
+works. For many years he was a central and most popular figure in the
+best English literary society, and he reckoned most of the leading
+intellects of his day among his friends. He was in an extraordinary
+degree many-sided, both in his knowledge and his sympathies. He was an
+admirable critic, and the eminent sanity of his judgment, as well as
+the eminent kindness of his nature, combined with a great charm both
+of manner and of conversation. Few men of his time had more friends,
+and were more admired, consulted, and loved.
+
+Mr. Arthur Milman has sketched his father's life in one short
+volume,[48] written in excellent English and with uniformly good
+taste. We have read it with much interest, yet in laying it down it is
+impossible not to be sensible how much of the personal charm which was
+so conspicuous in its subject has passed beyond recovery. More than
+thirty years have gone by since the old Dean was laid in his grave,
+and but few of those who knew him intimately survive. He appears to
+have kept no journal. He wrote nothing autobiographical, and he had a
+strong sense of the chasm that should separate private from public
+life. It was wholly contrary to his unegotistical nature to make the
+great public the confidant of his domestic affairs or of his inner
+feelings, and he was deeply sensible of the injustice which is so
+often done by biographers in printing unguarded, unqualified opinions
+and judgments, expressed in the freedom of private correspondence. He
+acted sternly on this view. Many of the foremost men in England were
+among his correspondents, but he deliberately burnt their letters. 'I
+could never bear,' we have heard him say, 'that what was written to me
+by dear friends in the most unreserved and absolute confidence should,
+through my fault, be one day dragged before the public.' This
+reticence and this strong feeling of the sanctity of friendship and
+private correspondence, which is now becoming very rare, was one of
+his most characteristic traits, but it has necessarily deprived his
+biography of many elements of interest.
+
+He was the youngest son of Sir Francis Milman, the well-known
+physician of George III. He was born in 1791, and educated at Eton and
+Oxford, where he soon distinguished himself as one of the most
+brilliant of students. He won the Newdigate in 1812, the Chancellor's
+prize for Latin verse in 1813, the prize for English and Latin essays
+in 1816. He obtained a first class in classics, and in 1815 he was
+elected a Fellow of his college. He was ordained in the following
+year, and a year later Lord Eldon, who was then Chancellor of the
+university, nominated him to the vicarage of St. Mary at Reading,
+where he spent eighteen happy and fruitful years. Like most young and
+brilliant men, he first turned to verse, and for several years he
+poured out in rapid succession a number of dramas and poems which have
+been collected in three substantial volumes. The tragedy of 'Fazio'
+was written when he was still at Oxford, and it was speedily followed
+by a long and ambitious epic poem called 'Samor, Lord of the Bright
+City'; by three elaborate sacred dramas, the 'Fall of Jerusalem,' the
+'Martyr of Antioch,' and 'Belshazzar'; and by an historical tragedy on
+'Anne Boleyn,' as well as by a few minor poems.
+
+Some of these works had considerable popularity. 'Fazio' for many
+years held its place on the stage. Byron, in one of his letters to
+Rogers, speaks of its 'great and deserved success' when it was brought
+out at Covent Garden. Its heroine was a favourite part of Miss O'Neil
+and of Fanny Kemble. It was translated into Italian by Del Ongaro for
+Ristori, who acted it with admirable power, and there was also a
+French translation or adaptation in which Mademoiselle Mars took part.
+The 'Fall of Jerusalem' was never intended for the stage, but it had a
+great literary success. Murray, who had given only a hundred and fifty
+guineas for 'Fazio,' gave five hundred for the 'Fall of Jerusalem,'
+and he gave the same sum both for the 'Martyr of Antioch' and for
+'Belshazzar,' which succeeded it. Neither of these, however, proved as
+popular as the 'Fall of Jerusalem,' but the 'Martyr of Antioch'
+contains that noble funeral ode beginning 'Brother, thou art gone
+before us, and thy saintly soul is flown,' which is familiar to
+numbers who are probably not aware of its authorship. It is worthy of
+notice that as recently as 1880 Sir Arthur Sullivan set the 'Martyr of
+Antioch' to music and brought it out at the Leeds Festival, where it
+achieved an immediate and brilliant success, and was frequently
+performed.[49] On the other hand, 'Samor' and 'Anne Boleyn' were
+almost absolute failures, and, on the whole, the longer poems of
+Milman have not retained their popularity, and probably now rarely
+find a reader.
+
+Those who turn to them will certainly be struck by the command of
+language and metre they display. It was shown both in rhyme and in
+blank verse. Many fine odes are scattered through them, and in the
+octo-syllabic verse Milman always appears to us peculiarly happy. But
+his poetry, like most of the poetry that was written under the Byronic
+influence, was rather the poetry of rhetoric than of imagination, and
+it wanted both the intensity and the concentration of the great
+master. Stately, sonorous, fluent, unfailingly lucid, it was too
+lengthy and too artificial, and Lockhart was not wholly wrong in
+pronouncing that it showed 'fine talents, but no genius,' and in
+urging that prose rather than poetry was the vehicle in which its
+author was destined to succeed. In addition, however, to the funeral
+ode to which we have referred, Milman has written many hymns, and some
+of these are of singular beauty. They appeared originally in the
+collection of that other great hymn-writer, Bishop Heber, who was one
+of his dearest friends, and one of the men to whose memory he looked
+back with the fondest affection. The Good Friday hymn, 'Bound upon th'
+accursed tree,' the Palm Sunday hymn, 'Ride on, ride on in majesty,'
+and perhaps still more that exquisitely pathetic hymn (so often
+misprinted in modern hymn-books) beginning
+
+    When our heads are bowed with woe,
+    When our bitter tears o'erflow,
+
+have long since taken their permanent place in devotional literature.
+
+In another and very different field of poetry also he greatly
+excelled. He was an admirable example of that highly finished and
+fastidious classical scholarship which is, or was, the pride of our
+great public schools, and he took great pleasure in translations from
+the classics. He translated into verse the 'Agamemnon' of AEschylus,
+and the 'Bacchanals' of Euripides, and also a great number of small
+and much less known poems. He held the professorship of poetry at
+Oxford from 1821 to 1831, and as his lectures, according to the custom
+which then prevailed, were delivered in Latin, he had the happy
+thought of diversifying them by English metrical translations of the
+different poems he treated. They range over a wide field of obscure
+Greek poets, as well as of epitaphs, votive inscriptions, and
+inscriptions relating to the fine arts, and in addition to these there
+are translations from Sanscrit poetry--a branch of knowledge which was
+then very little cultivated, and to which Milman was greatly
+attracted. These poems the author published in 1865, but the lectures
+in which they were produced he committed to the flames. They had, in
+his opinion, lost their value through the subsequent publication of
+the works on the history of Greek literature by Bode, Ulrici, Otfried
+Mueller, and Mure.
+
+In prose his pen was exceedingly active. In 1820 he began his long
+connection with the 'Quarterly Review,' which continued, with
+occasional intervals, through more than forty years. His articles
+extended over a great variety of subjects, but most of them were
+essentially reviews and essentially critical. The fact that he was
+both a poet and an accomplished critic of verse caused some persons to
+ascribe to him the authorship of two articles which had an unhappy
+reputation--the criticism which was falsely supposed to have hastened
+the death of Keats, and the attack upon the 'Alastor' of Shelley, a
+poet for whom Milman had a special admiration. It is now well known
+that neither of these articles was by him, but it is characteristic of
+his loyalty to his colleagues that he never disclaimed the authorship.
+This loyalty was indeed not less conspicuous in his nature than the
+singular kindness of disposition with which he ever shrank from giving
+pain. After his death a few of his many essays in the 'Quarterly' were
+collected in one volume. Among them there is an admirable account of
+Erasmus, with whom in mental characteristics he had considerable
+affinity.
+
+In 1829 appeared his first historical work, the 'History of the Jews,'
+a work which excited a violent storm of theological indignation. The
+crime of Milman was that he applied to Jewish history the usual canons
+of historical criticism--sifting evidence, discriminating between
+documents, pointing out the parallelisms between Jewish conditions and
+those of other Oriental nations, and attempting to separate in the
+sacred writings the parts which were essential and revealed from those
+which were merely human and fallible. In a remarkable preface to a
+revised and enlarged edition of this work, which was published thirty
+years later, he laid down very clearly the principles that had guided
+him. The Jewish writers, in his opinion, were 'men of their age and
+country who, as they spoke the language, so they thought the thoughts
+of their nation and their time.... They had no special knowledge on
+any subject but moral and religious truth to distinguish them from
+other men, and were as fallible as others on all questions of science,
+and even of history, extraneous to their religious teaching.... Their
+one paramount object being instruction and enlightenment in religion,
+they left their hearers uninstructed and unenlightened as before in
+other things.... In all other respects society, civilisation,
+developed itself according to its usual laws. The Hebrew in the
+wilderness, excepting as far as the law modified his manners and
+habits, was an Arab of the desert. Abraham, except in his worship and
+intercourse with the one true God, was a nomad Sheik.... The moral and
+religious truth, and this alone, I apprehend, is "the word of God"
+contained in the sacred writings.'
+
+It must also, he contended, be always remembered that the Semitic
+records are of an 'essentially Oriental, figurative, poetical cast,'
+and that it is therefore wholly erroneous to suppose that every word
+can be construed with the precision of an Act of Parliament or of a
+simple modern historical narrative.
+
+His attitude towards the miraculous was carefully defined. He observed
+the absolute impossibility of evading the conclusion that the Jewish
+writers, whether eye-witnesses or not, implicitly believed in 'the
+supernaturalism, the divine or miraculous agency almost throughout the
+older history of the Jews,' and that it is 'an integral, inseparable
+part of the narrative.' Sometimes it is possible 'with more or less
+probability to detect the naked fact which may lie beneath the
+imaginative or marvellous language in which it is recorded; but even
+in these cases the solution can be hardly more than conjectural.' In
+other cases 'the supernatural so entirely predominates and is so of
+the intimate essence of the transaction that the facts and the
+interpretation must be accepted together or rejected together.' In
+such cases it is the duty of the historian simply 'to relate the facts
+as recorded, to adduce his authorities, and to abstain from all
+explanation for which he has no ground.'
+
+The distinction between the providential and the strictly miraculous
+appears to him impossible to draw. 'Belief in Divine Providence, in
+the agency of God as the Prime Mover in the Natural world as in the
+mind of Man, is an inseparable part of religion. There can be no
+religion without it.' But in numerous cases, to distinguish between
+the simply providential and the strictly miraculous implies a
+knowledge of the working of natural causes greater than we possess;
+and in certain stages of civilisation, and very eminently in the
+Jewish mind, there is a marked tendency to suppress secondary causes,
+and to attribute not only the more extraordinary but also the common
+events of life to direct divine agency. The possibility and the
+reality of the miraculous he emphatically asserts.
+
+'The palmary miracle of all, the Resurrection, stands entirely by
+itself. Every attempt to resolve it into a natural event, a delusion
+or hallucination in the minds of the disciples, the eye-witnesses and
+death-defying witnesses to its truth, or to treat it as an allegory or
+figure of speech, is to me a signal failure. It must be accepted as
+the keystone--for such it is--and seal to the great Christian doctrine
+of a future life, as a historical fact, or rejected as a baseless
+fable.'
+
+But great numbers of what were deemed miracles may be explained by
+natural causes, by figurative modes of expression which were common in
+Oriental nations, by the tendency of the human mind to embellish or
+exaggerate surprising facts, or invent supernatural causes for what it
+is unable to explain, by the retrospective imagination which seeks to
+dignify the distant past with a supernatural halo. The early annals of
+all nations are strewn with pretended miracles which no one will now
+maintain, and Milman shows in a powerful passage how the idea of the
+miraculous has been steadily contracting and receding; how dangerous
+it is to base the defence of Christianity on the evidence of miracles
+rather than on appeals to the conscience, the moral sense, the innate
+religiousness, the deep spiritual cravings of human nature.
+
+Such views, though now sufficiently commonplace, seemed very novel in
+England when Milman wrote. Dean Stanley described his work as 'the
+first decisive inroad of German theology into England; the first
+palpable indication that the Bible could be studied like another book;
+that the characters and events of sacred history could be treated at
+once critically and reverently.' But though Milman was very well
+acquainted with German theology, he resented the notion that he was
+its interpreter or representative. He contended that in restricting
+the province of inspiration to the direct inculcation of religious
+truth he was following a sound Anglican tradition. He quoted the
+authority of Paley and Warburton, of Tillotson and Secker. In such
+principles of interpretation he said he had found 'a safeguard during
+a long and not unreflective life against the difficulties arising out
+of the philosophical and historical researches of his time.' They had
+enabled him 'to follow out all the marvellous discoveries of science,
+and all those hardly less marvellous, if less certain, conclusions of
+historical, ethnological, linguistic criticism, in the serene
+confidence that they are utterly irrelevant to the truth of
+Christianity.' 'If on such subjects,' he concluded, 'some solid ground
+be not found on which highly educated, reflective, reading, reasoning
+men may find firm footing, I can foresee nothing but a wide, a
+widening--I fear, an irreparable--breach between the thought and the
+religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing, truly Catholic
+Christianity which knows what is essential to religion, what is
+temporary and extraneous to it, may defy the world.'
+
+These words are taken from the later preface to which we have
+referred. In the same preface, and also in his 'History of
+Christianity,' may be found some interesting remarks on the German
+school of Biblical criticism, the greater portion of which has arisen
+since the original publication of the 'History of the Jews.' In many
+of its conclusions he had anticipated it, and he was quite as sensible
+as the German writers of the hopelessness of seeking scientific
+revelations in the Biblical narrative; of the worthlessness of most of
+the common schemes for reconciling science and theology; of the
+untrustworthy character of Jewish chronology and Jewish figures; of
+the grave doubts that hang over the authorship and the date of some of
+the books; of the necessity of making full allowance, when reading
+them, for human fallibility and inaccuracy. At the same time, his
+admiration for the German critics was by no means unqualified. While
+fully admitting their extraordinary learning, industry, and ingenuity,
+he complained that their too common infirmity was 'a passion for
+making history without historical materials,' basing the most dogmatic
+and positive statements upon faint indications, or upon ingenious
+conjectures that could not legitimately go beyond a very low degree of
+probability. The assurance with which these writers undertook by
+internal evidence to decompose ancient documents, assigning each
+paragraph to an independent source; the decisive weight they were
+accustomed to give to slight improbabilities or coincidences, and to
+small variations of style and phraseology; the confidence with which
+they put forward solutions or conjectures which, however ingenious or
+plausible, were based on no external evidence as if they were proved
+facts, appeared to him profoundly unhistorical.
+
+It must have been somewhat irritating to one who clung so closely to
+University life, and who had been justly regarded as one of the most
+brilliant of Oxford scholars, to find that his own University was
+prominent in the condemnation of the 'History of the Jews.' Only two
+years before he had preached with general approbation the Bampton
+Lectures in defence of Christianity. His new work was again and again
+condemned from the University pulpits, and among others by the
+Margaret Professor of Divinity and by the Hulsean lecturer for 1832.
+The clamour was naturally taken up in many other quarters, and
+especially by the religious newspapers. It was noticed that 'Milman's
+History' appeared in the window of Carlisle, the infidel bookseller.
+
+'I only wish,' wrote Milman, when the fact was brought to his notice,
+'all Carlisle's customers would read it. A noble lord once wrote to
+the bishop of a certain diocese to complain that a baronet who lived
+in the same parish brought his mistress to church, which sorely
+shocked his regular family. The bishop gravely assured him that he was
+very glad to hear that Sir ---- brought his naughty lady to church,
+and hoped that she would profit by what she heard there and amend her
+ways. So say I of Carlisle's customers.'[50]
+
+The opinions expressed in this, as in his later works, no doubt in
+some degree obstructed the promotion of Milman in the Church, but he
+had no reason to regret it. Of all men, he once said, he thought he
+owed most to Bishop Blomfield, for there was once a question of
+offering him a bishopric, and it was a remonstrance of the Bishop of
+London that prevented it. 'I am _afraid_,' he said, 'that if it had
+been offered me I should have accepted it, and I should then never
+have written my "Latin Christianity."' But, though he escaped the fate
+which has cut short the best work of more than one distinguished
+historian, his conspicuous position among the scholars and writers in
+the Church was widely recognised, and he was soon transferred from a
+provincial town to a central position in the Metropolis. In 1835 Sir
+Robert Peel made him Rector of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and
+Prebendary in the Abbey. Though continuing without intermission his
+historical work, he appears to have discharged with exemplary vigour
+the duties of a large and poor parish until 1849, when Lord John
+Russell appointed him Dean of St. Paul's. The position was exactly
+suited to him. It was one of much dignity, but also of much leisure,
+and it gave him ample opportunities of pursuing the studies which were
+the true work of his life.
+
+The great subject of the history of Christianity was, indeed,
+continually before him. Among other things, he studied minutely both
+the text and the authorities of Gibbon, for whom he had a deep and
+growing admiration. An excellent edition of Gibbon was one of the
+first results. Milman's notes have been included in Smith's later
+edition, and, though a large proportion of them were naturally
+somewhat controversial, being devoted to refuting some of the
+conclusions of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, it is impossible
+to read them without recognising the candour as well as the learning
+and the acumen of the critic. Few things that Milman has written are
+finer than the preface in which, in ten or twelve masterly pages, he
+sums up his estimate of his great predecessor.
+
+The three volumes of the 'History of Christianity,' dealing with its
+early history up to the period of the abolition of Paganism in the
+Roman Empire, appeared in 1840, and they were followed by the six
+large volumes of the 'History of Latin Christianity,' carrying the
+history of the Western Church to the end of the Pontificate of
+Nicholas V. in 1455. This great work was published in two
+instalments--the first three volumes in 1854, and the remaining three
+in the following year--and it gave its author indisputably the first
+place among the ecclesiastical historians of England and a high place
+among the historians of the nineteenth century. He possessed, indeed,
+in an eminent degree some of the qualities that are most rare, and at
+the same time most valuable, in ecclesiastical history. A large
+proportion of the most learned ecclesiastical historians have been men
+who have devoted their whole lives to this single department of
+knowledge, who derived from it all their measures of probability and
+canons of criticism, and who, treating it as an isolated and mainly
+supernatural thing, have taken very little account of the intellectual
+and political secular influences that have largely shaped its course.
+Most of them also have been men who undertook their task with
+convictions and habits of thought that were absolutely incompatible
+with real independence and impartiality of judgment in estimating
+either the events or the characters they described. Milman was wholly
+free from these defects. His wide knowledge, his cool, critical,
+admirably trained judgment, were never better shown than in the many
+pages in which he has pointed out the analogies or resemblances
+between Jewish and other Oriental beliefs; the manner in which
+national characteristics or secular intellectual tendencies affected
+theological types; the countless modifications in belief or practice
+which grew up, as the Church accommodated itself to the conditions of
+successive ages and entered into alliance or conflict with different
+political systems; the many indirect, subtle, far-reaching ways in
+which the world and the Church interacted upon each other in all the
+great departments of speculation, art, industry, social and political
+life. A certain aloofness and coldness of judgment in dealing with
+sacred subjects was the reproach which was most frequently brought
+against him. As he himself said, he wrote rather as an historian than
+a religious instructor, and he dealt with his subject chiefly in its
+temporal, social, and political aspects. Justice and impartiality of
+judgment to friend and foe he deemed one of the first moral duties of
+an historian, and Dean Church was not wrong in ascribing to him a
+quite 'unusual combination of the strongest feeling about right and
+wrong with the largest equity.' 'What a delightful book, so tolerant
+of the intolerant!' was his characteristic eulogy of the work of
+another writer, and it truly reflects the turn of his own mind.
+Provost Hawtrey, who was no mean judge of men, said, after an intimacy
+of nearly fifty years, that he had never known a man who possessed in
+a greater degree than Milman the virtue of Christian charity in its
+highest and rarest form. It was a gift which stood him in good stead
+in dealing with the very blended characters, the tangled politics, the
+often misguided enthusiasms of ecclesiastical history. While he was
+constitutionally extremely averse to the moral casuistry which
+confuses the boundaries of right and wrong, he had too sound a grasp
+of the evolution of history to fall into the common error of judging
+the acts of one age by the moral standards of another. His history was
+eminently a history of large lines and broad tendencies. The growth,
+influence, and decline of the Papacy--the distinctive characteristics
+of Latin and Teutonic Christianity; the effect of Christianity on
+jurisprudence; the monastic system in its various phases; the rise and
+conquests of Mohammedanism; the severance of Greek from Latin
+Christianity; Charlemagne, Hildebrand, the Crusades, the Templars, the
+Great Councils; the decay of Latin and the rise of modern languages;
+the influence of the Church on literature, painting, sculpture, and
+architecture--are but a few of the great subjects he has treated,
+always with knowledge and intelligence, often with conspicuous
+brilliancy.
+
+In so vast a field there were, no doubt, many subjects which have been
+treated with a greater fulness and completeness by other writers.
+There are some in which subsequent research has gone far to supersede
+what Milman has written, and inaccuracies of detail not unfrequently
+crept into his work; but in the truthfulness of its broad lines, in
+the sagacity of its estimates both of men and events, it holds a high
+place among the histories of the world. Very few historians have
+combined in a larger measure the three great requisites of knowledge,
+soundness of judgment, and inexorable love of truth. The growth and
+modifications of doctrines and the minutiae of religious controversies
+were, however, subjects in which he took little interest, and though
+they could not be excluded from an ecclesiastical history, they are
+dealt with only in a slight and cursory manner. Those who desire to
+study in detail this side of ecclesiastical history will find other
+histories much more useful. It has been said that his work is
+imperfect as a book of reference, for while the great events and
+personages are discussed with a fulness that leaves little to be
+desired, many of the more insignificant transactions or more obscure
+periods are passed over or barely noticed. Critics of different
+religious schools have also complained that his mind was essentially
+secular; that he had a low sense of the certainty and the importance
+of dogma; that there were some classes of ecclesiastical writers who
+have been deeply revered in the Church with whom he had no real
+sympathy; that the spirit of criticism was stronger in his book than
+the spirit of reverence; that he did not do full justice to the
+spiritual and inner side of the religion he described. He looked upon
+it, they said, too externally. He valued it as a moral revolution, the
+introduction of new principles of virtue and new rules for individual
+and social happiness. Much of this criticism would probably have been
+accepted with but little qualification by Milman himself. He would
+have said that what these writers complained of was in the main
+inseparable from an historical as distinguished from a devotional
+treatment of his subject. He would have added that no form of human
+history reveals so clearly as ecclesiastical history the fallibility,
+the credulity, the intolerance of the human mind, or requires more
+imperatively the constant exercise of independent judgment and of
+fearless and unsparing criticism, and that, if the history of the
+Church is ever to be written with profit, it must be written in such a
+spirit. Of his own deeper convictions he seldom spoke; but in the
+concluding page of his 'Latin Christianity' there is a passage of
+profound interest. Leaving it, as he says, to the future historian of
+religion to say what part of the ancient dogmatic system may be
+allowed to fall silently into disuse, and what transformations the
+interpretation of the Sacred Writings may still undergo, he adds these
+significant words:
+
+'As it is my own confident belief that the words of Christ, and his
+words alone (the primal indefeasible truths of Christianity), shall
+not pass away, so I cannot presume to say that men may not attain to a
+clearer, at the same time more full, comprehensive, and balanced sense
+of those words, than has as yet been generally received in the
+Christian world. As all else is transient and mutable, these only
+eternal and universal, assuredly whatever light may be thrown on the
+mental constitution of man, even on the constitution of nature and the
+laws which govern the world, will be concentered so as to give a more
+penetrating vision of those undying truths.... Christianity may yet
+have to exercise a far wider, even if more silent and untraceable
+influence, through its primary, all-pervading principles, on the
+civilisation of mankind.'
+
+Macaulay, speaking of the 'History of Latin Christianity' in his
+Journal, says, 'I was more impressed than ever by the contrast between
+the substance and the style: the substance is excellent; the style
+very much otherwise.' Looking at it from a purely literary point of
+view it had undoubtedly great merits. Milman had an admirable sense of
+proportion--a rare quality in history. He was invariably lucid, and it
+is easy to cull from his history many characters excellently drawn,
+many pages of vivid narrative, or terse and weighty criticism. Still,
+on the whole his historic style is on a lower level than that of
+Macaulay, Buckle, and Froude, though it will compare, I think, not
+unfavourably with that of Hallam and Grote. The points of controversy
+are usually relegated to his notes, which contain a great mass of
+curious learning and excellent criticism. The reader who turns to them
+from works of the German school will be struck by his strong English
+common-sense and grasp of facts, and his dislike of subtle far-fetched
+ingenuities of explanation. He has the crowning merit of being always
+readable, and his strong sane moral sense never left him. He was
+probably at his best in the later volumes, when he could treat his
+subject like secular history and was free from the embarrassing
+theological difficulties of the earlier portion, and he is especially
+admirable in those chapters which give scope to his wide literary and
+artistic sympathies. He was an excellent Italian scholar and keenly
+sensible of the beauties of Italian literature, and his love of the
+ancient classics never left him. There was something at once
+characteristic and amusing in the delight which he again and again
+expressed, after the termination of his History, at being able to
+return to them after spending so many years in reading bad Latin and
+Greek. In taste and character he was indeed pre-eminently a man of
+letters, and as such he ranks in the first line among his
+contemporaries.
+
+The outburst of indignation that in some quarters had greeted the
+first appearance of the 'History of the Jews' was not repeated when
+that work was republished in an enlarged form. Nor does it appear to
+have arisen on the appearance of the two later histories. Newman
+reviewed the 'History of Early Christianity' at great length, speaking
+with much personal respect of the writer, though he was naturally
+extremely hostile to its spirit. The difference between the High
+Church sentiment and the mind of Milman was indeed organic. Milman's
+own type of thought was formed before the Tractarian movement had
+begun; the sacerdotal spirit was thoroughly alien to him, and his
+profound study of ecclesiastical history had certainly not tended to
+attract him to it. He fully recognised both the abilities and the
+piety of Newman, and he described his secession as perhaps the
+greatest loss the Church of England had experienced since the
+Reformation; but he disliked his opinions, he profoundly distrusted
+the whole character of his mind and reasonings, and he early foresaw
+that he could never find a permanent resting-place in the English
+Church. In the posthumous volume of Essays there will be found a full
+and most searching examination of Newman's 'Essay on Development,' in
+which these points of difference are clearly shown. For Keble, Milman
+entertained warmer feelings. They were contemporaries, and at one time
+most intimate friends. In the field of sacred poetry they had been
+fellow-labourers. Keble had succeeded Milman as professor of poetry,
+and Milman had been one of the few persons who had read the 'Christian
+Year' in manuscript. When, after Keble's death, a committee was
+appointed to erect a memorial to his memory, Milman was much hurt at
+finding that it was determined to give it a distinctly Tractarian
+character, and that his own name was deliberately excluded. In
+Milman's last years the Oxford movement had begun to assume its
+ritualistic form, and questions of vestments and ceremonies and
+candles came to the forefront. With all this Milman had no sympathy.
+'After the drama,' he said of it, 'the melodrama!'
+
+It was a remarkable coincidence that for some years the two deaneries
+of London were both held by brilliant men of letters and by men with
+the strongest theological sympathy. A feeling of warm personal
+affection united Milman and Stanley, and there was something
+peculiarly touching in the almost filial attitude which Stanley
+assumed towards his older colleague. In one point, however, they
+differed greatly. Stanley was a keen fighter. He threw himself into
+the forefront of ecclesiastical controversies, and was never seen to
+greater advantage than when leading a small minority, defying
+inveterate prejudice, defending an unpopular cause. Milman could
+seldom be tempted to follow his example. He pleaded old age and
+declining strength, but, in truth, though he never flinched from the
+avowal of his own opinions, he had a deep and increasing distaste for
+religious controversies and Church politics. He was rarely seen in
+Convocation, and he always regarded its revival as a misfortune. He
+proposed, however, in it a petition for the discontinuance of the use
+of the State services commemorating the martyrdom of Charles I., the
+restoration of Charles II., the discovery of the gunpowder plot, and
+the Revolution of 1688; and Parliament soon after adopted his view. He
+also sat on the Royal Commission in 1864 for considering the subject
+of clerical subscription. He took on this occasion a characteristic
+line, advocating a complete abolition of the subscription of the
+Articles, and desiring that the sole test of membership of the Church
+should be the acceptance of the Liturgy and the Creeds. In 1865 he
+received an invitation, which greatly gratified him, to preach before
+the University of Oxford the annual sermon on Hebrew prophecy. The
+sermon was delivered in the pulpit of St. Mary's, where many years
+before he had been so vehemently condemned for views on the same
+subject, no one of which, as he truly said, he had either recanted or
+modified. His sermon was afterwards printed, and would form a worthy
+chapter of his 'History of the Jews.' In the Colenso controversy he
+had no great sympathy with either side. Many of Bishop Colenso's
+arguments appeared to him crude or exaggerated, and he dissented from
+many of his conclusions, but he considered that he had been treated
+with gross injustice and intolerance, and he accordingly subscribed to
+his defence fund. For the rest, he confined his ecclesiastical life as
+much as possible to his own cathedral, where he presided over the
+State funeral of the Duke of Wellington, and where he introduced the
+custom of throwing open the nave to evening services. His last and
+unfinished work was his 'Annals of St. Paul's,' investigating its
+history and portraying with his old learning and with much of his old
+felicity the lives of his predecessors.
+
+It was however in secular literary society that he was most fitted to
+shine, and there he passed many of his happiest hours. The usual
+honours of a distinguished man of letters clustered thickly around
+him. He was a trustee of the British Museum; an honorary member of the
+Royal Academy; a correspondent of the French Institute. He was also a
+member of 'The Club'--the small dining-club which was founded in 1764
+by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Johnson, and which since then has
+included in its fortnightly dinners the great majority of those
+Englishmen who in many walks of life have been most distinguished by
+their genius or their accomplishments. He was elected to it in 1836,
+three years before Macaulay, and he became one of its most constant
+attendants. In 1841 'The Club' made him its treasurer, and he held
+that position for twenty-three years, and presided over the centenary
+dinner in 1864. He was also an original member of the Philobiblion
+Society, which has brought together many curious and hitherto unknown
+documents, and he wrote for it a short paper on Michael Scott the
+Wizard, who, as he showed, had been once offered the Archbishopric of
+Cashel. He was never a keen politician, but he was intimate with a
+long succession of leading statesmen, and he contributed to Sir
+Cornewall Lewis's 'Administrations of Great Britain' a full and
+valuable letter on the relations of Pitt and Addington, which was
+largely based on his own recollections of the latter statesman.
+
+London society in the middle of the nineteenth century was much
+smaller and less mixed than at present, and there was then a
+distinctively literary or at least intellectual society which can now
+hardly be said to exist. The most eminent men of letters came more
+frequently together. Criticism was in fewer and perhaps stronger
+hands, and was to a larger extent representative of the opinions
+expressed in such social gatherings. In this kind of society Milman
+was long a foremost figure. He had all the gifts that fit men for
+it--not only brilliancy, knowledge, and versatility, but also
+unfailing tact, a rare charm of courtesy, a singularly wide tolerance.
+He was quick and generous in recognising rising talent, and he had
+that sympathetic touch which seldom failed to elicit what was best in
+those with whom he came in contact. Few men possessed more eminently
+the genius of friendship--the power of attaching others--the power of
+attaching himself to others. In the long list of his intimate friends
+Macaulay, Sir Charles Lyell, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis were
+conspicuous. Like most men of this type, he found the multiplying
+gaps around him the chief trial of old age. Not long before he died
+there was an exhibition of contemporary portraits, but though Milman
+went to it he could not go through it. 'When I found myself,' he said,
+'surrounded by the likenesses--often the miserable likenesses--of so
+many I had known and loved, it was more than I could bear.'
+
+An admirable portrait by Watts which is now in the National Portrait
+Gallery will recall to those who knew him his appearance in old
+age--his strong masculine features beaming with intelligence, his
+grand shaggy brows, his bright and penetrating eyes. An illness
+affecting the spine had bowed him nearly double, and there are still
+those who will remember how his bent figure seemed projected, almost
+like a bird in its flight, across the dinner-table, while his eager
+brilliant talk delighted and fascinated his hearers. In his last years
+increasing deafness obliged him to narrow the circle of his social
+life, but he retained to the end all the vividness of his mind and
+sympathies, and when at length death came in his seventy-eighth year,
+it found him in the midst of unfinished work. His life was not of a
+kind to win wide popularity and to give him a conspicuous place among
+the great masses of his nation, but few English clergymen of his
+generation made so deep an impression on those who came in contact
+with them or have left works of such enduring value behind them.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[48] _Henry Hart Milman, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's._ A Biographical
+Sketch by his son, Arthur Milman, M.A., LL.D.
+
+[49] Laurence's _Life of Sir A. Sullivan_, p. 310.
+
+[50] Smiles' _Memoirs of John Murray_, ii. p. 300.
+
+
+
+
+QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE
+
+
+At a time when the unprecedented increase of gigantic and rapidly
+acquired fortunes has deeply infected both English and American
+society with the characteristic vices of a Plutocracy, the profound
+feeling of sorrow and admiration elicited by the death of Queen
+Victoria is an encouraging sign. It shows that the vulgar ideals, the
+false moral measurements, the feverish social ambitions, the love of
+the ostentatious and the factitious, and the disdain for simple
+habits, pleasures, and characters so apparent in certain conspicuous
+sections of society, have not yet blunted the moral sense or perverted
+the moral perceptions of the great masses on either side of the
+Atlantic. To this type, indeed, we could scarcely find a more complete
+antithesis than in the life and character of the great Queen who has
+passed away. Nothing more deeply impressed all who came in contact
+with her than the essential simplicity and genuineness of her nature.
+
+She was a great ruler, but she was also to the last a true, kindly,
+simple-minded woman, retaining with undiminished intensity all the
+warmth of a most affectionate nature, all the soundness of a most
+excellent judgment. Brought up from childhood in the artificial
+atmosphere of a Court, called while still a girl to the isolation of a
+throne; deprived, when her reign had yet forty years to run, of the
+support and counsel of her husband, she might well have been pardoned
+if she often found herself out of touch with large sections of her
+people, and had viewed life through a false medium or in partial
+aspects. Yet Lord Salisbury probably in no degree exaggerated when he
+said that if he wished to ascertain the feelings and opinions of the
+English people, and especially of the English middle classes, he knew
+no truer or more enlightening judgment than that of the Queen. She
+thought with them and she felt with them; she shared their ambitions;
+she knew by a kind of intuitive instinct the course of their
+judgments; she sympathised deeply with their trials and their sorrows.
+
+She could hardly be called a brilliant woman. It is difficult indeed
+to judge the full social capacities of anyone who lives under the
+constant restraints of a royal position, but I do not think that in
+any sphere of life the Queen would have been regarded as a woman of
+striking wit, or originality, or even commanding power. The qualities
+that made her so successful in her high calling were of another kind:
+supreme good sense; a tact in dealing with men and circumstances so
+unfailing that it almost amounted to genius; an indefatigable industry
+which never flagged from early youth till extreme old age; a sense of
+duty so steady and so strong that it governed all her actions and
+pleasures, and saved her not only from the grosser and more common
+temptations of an exalted position, but also in a most unusual degree
+from the subtle and often half-concealed deflecting influences that
+spring from ambition or resentment, from personal predilections and
+personal dislikes. It was these qualities, combined with her
+unrivalled experience of affairs, and strengthened by long and
+constant intercourse with the foremost English statesmen of two
+generations, that made her what she undoubtedly was--a perfect model
+of a constitutional Sovereign.
+
+The position of a Sovereign under a parliamentary government like ours
+is a singular and difficult one. There was a school of politicians who
+were much more prominent in the last generation than in the present
+one, who regarded the Sovereign, in political life at least, as little
+more than a figure-head or a cipher, absolved from all responsibility,
+but also divested of all power, and fulfilling functions in the
+Constitution which are little more than mechanical. This view of the
+unimportance of the Monarchy will now be held by few really
+intelligent men. Those take but a false and narrow view of human
+affairs who fail to realise the part which sentiment and enthusiasm
+play in the government of men; and no one who knows England will
+question that the throne is the centre of a great strength of personal
+attachment which is wholly different from any attachment to a party or
+a parliament.
+
+In India and the Colonies this is still more the case. It is not the
+British Parliament or the British Cabinet that there forms the centre
+of unity or excites genuine attachment. The Crown is the main link
+binding the different States to one another, and the pervading
+sentiment of a common loyalty unites them in one great and living
+whole. In foreign politics it cannot be a matter of indifference that
+a Sovereign is closely related to nearly all the greatest rulers in
+the world, and in frequent, intimate, unconstrained correspondence
+with them. This is a kind of influence which no Minister, however
+powerful, can exercise, and it was possessed by Queen Victoria
+probably to a greater degree than by any Sovereign on record, for
+there has scarcely ever been one who included among her relations so
+many of the Sovereigns of the world. Future historians will no doubt
+have ample means of judging how frequently and how judiciously it was
+employed in assuaging differences and promoting European peace. All
+the great offices in Church and State, all the great distributions of
+honours were submitted to her; and though in a large number of cases
+this patronage is purely Ministerial or professional, there are many
+cases in which the Sovereign had a real voice, and a strong objection
+on her part was usually attended to. In Church patronage and in the
+distribution of honours she is known to have taken a great interest,
+and to have exercised a considerable influence.
+
+The one subject on which the Queen was not always in harmony with her
+people was that of foreign politics. She and the Prince Consort took a
+keen interest in them, and during his lifetime she followed very
+implicitly his guidance. The strong German sympathies she imbued from
+her own marriage were much intensified by the marriages of her
+children, and especially by that of her eldest daughter to the heir of
+the Prussian throne. The influence also of Stockmar, who was the
+closest adviser of her early married life, was not wholly for good,
+and the theory which the Prince held that the direction of foreign
+affairs is in a peculiar degree under the care of the Sovereign, and
+that the Prince, her husband, should be regarded as 'her permanent
+Minister,' created during many years much friction. In a
+constitutional country, where the responsibility of affairs rests
+wholly on the Minister, who is doubly responsible to the Cabinet and
+to the Parliament, such a theory can only be maintained with great
+qualifications.
+
+On the other hand, the government of the country was carried on in the
+name of the Queen. Foreign despatches were addressed to her and could
+only be answered with her sanction. The right of the English
+Sovereigns to be present at the Cabinet Councils of their Ministers
+was abdicated when George I. came to the throne, but every important
+departure in policy was submitted to the Queen and required her
+assent. The testimony of Ministers of all shades of policy supports
+the belief that this was no idle form. The Queen, though always open
+to argument and tolerant of contradiction, had her own decided
+opinions; she exercised her undoubted right of expressing and
+defending them, and even apart from her royal position, her great
+experience and her singular clearness and rectitude of judgment made
+her opinion well worth listening to.
+
+The claim put forward by the Queen in her famous memorandum of August
+1850, can, I think, hardly be pronounced excessive. She demanded only
+that before a line of policy was adopted and brought before her she
+should be distinctly informed of the facts of the case and of the
+motives that inspired it; that when she had given her sanction to a
+measure it should not be arbitrarily altered or modified by the
+Minister; that she must be kept acquainted with all important
+communications between foreign Ministers and her own Foreign
+Secretary, and that the drafts of foreign despatches must be sent to
+her for her approval in sufficient time for her to make herself
+acquainted with them. She complained that Lord Palmerston was
+accustomed to send despatches to the Continent without submitting
+them, in their last revise, to the Sovereign; that in one case he
+retained without her knowledge a passage which the Prince Consort had
+deleted; that he paid little or no attention to the numerous memoranda
+which were drawn up by the Prince for his instruction; that he of his
+own will and without any consultation committed his Government, in a
+conversation with the French Ambassador, to an approbation of the
+_coup d'etat_ of Napoleon III. If the general line of his policy had
+been in accordance with the royal wishes, indiscretions of detail
+could probably have been overlooked, but the Queen and Prince were
+both undoubtedly on many occasions--and especially in 1848 and
+1849--strongly opposed to the policy of Lord Palmerston. In the
+interests of peace they objected to the remarkably provocative
+character of his despatches, which excited a degree of animosity and
+resentment among the Governments of the Continent that has rarely been
+paralleled--on two, if not three, occasions it brought England into
+grave danger of a war with France--and which aroused a very widespread
+indignation among statesmen of his own party at home.
+
+The widely different tone which was adopted by Lord Clarendon and Lord
+Granville, the open breach between Palmerston and Lord John Russell on
+account of the way in which the former conducted his foreign policy
+without consultation with the Cabinet, and the refusal of Lord Grey,
+in a most critical moment, to take office in a Government in which
+Lord Palmerston held the seals of the Foreign Office, show how fully
+in this respect the sentiments of the Queen accorded with those of
+many of Lord Palmerston's own colleagues. But in addition to mere
+questions of manner and procedure, there was much in the substance of
+the policy of Palmerston to which the Queen objected. Her dislike to
+the Revolutionary element on the Continent, which Lord Palmerston
+either encouraged or viewed with indifference, her sympathy with the
+old governments and dynasties, that were so gravely shaken in the year
+of the Revolution, were very marked. In the disputes between Germany
+and Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein question her sympathies, unlike
+those of her people, were decidedly with Germany, and although she was
+fully sensible of the misgovernment of some of the Italian States, she
+was not favourable to that cause of Italian unity which Lord John
+Russell and Lord Palmerston so strenuously upheld. Her nature, which
+was very frank, made it impossible for her, even if she desired it, to
+conceal her opinions, and she devoted much time and pains to making
+herself acquainted with the details of every question as it arose. She
+made it a rule to sign no paper that she had not read. She did not
+hesitate fully to apprise her Ministers of her views when they
+differed from their own, and she enforced her views by argument and
+remonstrance. She more than once drew up memoranda of her dissent from
+the opinions of her Foreign Minister, and insisted on their being
+brought before the Cabinet for consideration. In the formation of a
+new Ministry she more than once exercised her power of deciding to
+whom the succession of the first places should be offered. After an
+adverse vote of the House of Commons, she considered herself fully
+authorised to decide whether she would accept the resignation of a
+Minister or submit the issue to the test of a dissolution, and there
+were occasions on which she remonstrated with her Ministers on their
+too ready determination to resign.
+
+At the same time it is certain that the Queen fulfilled with
+perfection that most difficult duty of an able constitutional
+Sovereign--the duty of yielding her convictions to those of her
+responsible Ministers and acting faithfully with Ministers she
+distrusted. To a Sovereign with clear views and a more than common
+force of character this must often have been very painful, and to have
+fulfilled it faithfully and with no loss of dignity is no small merit.
+It is the universal testimony of all who served her, that no Sovereign
+ever supported her successive Ministers with a more perfect loyalty or
+held the scales between contending parties with a more complete
+impartiality. No one understood better to what point a constitutional
+Sovereign may press her opinions and at what point she is bound to
+give way; and while maintaining her rightful authority she never in
+any degree transgressed its bounds. In the very beginning of her reign
+she showed this quality in a high degree. She looked up to Lord
+Melbourne with an almost filial affection, and there were peculiar
+reasons why his great opponent, Sir Robert Peel, should have been
+distasteful to her. The dispute about the removal of her Ladies of the
+Bedchamber, and still more the conduct of Sir Robert Peel in
+supporting the reduction of the income which the Whigs had proposed
+for Prince Albert, must have touched her feelings on the most
+sensitive points, and the stiff, formal, somewhat awkward manner of
+Peel seemed very little fitted to ingratiate him with a young
+Sovereign. Yet when the change of Ministry arrived, Peel found no
+trace of resentment in the Queen. She gave him her complete
+confidence, and she fully estimated his great qualities. Of all the
+Ministers who served her there is indeed none of whom she has written
+in warmer terms. When Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister in 1855 it
+was contrary to her earnest desire, but when the change was made
+Palmerston himself acknowledged that he had 'no reason to complain of
+the least want of cordiality or confidence on the part of the Court.'
+At the time when she was most opposed to her Ministers, she fully
+acquiesced in the principle that she must submit all letters on public
+affairs to them and frame her replies upon their advice. There were
+constant attempts on the part of foreign Sovereigns who were connected
+with her to carry on affairs by correspondence with her without the
+knowledge and sanction of her Ministers, but the Queen steadily
+resisted them. Anything, indeed, that in any way savoured of intrigue
+was in the highest degree repugnant to her nature.
+
+She acted in the same way in internal affairs. Few measures that were
+carried in her time were more repugnant to her than Gladstone's
+disestablishment of the Irish Church. It abolished an institution of
+which she was herself the head and which a special clause in the
+Coronation Oath required her to uphold, and she foretold, not without
+good reason, that it would not pacify Ireland but would be an
+encouragement to further agitation. The question, however, had been
+submitted at a general election to the decision of the country, and
+after that decision had been unequivocally given in favour of the
+policy of Gladstone, she frankly accepted it with the assent of the
+Prime Minister. When a great danger of a conflict between the two
+Houses of Parliament had arisen, she devoted herself actively in
+preventing it. She employed for that service the instrumentality of
+Archbishop Tait--a great statesman-prelate, whose promotion to the see
+of Canterbury was due to her own personal initiative, contrary to the
+wish of Lord Beaconsfield, but most fully justified by the result--and
+it was largely due to the intervention of the Queen that the Church
+Bill was not thrown out in the House of Lords. She acted in a
+somewhat similar way with reference to the Franchise Bill of 1884,
+though on this occasion she does not seem to have disliked the
+measure, which she urged the House of Lords to accept.
+
+On three very memorable occasions the intervention of the Queen had
+probably a great effect on English politics. It is well known that at
+the time when the issue of peace or war with the United States was
+trembling in the balance on account of the seizure of the Southern
+envoys on the 'Trent,' the Queen, acting in accordance with the Prince
+Consort, by softening and revising the language of an English despatch
+to America, did very much to prevent the dispute from leading to a
+great war; that in the proclamation which was issued to the Indian
+people after the Sepoy Mutiny, she insisted on the excision of some
+most unfortunate words that seemed to menace the native creeds, and on
+the insertion of an emphatic promise that they should in no wise be
+interfered with, and thus probably prevented a new outburst of most
+dangerous fanaticism; that at the time of the Schleswig-Holstein
+dispute she contributed powerfully and actively to give a turn to the
+negotiations that averted a war with Prussia and Austria, which, as is
+now almost universally recognised, could only have led to a great
+catastrophe.
+
+Whatever opinions may be formed of the merits of the dispute between
+Denmark and the German powers about Schleswig-Holstein, few persons
+who judge by the event can doubt that an isolated intervention of
+England on behalf of Denmark against the combined forces of Austria
+and Prussia would have been absolutely impotent to effect the object
+that was desired, and that even if France had consented to join in the
+struggle it would have led to a military disaster hardly less than
+that of the war of Sedan. If, contrary to all probability, the
+combined forces of France and England had proved stronger than those
+of Austria and Germany, the result could have hardly failed to be that
+France would have been established on the left bank of the Rhine, and
+that the treaty of Vienna, which it was one of the great objects of
+English policy to maintain, would have been torn into shreds.
+
+The dangers, however, of conflict arising from the extreme
+irritability of English public opinion against Germany on the Danish
+question, were very great, and there can be little doubt that the
+personal influence of the Queen with the German Sovereign was an
+appreciable influence, and it was her desire that a paragraph in the
+Queen's Speech opening Parliament in February 1864 was erased. Words
+which contained at least a veiled or attributed threat to Germany were
+omitted, and instead of them an inoffensive paragraph was inserted
+expressing the Queen's ardent desire for peace and recording the
+earnest efforts she had made to maintain it.[51] At the same time
+when, by the Convention of Gastein in August 1865, the Duchies were
+severed from the Danish throne and placed in the virtual possession of
+Prussia and Austria, the protest of Lord Russell against so flagrant a
+violation of public right, and especially of the right of the people
+to be consulted on their own destiny, was drawn up with her full
+assent and indeed in a great measure at her suggestion.[52]
+
+On other occasions her remonstrances were disregarded, and courses
+were pursued to which she strongly objected. The surrender after
+Majuba was in her opinion a pusillanimous abandonment of the English
+flag, and it was with extreme reluctance that she acquiesced in it.
+Still more vehement were her feelings about the long abandonment of
+General Gordon in the Soudan. She had been indefatigable in urging on
+the Ministry of Gladstone the duty of speedy measures for his rescue,
+and when, owing to the long delay of the Ministry, the most heroic of
+modern Englishmen perished at Khartoum, her indignation knew no
+bounds. In a letter to his sisters, burning with mingled pity and
+indignation, she pronounced his 'cruel though heroic fate' to be 'a
+stain left upon England,' which she keenly felt. This was one of the
+few occasions in which she allowed her sentiments in hostility to the
+policy of her Ministers to appear publicly before the world. In
+general, she had a profound distrust of the policy and judgment of Mr.
+Gladstone, and she fully shared the dread with which the great body of
+English statesmen looked upon the Home Rule policy. It was no new
+sentiment on her part, for she had lived through the Repeal agitation
+of O'Connell, and as far back as 1843 Sir Robert Peel had somewhat
+unconstitutionally declared in Parliament that he was authorised by
+the Queen to state that she, like her predecessor, was resolved to
+maintain the Union inviolate by all the means in her power.
+
+There can now be no harm in saying--what when both parties were alive
+was naturally kept in the background--that the relations of the Queen
+with Mr. Gladstone were usually of a very painful character. She had
+personally not much to complain of. The skill and firmness with which
+Mr. Gladstone resisted the attempts to diminish the parliamentary
+subsidies for her family were fully and gratefully recognised by the
+Queen, but the main course of his politics, both foreign and domestic,
+filled her with alarm, and she never appears to have experienced the
+attraction which his great personal gifts exercised over most of those
+with whom he came in immediate contact. The extreme copiousness of his
+vocabulary, the extreme subtlety of his mind and reasoning, and the
+imperiousness of temper with which he seldom failed to meet
+opposition, were all repugnant to her. To those who have experienced
+the sustained emphasis of language with which Mr. Gladstone was
+accustomed in conversation to enforce his views, there is much truth
+as well as humour in the saying which was attributed to the Queen, 'I
+wish Mr. Gladstone would not always speak to me as if I was a public
+meeting'; and a little episode which is related by Sir Theodore Martin
+illustrates the irritation which Mr. Gladstone's methods of business
+must have caused to a very busy and overworked lady who always loved
+few words and simple and direct arguments.[53] At all times the Queen
+had decided political opinions, and the experience of a long reign had
+given her a large measure of not unjustifiable self-confidence. Few
+persons had studied as she had during all those years the various
+political questions that arose, and she had had the advantage of
+discussing them at length with a long succession of the leading
+statesmen of England. Under such circumstances her opinions had no
+small weight, and although in the Liberal Government she gave her full
+confidence to Lord Clarendon and Lord Granville, she looked with the
+gravest apprehension on the policy of Mr. Gladstone.
+
+It was a painful and irksome position, but it did not lead the Queen
+to any unconstitutional course. No public act or word ever disclosed
+her feelings. It was indeed in most cases very slowly, and in small
+circles and through private channels, that the convictions of the
+Queen became known.
+
+At the close of the second Ministry of Mr. Gladstone she at once
+offered him an earldom, which he refused, and on his death she fully
+acquiesced in the public funeral in Westminster Abbey, and the Prince
+of Wales attended it as her representative. In an autograph letter to
+Mrs. Gladstone she spoke with the deep and genuine warmth that was
+never wanting in her letters of condolence of her sympathy with the
+bereavement of that lady. She spoke of his illustrious gifts and of
+his personal kindness to herself, but it was noticed that no sentence
+in the letter intimated any approbation of his general policy. 'Truth
+in the inmost parts' was indeed a prominent characteristic of the
+Queen, and she wrote nothing which was not in accordance with her true
+convictions.
+
+There were occasions when she took independent steps, and some of these
+had a considerable influence on politics. Louis Napoleon was one of the
+few great Sovereigns who were not related to her, and to few persons
+could the _coup d'etat_ which brought him to the throne have been more
+repugnant, but the cordial personal relations she established with him
+undoubtedly contributed considerably to the good relations which for
+many years subsisted between England and France. Bismarck detested
+English Court influence and was greatly prejudiced against her, but he
+has left a striking testimony to the favourable impression which her
+tact and good sense made upon him when he first came into contact with
+her. She possessed to a high degree the power of choosing the right
+moment and striking the true chord, and she appears to have been an
+excellent judge not only of the feelings of large bodies of men, but
+also of the individual characters of those with whom she dealt. She had
+a style of writing which was eminently characteristic and eminently
+feminine, and it is easy to trace the letters which were entirely her
+own. Her letters of congratulation, or sympathy, or encouragement on
+public occasions scarcely ever failed in their effect and never
+contained an injudicious word. The same thing may be said of her many
+beautiful letters to those who were suffering from some grievous
+calamity. Whether she was writing to a great public character like the
+widow of an American President, or expressing her sorrow for obscure
+sufferers, there was the same note of true womanly sympathy, so
+manifestly spontaneous and so manifestly heartfelt, that it found its
+way to the hearts of thousands. The tact for which she was so justly
+celebrated, like all true tact, sprang largely from character, from the
+quick and lively sympathies of an eminently affectionate nature. No one
+could have been less theatrical, or less likely in any unworthy way to
+seek for popularity; but she knew admirably the occasions or the methods
+by which she could strike the imagination and appeal most favourably to
+the feelings of her people. She showed this in the very beginning of her
+reign when she insisted, in defiance of the opinion of the Duke of
+Wellington, on riding herself through the ranks of her troops at her
+first review. She showed it on countless other occasions of her long
+reign--pre-eminently in her two Jubilees and in her last visit to
+Ireland. It is well known that this visit was entirely her own idea. To
+many it seemed rash or even positively dangerous. They dwelt upon the
+bitter disaffection of a great portion of the Irish people, upon the
+danger of mob outrage or even assassination, upon the extreme difficulty
+of preventing a royal visit to Ireland from taking a party character and
+being regarded as a party triumph or defeat. But the Queen, as Sir
+William Harcourt once truly said, 'never feared her people,' and nothing
+could be more happy than the manner in which she availed herself of the
+new turn given to Irish feeling by the splendid achievements of Irish
+soldiers in South Africa, to come over, as if to thank her Irish people
+in person, and at the same time to repair in extreme old age a neglect
+for which she had been often, and not altogether unjustly, blamed. There
+never indeed was a more brilliant and unqualified success. To those who
+witnessed the spontaneous and passionate enthusiasm with which she was
+everywhere greeted, it seemed as if all bitter feeling vanished at her
+presence; and the Irish visit, which was one of the last, was also one
+of the brightest pages of her reign. The credit of its most skilful
+arrangements belongs chiefly to the officials in Dublin, but the Irish
+people will long remember the patient courage with which the aged Queen
+went through its fatigues; the tactful kindness and the gracious dignity
+with which she won the hearts of multitudes who had never before seen
+her or spoken to her; the evident enjoyment with which she responded to
+the cordiality of her reception. One feature of that visit was
+especially characteristic. It was the Children's Review in Phoenix Park,
+where, by the desire of the Queen, 'some fifty thousand children were
+brought together to meet her. No act of kindness could have gone more
+directly home to the hearts of the parents, and it left a memory in many
+young minds that will never be effaced.
+
+It is rather, however, by the example of a life than by any public
+acts that a constitutional Sovereign can impress her personality on
+the affections of her people. Of the reign of Queen Victoria it may be
+truly said that very few in English history have been so blameless as
+this, which was the longest of all. Her Court was a model of quiet
+dignity and decorum, singularly free from all the atmosphere of
+intrigue and from all suspicion of injudicious or unworthy
+favouritism. She managed it as she managed her family, with a happy
+mixture of tact and affection; and though she gave her confidence to
+many she gave it to such persons and in such a way that it seemed
+never to be abused. No domestic life could in all its relations have
+been more perfect, and her love of children amounted to a passion.
+Among the great female rulers it would be difficult to find one less
+like Queen Victoria than the Empress Catherine of Russia, but they had
+this common trait of an intense love of children and a great power of
+winning their affection. There is a charming letter of Catherine to
+Grimm, describing her life among her grandchildren, which might almost
+have been written by the English Queen. Her vast family, spread
+through many countries, was her abiding interest and delight, and
+although she had to pay in full measure the natural penalty of many
+bereavements, she at least never knew the dreary loneliness that
+clouded the last days of her great predecessor, Elizabeth.
+
+In the early years of her reign she fully filled her place as the
+leader of English society. In the plays she patronised, in the art
+she preferred, in the restrictions of her Drawing Rooms, in the
+fashions she countenanced, in the intimacies she selected or
+encouraged, her influence was always healthy and pure, and for some
+years it powerfully affected the tone of English society.
+Unfortunately, after the great calamity of her widowhood the nerves of
+the Queen seem to have been shaken, and though she never intermitted
+her political duties and spent daily many hours over her
+correspondence, she allowed her social duties to fall too much and too
+long into abeyance. She still, it is true, occasionally appeared in
+public ceremonies. She laid the first stones of several hospitals and
+infirmaries. She presided over the inauguration of several great
+industrial enterprises. She sometimes opened Parliament in person, and
+was sometimes present at military and naval reviews. But she scarcely
+ever appeared in London, except for a few days. She never appeared in
+a London theatre. She shrank from great crowds and large social
+gatherings, and buried herself too much in her Highland home. This is
+one of the few real reproaches that history is likely to bring against
+her. Her influence on English society was never wholly lost, and it
+was always an influence for good, but for many years it was exerted
+less frequently and less powerfully than it should have been, and the
+tone of large sections of society lost something by her retirement.
+
+It may be doubted, however, whether this long retirement really
+injured her in the minds of her people. Her rare occasional
+appearances had a greater weight, and the depth of feeling exhibited
+by her long widowhood became a new title to respect. The transparent
+simplicity and unselfishness of her character were now generally
+appreciated, and her own books contributed greatly to make her people
+understand her. It is in general far from a wise thing for royal
+personages to descend into the arena of literature unless they possess
+some special aptitude for it. They expose themselves to a kind of
+criticism wholly different from that which follows them in their
+public lives--a criticism more minute and often more deliberately
+malevolent than that to which an ordinary writer is subject. The Queen
+wrote pure and excellent English and she had a good literary taste,
+but she certainly could never have become a great writer; and the
+complete frankness and unreserve of her Journals, as well as their
+curious homeliness of thought and feeling, were not viewed with favour
+in some sections of the fashionable and of the literary world. There
+were circles in which the word 'bourgeois,' and there were others in
+which the word 'commonplace,' was often pronounced. Yet in this, as on
+nearly all occasions when the Queen acted on her own impulse, she
+acted wisely. Her books had at once an enormous circulation, and there
+can be no doubt that they contributed very widely to her popularity.
+Multitudes to whom she had before been little more than a name, now
+realised that she was one with whom they had very much in common. Her
+evident longing for sympathy produced an immediate response. Her deep
+domestic affection, her constant interest in her servants, her high
+spirits, her love of scenery, her love of animals, her power of taking
+delight in little things, appeared vividly in her pages and came home
+to the largest classes of her people.
+
+In some respects the Queen was an eminently democratic Sovereign.
+While maintaining the dignity of her position, rank and wealth were in
+her eyes always subordinate to the great realities of life and to
+true human affections. In no one was the touch of Nature that makes
+the whole world kin more constantly visible. She was never more in her
+place than in visiting some poor tenant on the morrow of a great
+bereavement, or uttering words of comfort by the sick bed of some
+humble dependant. Men of all ranks who came in contact with her were
+struck with her thoughtful kindness, and her royal gift of an
+excellent memory never showed itself more frequently than in the
+manner in which she remembered and inquired after the fortunes and
+happiness of obscure persons related to those with whom she spoke.
+
+Her religious opinions were brought very little before the public.
+Beyond a deep sense of Providential guidance and of the comforting
+power of religion, little is to be gathered from her published
+utterances; but she seemed equally at home in the Scotch Presbyterian
+and the Anglican Episcopal Church, and her marked admiration for such
+men as Dean Stanley and Norman Macleod, and for the preaching of
+Principal Caird, gives some clue to the bias of her opinions. Her mind
+was not speculative but eminently practical, and while she patronised
+good works of the most various kinds, there is reason to believe that
+those which most appealed to her personal feelings were those which
+directly contributed to alleviate the sufferings, or promote the
+material welfare, of the poor. She devoted the greater part of her
+Jubilee present to institutions for providing nurses for the sick
+poor, and this is said to have been one of the charities in which she
+took the warmest and most constant interest.
+
+She is said not to have had any sympathy with the movement for the
+extension of political power to women, which became so conspicuous in
+her reign; but her own success in filling for sixty-three years the
+highest political position in the nation will always be quoted in its
+support. Considering, indeed, how comparatively small has been the
+number of reigning female Sovereigns, it is remarkable how many in
+modern times have shown themselves pre-eminently capable. Isabella of
+Spain, Catherine of Russia, Maria Theresa of Austria, and our own
+Elizabeth, all rise far above the level of ordinary Sovereigns. Some
+of these seem figures of a larger and stronger mould than Queen
+Victoria, but they governed under very different constitutional
+conditions, and, with one exception, there are serious blots on their
+memory. There are few sadder facts in history than that the pure and
+tender-hearted Spanish Queen should have been deeply tinged with the
+persecuting fanaticism of her age and country; that she should have
+consented to the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile, to the
+expulsion of the Moors from her dominions, to the first law in Europe
+establishing a practical censorship of the Press. The unscrupulous
+ambition, the shameless favouritism, the gross personal vices of
+Catherine, are as conspicuous as her high intelligence, her
+indomitable will, her majestic commanding power. The reign of
+Elizabeth is perhaps the most glorious in English history, but the
+character of that great Queen is lamentably tarnished by waywardness
+and caprice. Among purely constitutional Sovereigns Queen Anne holds a
+respectable, though certainly not a brilliant, place, and it may be
+added that much of the merit of the very constitutional though not
+very glorious reign of George II. is due to the excellent sense and
+judgment of Queen Caroline. In spite of the saying of Burke, the age
+of chivalry is not wholly dead. The sex of Queen Victoria no doubt
+gave an additional touch of warmth to the loyalty of her people, and
+many of the qualities that made her most popular are intensely, if not
+distinctively, feminine. They would not, however, have given her the
+place she will always hold in English history, if they had not been
+united with what men are accustomed to regard as more peculiarly
+masculine--a clear, well-balanced mind, singularly free from
+fanaticisms and exaggerations, excellently fitted to estimate rightly
+the true proportion of things.
+
+In the last years of her reign the political horizon greatly cleared.
+Lord Beaconsfield, during his later Ministries, obtained not only her
+fullest political confidence, but also won a warmer degree of personal
+friendship than she had bestowed on any Minister since the death of
+Lord Melbourne; and her relations with his successor, Lord Salisbury,
+appear to have been perfectly harmonious. The decisive rejection by
+the country of the Home Rule policy removed a great incubus from her
+mind, and she was fully in harmony with the strong Imperialist
+sentiments which now began to prevail in English thought, and
+especially with the warmer feeling towards our distant colonies which
+was one of its chief characteristics. Her own popularity also rapidly
+grew. She had keenly felt and bitterly resented the reproaches which
+had at one period been frequently brought against her for her neglect
+of social and ceremonial duties during many years of her widowhood.
+Her censors, she maintained, made no allowance for her loneliness, her
+advancing years, her feeble health, the overwhelming and incessant
+pressure of her more serious political duties. But her two Jubilees,
+bringing her once more into close touch with her people, put an end to
+these reproaches. The Queen found with pleasure and perhaps with
+surprise how capable she still was of performing great public
+functions, and the vast outburst of spontaneous loyalty and affection
+of which she became the object gave her deep and unconcealed pleasure.
+To those, however, who were closely in connection with her it was
+touching to observe the gracious and unaffected modesty with which she
+received the homage of her subjects. Flattery was one of the things
+she disliked the most, and all who knew her best were struck with the
+singularly modest view she always took of herself. But blending with
+this modesty, and even with a shyness which she never wholly
+conquered, was the craving of a deeply affectionate and womanly nature
+for sympathy, and this craving was now abundantly gratified.
+
+Still, with all this there was much that was melancholy in her later
+days. She had survived nearly all the intimacies of her youth. Death
+had made--especially in very recent times--many gaps in the circle of
+those who were nearest to her, and several of her children and of her
+children's husbands had preceded her to the tomb. Her sight had
+greatly failed. She was bowed down by physical infirmity, and her last
+year was saddened by a long, sanguinary, and inglorious war. Yet
+almost to the very end she continued with unabated courage to fulfil
+her daily task, and there was no sign that she had lost anything of
+her quick sympathy and her admirable judgment and tact. Her life was a
+most harmonious whole in which mind and character were happily
+attuned,
+
+    Like perfect music set to noble words.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[51] _Queen Victoria_, by Sidney Lee, p. 349.
+
+[52] Ollivier, _L'Empire Liberal_, vii. p. 455.
+
+[53] Sir Theodore Martin was asked by the Queen to give her a _precis_
+of a very long and unintelligible letter of Mr. Gladstone purporting to
+explain the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill (_Queen Victoria as I
+knew Her_, by Sir Theodore Martin).--ED.
+
+
+
+
+OLD-AGE PENSIONS
+
+
+There are many signs that the question of old-age pensions is destined
+to assume a great prominence in England; although it is probable that
+the large increase of national expenditure which is certain to follow
+the unhappy war in South Africa may, for some time, postpone actual
+legislation on the subject. The generation has passed away which
+witnessed the enormous abuses of Poor Law relief that existed, under
+the old English Poor Law, before 1834, and the rapid diminution of
+pauperism that was effected by the sterner administration introduced
+in that year.
+
+The principles of poor-law relief which were then recognised by the
+best minds in England have been somewhat forgotten. These principles
+were that, while in England provision is made for the support of all
+who are absolutely destitute, it is of the utmost importance that on
+the whole the condition of the pauper should be a less eligible one
+than that of an independent labourer; that nothing should be done that
+could diminish habits of thrift, forethought, and steady industry
+among the poor; nothing that could weaken their sense of the necessity
+of providing for their latter days, or of their duty of supporting,
+when they have the means, their aged parents and relations. In
+accordance with these principles it was laid down that outdoor relief
+should be either absolutely refused to the able-bodied or only
+granted under most exceptional circumstances; that the workhouse test,
+with its stringent, deterrent discipline, should be steadily
+maintained; that relaxations and special favours granted out of public
+funds should be limited, as far as possible, to cases of special
+calamity which it was impossible for any prudence or foresight to have
+averted.
+
+It would certainly be a great exaggeration to say that these
+principles have disappeared. Indeed, the robust, independent,
+self-respecting character which it was the object of the Manchester
+School to encourage is abundantly displayed in the gigantic Friendly
+and other working-class Co-operative Societies which have so largely
+increased in England during the last half-century. Two of these
+Friendly Societies--the Manchester Unity and the Foresters--have each
+of them more than seven hundred thousand members on their roll. At the
+same time, it is equally certain that in many quarters a different,
+and, in my opinion, very dangerous, spirit prevails. In England as
+elsewhere there is an increased tendency to aggrandise the functions
+of the State and to look to State aid or State control rather than
+individual or co-operative effort as the remedy of every evil. Social
+questions have assumed a greater prominence in politics; and, with the
+lowering of the franchise, the vague State Socialism, which, in
+different degrees, pervades most working-class politics, has given a
+bias to both parties in the State. It has become prominent in every
+election and has produced many rash pledges.
+
+The close connection between taxation and representation, which was
+once considered the cardinal principle of English Liberalism, has, in
+a marked degree, diminished, both in Imperial and local taxation. It
+used to be contended that those who chiefly paid should chiefly
+regulate, and that taxation should be as much as possible the
+voluntary grant of the taxpayers, restricted to their common purposes.
+But in many quarters a different belief has grown up. It is held that
+in the hands of a democracy taxation should be made the means of
+redressing the inequalities of fortune, ability, or industry; the
+preponderant class voting and spending money which another class are
+obliged to pay. The income-tax is so arranged that a large majority of
+the voters are exempt from its burden; a highly graduated system of
+death duties is now nearly the most prominent of our Imperial taxes;
+and the Local Government Act of 1894 has placed local taxation on the
+most democratic basis. The latter has given the power of voting rates
+to many who do not pay them; and, by abolishing the nominated, or
+ex-officio, guardians, and the plural voting of the larger ratepayers,
+it has almost destroyed the influence of property on local taxation.
+
+At the same time the doctrine has arisen, and is now sedulously
+propagated in England, that the State ought to undertake to provide at
+the public expense for all old persons, or at least for all deserving
+old persons, who have not succeeded in obtaining a sufficient
+livelihood for themselves; that this provision should not be regarded
+as an eleemosynary grant, but as a positive right; and that, in order
+to free it from the taint of pauperism, and take away from the
+recipient all reluctance to receive it, a new fund should be created,
+entirely distinct from poor-law relief, and administered by some other
+tribunal than the poor-law guardians.
+
+The claim has been supported on another ground. The immense
+improvement of the material condition of the English working classes
+during the last half-century is beyond all question; but it is much
+more evident among the young and the strong than among the old. The
+intense competition of modern industry, stimulated to the highest
+point by free trade, by the factory system, and by the vast
+development of machinery, has expelled the old and feeble from some of
+its most important fields; and the influence of trade-unions in
+enforcing, in each trade which they can control, a uniform and minimum
+wage, has obliged the employer to employ only the most efficient
+labour.
+
+The old man who could once easily obtain a little work at low wages
+now finds it much more difficult; and the recent legislation
+compelling the employer to compensate his workmen for all accidents
+that take place in his employment, even when those accidents are in no
+degree due to any negligence on his own part or on that of his
+servants, has acted in the same direction. Such serious obligations
+have been thrown on the employer in the more dangerous trades, that he
+is obliged in self-defence to restrict himself to the workmen who are
+least liable to accidents; and they are naturally those whose
+strength, activity, and eyesight are at their best. Among the
+recipients of poor-law relief the proportion of men over sixty-five is
+enormously great; and some figures which, in 1893, were brought before
+the Commission on the Aged Poor, made a great impression on the
+country. It was stated that in a single year 29.3 of the whole
+population over sixty-five were in receipt of poor-law relief in
+England and Wales; and assuming that a third part of these old persons
+belonged to the well-to-do, it was calculated that not much less than
+three in seven must fall into the ranks of pauperism.
+
+There has been much controversy about the accuracy of this statement;
+and, even if it be admitted, a good deal has been said to attenuate
+its force. In the poor-law system as it was reformed in 1834, it was a
+first principle that the workhouse, with its painful and degrading
+associations, was to be the chief form of poor-law relief, and that
+outdoor relief should only be granted on exceptional occasions and on
+stringent conditions. This provision has been gradually relaxed.
+Outdoor relief, which, in the eyes of the poor, carries with it very
+little of the discredit and dislike that gathers round the workhouse,
+is now by far the larger part of poor-law relief; and in many
+districts it is administered with great laxity.
+
+It has been proved by the clearest evidence that the immense majority
+of the aged and deserving poor who are in receipt of poor-law relief
+only receive it in the form of outdoor relief, and very often only in
+the form of medical relief, and that if they go to the workhouse it is
+only when their peculiar circumstances make it desirable for them to
+do so. Wherever a more stringent system of relief is imposed,
+pauperism invariably and rapidly decreases; and Mr. Loch, the
+Secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, has collected much
+evidence to show that, on the whole, old-age pauperism is diminishing,
+though it has not been diminishing at the same rate as pauperism under
+the age of sixty. The administration of the workhouses has also
+greatly improved; and the poor-law infirmaries are becoming hospitals
+which are largely resorted to in time of sickness by many who might
+easily avoid them. On the whole, old-age destitution is, and must be,
+a grave question for philanthropists; but there has been great
+exaggeration about its magnitude and its hardships.
+
+The expediency of devising a new and better method of providing for
+the destitute aged poor of deserving character has long been
+smouldering obscurely in English politics; but it obtained a real
+importance for the first time when a very strong Royal Commission,
+under the presidency of Lord Aberdare, was appointed, at the beginning
+of 1893, to inquire into the question. After long and careful inquiry,
+and after hearing a great multitude of witnesses, this Commission
+reported in the spring of 1895. The majority of the members, while
+recommending various reforms in the administration of the poor-law,
+reported decisively against any system of old-age pensions, either in
+the form of endowment or assisted assurance, as likely to do more harm
+than good; but a minority, which derived special importance from the
+presence of Mr. Chamberlain, refused to accept this decision as final,
+and urged that the question should be submitted to a smaller body of
+experts. In the election which took place in 1895 the question
+appeared frequently upon the platform, and many members on both sides
+of politics pledged themselves on the subject.
+
+The weight which is always attached to the speeches of Mr. Chamberlain
+gave a great impulse to the movement. He never countenanced the idea
+of universal old-age pensions, which was already advocated by many;
+but he strongly maintained that special provision, apart from the
+poor-law and in the shape of pensions, might, and ought to, be made
+for the old and deserving poor; he expressed his belief that such a
+measure 'would do more than anything else to secure the happiness of
+the working classes'; and he suggested as the most feasible scheme
+that 'whenever a man acquires for himself in a Friendly Society or
+any other society a pension of 2_s._ 6_d._ a week the State should
+come in and double that pension.' Mr. Chamberlain, however, did not
+insist on this precise proposal; but he gave the question a great
+prominence; and among politicians on both sides there was a manifest
+tendency to make party capital out of it.
+
+A purely non-party Committee, presided over by Lord Rothschild, and
+consisting mainly of distinguished financial authorities connected
+with the permanent Civil Service, and therefore removed from active
+politics, was appointed in 1896, in accordance with the recommendation
+of the Aberdare Commission, to inquire especially into the question of
+old-age pensions; and it reported in a document of conspicuous
+ability. It was unanimous in condemning as impracticable or dangerous
+all the schemes for such pensions that were brought before it; and it
+fully confirmed the views of the preceding Commission. The report, and
+the evidence on which it is based, clearly show the ways in which
+measures intended for the benefit of the working class may prove in
+the highest degree injurious to them.
+
+If the matter could have been decided by pure reasoning, this report
+might have been generally accepted as decisive. But many of the
+supporters of the Government had at the election made speeches in
+favour of old-age pensions. One of its most powerful members had
+thrown his weight into the scale. The idea had taken hold of great
+sections of the working classes. The trade-unions, that see in
+increasing old-age poverty the chief drawback to their policy of
+enforcing in each trade a uniform and minimum wage, were naturally
+delighted that the State should undertake, out of public funds, to
+remove their difficulty. A number of Bills dealing with the question
+had been introduced into the House of Commons by private members; and
+the reluctance of the Government to take it up had become a favourite
+form of party attack. The Government acted as perhaps most
+Governments, under the circumstances, would have done. While refusing
+to give any pledge, and repudiating any sympathy with the idea of
+universal pensions, and insisting that an encouragement of thrift
+should be an essential condition of any old-age pension scheme, they
+refused to admit that a false departure had been made; and they
+appointed a new Committee--of which the writer of these lines was a
+member--to report upon the best means of improving the condition of
+the aged deserving poor, and upon the feasibility of dealing with
+their case by old-age pensions.
+
+Mr. Chaplin, the President of the Local Government Board, an
+experienced and very popular member of the Cabinet, presided over the
+Committee; and the fact that he drew up the report of the majority
+gave that report its chief political importance. The Committee
+consisted largely of members who had already committed themselves
+deeply in favour of old-age pensions; and it will hardly be disputed
+in England that it carried with it much less financial and political
+weight than its predecessors; and that the majority report--which was
+carried by 9 to 4--is more remarkable for the boldness of its
+recommendations than for the cogency of its reasoning. It completely,
+and almost contemptuously, discarded the conclusions of the majority
+of the Aberdare Commission, and the unanimous opinion of the
+Rothschild Committee; and it recommended that old-age pensions,
+derived in part from Imperial and in part from local sources, and
+varying from 5_s._ to 7_s._ a week, should be granted to all the
+deserving poor who had attained the age of sixty-five and whose
+incomes did not exceed 10_s._ a week. It proposed that these pensions
+should be granted by committees established in every poor-law union
+and elected by the poor-law guardians; that they should be revised
+every three years; and that they should be distributed through the
+agency of the post-office.
+
+On the great difficulties that seemed so formidable to its
+predecessors it touched very lightly. How many of the poor were likely
+under the proposed system to become pensioners, and what burden of
+taxation was likely to be thrown on the State, were questions that
+were put aside as irrelevant to the inquiry. To meet the enormous
+difficulty of deciding upon the real merits, and of investigating the
+real circumstances, of the great masses of independent and industrious
+labourers who live in the manufacturing towns, or are constantly
+moving from one great centre of population to another, and circulating
+in quest of work through the whole extent of the Empire, it was
+suggested that the relief be confined to those who were resident in a
+single locality; and it was pointed out that a number of charities,
+endowed out of old legacies or donations, and applying to particular
+classes or districts, had come to be administered by the Charity
+Commissioners, and that in this restricted field they had been able to
+convert a large part of the income at their disposal from doles into
+permanent pensions.
+
+The thrift test and the character test, which previous inquirers had
+found it almost impossible to establish on a satisfactory basis, were
+defined on the loosest lines. The pensioner must not, during the
+preceding twenty years, have been sentenced to penal servitude or
+imprisonment without the option of a fine; he must not, during the
+same period of time, have been in receipt of poor-law relief 'other
+than medical relief or unless under circumstances of a wholly
+exceptional character'; and he must have 'endeavoured to the best of
+his ability, by his industry and by the exercise of reasonable
+providence, to make provision for himself and those immediately
+dependent on him.'
+
+The extreme vagueness and the extreme elasticity of such provisions
+are sufficiently manifest; and it is difficult to see how they can
+give any real assistance in practical legislation; while they leave
+the door open to the largest and most lavish expenditure. I have
+endeavoured in a minority report to deal with these questions at
+somewhat greater length than my present space will admit; but a few
+pages may suffice to give an outline of the case of those who believe
+the new policy to be both mistaken and dangerous.
+
+Nothing is more certain or more cheering in the condition of modern
+England than the extraordinary diminution that has taken place, during
+the present generation, in pauperism. It began with the reform of the
+poor law in 1834; and although it has been found possible to relax
+greatly the stringency of the poor-law regulations that were then
+made, it has steadily continued. Much of this is due to the increase
+in the rate of wages which has taken place in most departments of
+English industry, and which has been accompanied by a great decrease
+in the cost of most of the chief necessaries of life, as well as by a
+considerable reduction in the hours of work. Sir Robert Giffen, in the
+very remarkable paper which he published, in 1883, on the condition of
+the working classes in England during the preceding fifty years, has
+shown that in every class of work in which it is possible to make a
+comparison the wages of the labourer have in these fifty years risen
+at least 20 per cent., and in most cases between 50 and 100 per cent.;
+and he has clearly demonstrated that no other section of the community
+has obtained so large a proportion of the increase of the national
+wealth, and improved in so great a degree in material prosperity.
+
+But the mere increase of wages is but one element of this improvement.
+The very mainspring of the prosperity of the great masses of the
+British working classes is to be found in their increased sobriety,
+and in the habits of thrift and providence that have followed the
+spread of education. The statistics of the Friendly Societies, the
+Industrial and Provident Societies, the Building Societies, the
+savings-banks, and of countless other institutions, created by
+voluntary working-class effort for the purpose of insuring against
+sickness or death, and providing working-class investments, attest in
+the clearest manner the rapid growth of provident and thrifty habits
+among the wage-earning classes. In no other respect is the improvement
+of the nation so marked and so indisputable and no element in the
+national character is more important to its prosperity and to its
+enduring greatness. In the evidence that was brought before our
+Committee, it was shown that since 1849 the pauperism of Great Britain
+had been reduced from 62.7 per 1,000 to 26.2 per 1,000, if lunatics
+and vagrants are included, to 22.8 per 1,000, if lunatics and vagrants
+are excluded.
+
+The first, and most vital, condition of any sound legislation for the
+relief of poverty is that it should not impair these industrial
+qualities, or weaken these vast voluntary organisations of self-help
+which are their result. Can it be said that the old-age pension policy
+is compatible with this condition?
+
+It proposes to open, in addition to the existing system of poor
+relief, a new fund, amounting to many millions of pounds a year, and
+drawn from compulsory taxation for the purpose of subsidising simple
+poverty; a fund to which it is to be rather creditable than otherwise
+to resort; a fund which is intended to deal, not with exceptional
+calamity, but with that which springs from the mere efflux of time,
+and which is, beyond all others, the most normal and most easily
+foreseen. It proposes to teach the whole working population to look to
+the State, and not to themselves, for the provision for their old age,
+and for the old age of those who might be dependent on them, and thus
+to destroy the most powerful of all motives to thrift--the very
+mainspring of productive and self-sacrificing industry. And it
+proposes to do this at a time when wages are higher than they have
+ever been before; when voluntary societies for securing the poor from
+want are flourishing and increasing as they have never done before;
+when the rapid decline of pauperism is one of the most marked and most
+universally recognised signs of national improvement. Can it be
+seriously believed that the addition of many millions a year to the
+State funds directly employed in the relief of poverty will, in the
+long run, tend to diminish pauperism or to encourage self-reliance and
+thrift?
+
+Mr. Chamberlain and the other more considerable advocates of old-age
+pensions clearly see that if such pensions are to be of real value
+they must discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving; and
+they believe that they may have the effect of stimulating, instead of
+weakening, thrift. For this purpose several schemes have been devised.
+
+The most popular Continental method of achieving this end is by a law
+obliging the working man in early life to insure against old age, and
+by supplementing the income derived from this insurance by a State
+subsidy. In Germany, where this system is actually carried out, the
+old-age pension is derived from three sources--viz. compulsory
+insurance by the workers, compulsory contribution by the employer, and
+a State subsidy. Compulsory insurance found for many years a powerful
+English advocate in Canon Blackley; and it has been recommended by a
+recent inquiry in Holland, which, however, refused to propose any
+system of old-age pensions. According to the best accounts, the German
+system has been far from successful either economically or
+politically; and it has certainly not prevented Socialism from
+becoming one of the great dangers of the State. Into this question,
+however, it is needless to enter, as it is now universally admitted in
+England that compulsory insurance for old age is an impossibility; for
+it would certainly be repudiated by the working classes.
+
+A large group of proposals are to the effect that old-age pensions
+should be granted to all poor persons over the age of sixty-five whose
+total income is less than 10_s._ a week, provided that a certain
+portion of that income consists of a fixed annuity acquired by their
+own industry and thrift. It is urged that in most of the great
+branches of industry a deserving man in his earlier and stronger years
+could easily earn such an annuity; and it is suggested that the State
+should double it, or add to it sufficient to make it up to 10_s._ a
+week, or supplement it by a fixed grant of 2_s._ 6_d._, or 5_s._, or
+even 7_s._ a week.
+
+The objections to such schemes are very serious. It is obvious that if
+they encourage a workman to save up to the amount required to secure a
+pension, they would have a directly opposite effect as soon as that
+amount had been attained. The first result of any addition to his
+income would then be to disqualify him for a pension. It is also
+obvious that the pensioner of sixty-five would have a strong
+inducement to abstain from the work he could easily do, and that if he
+continued to do it he would compete on exceptionally favourable terms
+with the workman who, though he had passed the prime of life, was not
+yet entitled to a pension, restricting his means of employment and
+beating down his wages. Many of the most necessitous and deserving
+poor would also be left unrelieved.
+
+Although it is true that in the more flourishing trades men could
+easily in early life save out of their wages a sufficient sum to
+acquire this annuity, there are large fields of industry in which such
+a saving would be almost or absolutely impossible. We have had
+melancholy evidence of how utterly insufficient most forms of women's
+wages are to provide the needed margin. The same thing is true of the
+agricultural labourer in the more depressed districts in England and
+in large tracts of Ireland and Scotland. Even in the more remunerative
+employments innumerable special circumstances would prevent a thrifty
+and deserving man from obtaining this annuity. Certainly no one is
+more deserving of compassion and State aid than the widow and young
+orphans of a working man; but the scheme we are considering would not
+only not help them, but would most seriously injure them. It is a
+direct incentive to the workman to sink his savings in an annuity
+which would terminate with his own life.
+
+The whole policy, indeed, of attempting to turn all working-class
+savings into this one channel is a false one; and it has been shown
+that no kind of saving is in fact less popular among working men than
+the purchase of a deferred annuity. I may here be allowed to quote a
+few lines from my own report:
+
+'In the infinitely various conditions of a working-man's life thrift
+will take many forms, and an attempt to prescribe a single form is
+eminently injudicious. The whole life-plan of a farmer whose farm will
+remain with him to the end will be different from that of an artisan
+or a domestic servant whose power of earning a livelihood depends
+entirely upon his physical strength. The former will probably find it
+most profitable to expend his savings on the improvement of his farm.
+Where the system of peasant proprietorship prevails most agricultural
+thrift is directed to the purchase and enlargement of farms. In
+Ireland it is largely directed to the purchase of tenant right, or to
+enabling the younger members of the family to emigrate.
+
+'Nor is it true that even the artisan will find the purchase of an
+annuity the best thing to be aimed at. To buy a house or some
+furniture; to start a small business; to expend his savings in tiding
+over periods of slack or failing work; to avail himself of the
+advantage which some fluctuation in the market gives to the man who
+can transport himself promptly to a new locality or a new business is
+often far more to his advantage. Above all, money expended in settling
+his family is often his best policy as well as the course which is
+most beneficial to the community. At present a large proportion of
+working men look forward to their children to help them in their old
+age, and make it a main object of their lives to place them in a
+position to do so. It does not seem to me a wise thing for the State
+either to emancipate children from this duty or to induce every
+married working man to sink his savings in an annuity which will end
+with his life and from which his widow and children can derive no
+benefit. It is certainly not for the advantage of the country that in
+selecting between alternative ways of providing for old age he should
+be induced to choose that which throws the greatest burden on the
+State. With the vast increase of population, with the great
+fluctuations of modern industry, and with the rapid development of the
+colonies, it is extremely desirable both in the interest of the
+working men and of the State that they should be induced to transfer
+themselves from congested towns and from exhausted industries to new
+fields. A general pension system would certainly contribute most
+powerfully to prevent them from doing so.'
+
+It has been proposed by others that the pension fund should be placed
+in the hands of Friendly or Benefit Societies, and that they should be
+intrusted with its administration, or that subscription to such
+societies for a certain number of years should be taken by the State
+as the thrift test. On the first proposal it is sufficient to say,
+that these great voluntary societies are themselves opposed to it; for
+if they were directly subsidised by the State, they would be obliged
+to submit to a State control of their management and their finances
+which they do not desire. It is observed that only a very small
+proportion of the subscribers to these societies ever find it
+necessary to come upon the poor rates; and if a system of old-age
+pensions were confined to these limits, it would act in the most
+unequal manner. Their members are drawn in a far larger proportion
+from the lucrative and flourishing trades than from those which are
+struggling and underpaid. Few women belong to them. In Ireland, which
+is the poorest part of the Empire, Friendly Societies scarcely exist;
+and the same thing is true of large districts in Wales and Scotland.
+The main result of such proposals would be to concentrate the new
+State fund for the relief of poverty on the richest parts of the
+Empire, and on the trades that need it the least.
+
+The extreme difficulty of finding any efficient test of thrift is very
+evident; and those proposed by a large number of the advocates of
+old-age pensions are so easy as to be almost worthless. Some consider
+it sufficient that a man has for a certain number of years not been in
+receipt of poor-law relief, except medical relief or relief granted
+under 'exceptional circumstances.' Others would accept the mere fact
+that a man has lived to be sixty-five, as the drunken and disreputable
+workman seldom lives so long. A large number of resolutions have
+condemned Mr. Chaplin's report on the grounds that old-age pensions
+ought not to be confined to the 'deserving' poor; that they ought to
+begin at an earlier age than sixty-five; that they ought to be
+administered by a body totally unconnected with the poor law, so as to
+carry with them no taint of pauperism or eleemosynary relief. They
+ought, it is said, to be universal; to be looked on as a matter of
+strict right; to be considered as of the same nature as the pension
+given to the soldier or the Civil Servant.
+
+It is obvious that all this may carry us very far. It is estimated
+that some of the most popular proposals would involve an annual
+expenditure of considerably more than twenty millions of
+pounds--making allowance for the saving that might be effected in the
+ordinary poor-law relief, but not counting the cost of administration.
+And this expenditure would be a growing one; and once accepted it
+could hardly be withdrawn. The vast addition to the national debt that
+might follow a great European war or the great shrinkage of the
+national income that might easily follow some revolution in trade or
+manufacture, might render the burden of taxation incomparably more
+serious than at present; but once the great mass of the population had
+learned to regard State support in old age as their normal prospect
+and their inalienable right, it would be impossible, without producing
+a social revolution, to recede. All the advantages gained by
+generations of economical administration of the national finance would
+be nullified; while the certain result of this crushing addition to
+taxation would be to weaken incalculably the spirit of thrift,
+providence, and self-reliance, and at the same time to lower wages, by
+removing one of the great considerations by which they are regulated.
+And this reduction of wages would fall not only on the recipient of
+the pension, but also on multitudes who would never live to attain it.
+Nothing can be more certain than that a general system of pensions
+attached to the labour of the wage-earner must lower wages, at least
+among all those who are approaching the pension age; while it would
+prevent or retard their natural increase over a far wider area.
+
+It would also most certainly bring with it the gravest danger of
+corruption. It would not be easy to secure the pure and the impartial
+administration of these vast funds; but the political dangers would be
+much more serious. It is proposed that the pension system should be
+first introduced on a small scale, but gradually extended till it
+included all the aged poor, or at least all who were deserving. Such a
+question would infallibly pass into the competitions of party warfare.
+It would become in most constituencies one of the most prominent of
+electioneering tests. Rival candidates would be competing for the
+votes of a wage-earning electorate who had a direct pecuniary interest
+in increasing or extending pensions and in relaxing the conditions on
+which they are given. Can it be doubted that in many cases their first
+object would be to outbid one another, and that national and party
+politics would soon be forced into a demoralising race of
+extravagance?
+
+I cannot conclude without protesting against the supposition that
+those who think with me are indifferent to the great evil of old-age
+destitution and propose nothing for its relief. The committees which
+have most clearly pointed out the dangers of old-age pensions have
+also urged, that within the lines of our present poor-law system it is
+quite possible to do much, by an improved classification, to
+distinguish among the recipients of poor-law relief between the
+respectable and the worthless. Much has already been done, and in the
+most important unions the guardians have introduced a large amount of
+classification by merit. As I have already said, the immense majority
+of the respectable aged poor are now relieved only in their own homes
+or in comfortable infirmaries. The severe test of absolute destitution
+has in practice been greatly relaxed; there is a legal provision
+preventing those who are receiving help from Friendly Societies from
+being disqualified for relief; husbands and wives are no longer
+separated in the workhouse; and in some unions of which we had
+evidence much more has been done. This, however, depends too much on
+the will of particular Boards of Guardians, and there are in
+consequence great inequalities of treatment. The condition of the
+deserving poor may be greatly improved by relaxation in points of
+hours, discipline, and visitors, and by workhouse arrangements
+securing more universally that paupers who have lived respectable
+lives should not be obliged to mix with the drunken, the disreputable,
+and the hopelessly idle. And, though extensions of outdoor relief
+should be carefully watched, and entail great dangers, yet under wise
+and strict administration something more may be done in this
+direction.
+
+But all this should be regarded as essentially poor-law relief, and
+not as the recognition of a claim of right for services supposed to
+have been rendered to the community. No form of State Socialism is
+more dangerous than the doctrine which has been countenanced by Prince
+Bismarck, and which is making many disciples in England--namely, that
+an industrious man, who has pursued his course in life with perfect
+independence, made his own contracts, chosen his own work, and been
+paid for it by stipulated wages, is entitled, if he fails in obtaining
+a sufficiency for his old age, to be placed as a 'soldier of industry'
+in the same category as State servants, and to receive like them, not
+on the ground of compassion, but of right, a State pension drawn from
+the taxation of the community. There is no real analogy between the
+relief that is very properly granted to such workmen in their
+destitution, and the pensions--largely of the nature of deferred
+pay--that are given by the State or by private employers, under the
+terms of distinct contracts, and for specific services duly rendered,
+to those who have entered into their employment and placed themselves
+under their control.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Aberdare Commission, 303
+
+Addington, 273
+
+American Revolution, 34-37, 55-57, 77, 78
+
+Anne, Queen, 295
+
+Anti-Semite movement, 116-121, 123-125, 128
+
+Arnold, Dr., 251
+
+Australia, 58
+
+Austria, 116, 145
+
+
+Bacon, 28, 94, 101
+
+Bayard, Mr., 48
+
+Bayle, 97
+
+Beaconsfield, Earl of (B. Disraeli), 126, 151, 153, 207, 211, 214,
+    215, 217, 283;
+  imperialism, 46;
+  policy regarding Eastern Crisis, 222;
+  relations with Lord Derby, 223;
+  Queen Victoria's regard for, 296
+
+Beer, George, 56
+
+Bentham, J., 43, 101
+
+Bernard, Claude, 121
+
+Bismarck, Prince, 288, 289, 317
+
+Blackley, Canon, 310
+
+Blennerhassett, Lady, 131-133, 145, 148, 149
+
+Blomfield, Bishop, 263
+
+Bossuet, 96-98
+
+Boulanger, General, 116
+
+Bright, 207, 208
+
+British Empire, growth, 51, 53, 64;
+  defence, 61, 65;
+  unity, 45, 48, 51, 62, 67
+
+Browning, Robert, 105, 251
+
+Buckle, H.T., 29, 100-102, 251, 269
+
+Burke, Edmund, 28, 54, 55, 151, 295
+
+Butler's 'Analogy,' 91, 92
+
+
+Caird, Principal, 294
+
+Canada, 59, 60
+
+Canning, 151, 174, 188, 189, 198, 199;
+  attitude towards Catholic Question, 156, 160, 161, 166-170, 172, 188;
+  quoted, 213
+
+Cardan, quoted, 10
+
+Carlyle, Thomas, 47, 91, 216, 247, 251;
+  school of, 29;
+  style, 105;
+  characteristics, 106-113;
+  teaching, 107, 108, 110-115
+
+Caroline, Queen, 295
+
+Castlereagh, Viscount, 156, 157, 160, 161, 167, 169, 170, 188
+
+Catherine, of Russia, Empress, 291, 295
+
+Catholic Emancipation, 78-86, 152, 153, 157-174, 187-190, 193, 194, 197;
+  _see also under_ Ireland
+
+Cato, 15
+
+Chamberlain, Joseph, 303-304, 309
+
+Charlemagne, 17-19, 266
+
+Charlemont, 73, 81
+
+Chartism, 108, 115
+
+Chatham, Lord, 85, 86, 138, 151, 157-160, 165, 186, 273
+
+Chaucer, 18, 117
+
+Chivalry, 17, 19, 295
+
+Chrysostom, Dio, 16
+
+Church, Dean, 250, 265
+
+Clarendon, Lord, 244, 246, 280
+
+Cobden, Richard, 44, 46, 62
+
+Colenso, Bishop, 272
+
+Coleridge, 22, 96, 112, 147
+
+Colonial policy of Great Britain, 43-46, 52, 53, 55-61
+
+Colonies, British:
+  defence, 49, 56, 65;
+  federation, 63, 64;
+  governors, 52, 54, 60;
+  representation, 51, 65, 66;
+  trade, 47, 56, 63-65, 225;
+  value of, 47-50;
+  attachment to the Crown, 277
+
+Comte, 100
+
+Constant, Benjamin, 142, 144, 148
+
+Constitutional sovereignty, 277
+
+Co-operation, 108, 217, 299
+
+Croker, 177, 178
+
+Crusades, 18, 19, 266
+
+Curchod, Mlle., _see_ Necker, Mme.
+
+Curwen's Act, 177
+
+
+Dalling, Lord, 151
+
+Darwin and his teaching, 90, 101, 114, 247, 251
+
+Davies, Sir John, quoted, 70
+
+Delane, J.T., 243
+
+De Quincey, 107
+
+Derby, 14th Earl of, 201, 202, 204-206, 208-210, 212, 214, 215
+
+Derby, 15th Earl of:
+  career, 200, 205-213, 215, 217, 218, 222-224, 234, 235;
+  views on Church questions, 205, 210, 214, 232, 233;
+  on Reform Bill, 210;
+  Indian policy, 205, 209, 210;
+  foreign policy, 212, 213, 217-224;
+  colonial policy, 208, 224, 225, 228-230;
+  attitude towards Home Rule, 234;
+  contemporary opinion of him, 206-209, 211-213, 219, 220;
+  marriage 215;
+  interest in social questions, 205, 206, 212, 216, 217, 224, 235;
+  in working men, 205, 206, 210, 216, 217, 237;
+  tastes, 239, 240;
+  conversation, 240, 241;
+  estimate of his talents and character, 202-204, 207, 209, 212, 217,
+    219-224;
+  speeches, 202, 205, 211, 212, 214, 215, 217, 222-224, 229, 234-236
+
+Dicey, Professor 89
+
+Disraeli, B., _see_ Beaconsfield
+
+Duigenan, 169, 174
+
+
+Eastern Question, Lord Derby's views on, 218-223
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, 242, 243, 246, 247
+
+Education, popular, 108, 185
+
+Eldon, Lord, 160, 174, 189, 190, 192, 253
+
+Elizabeth, Queen, 291, 295;
+  inscription on tomb of, 187
+
+Ellenborough, Lord, 208, 209
+
+Emerson, R.W., 96, 104
+
+Emigration, 49, 50, 53, 108
+
+Erasmus, 257
+
+'Essays and Reviews,' 90
+
+
+Faber, 250
+
+Factory legislation, 108
+
+Federation, 63, 64, 225
+
+Feudalism, 17, 69, 110
+
+Fitzwilliam, Lord, 85
+
+Flood, 73, 81
+
+Foster, Leslie, 195
+
+Fox, 158, 162, 174
+
+France, 73, 97, 98, 116
+
+Franklin, Benjamin, 94
+
+_Fraser's Magazine_, 104
+
+Free Trade, 44, 45, 47, 63, 64, 78, 225
+
+French Revolution, 28, 37, 38, 82, 139, 141, 142
+
+Froude, J.A., 251, 269
+
+
+Galdos' 'Gloria,' 117
+
+George II., 295
+
+George III. and Catholic Emancipation, 85, 86, 157-162, 194
+
+George IV., as Prince Regent, 162, 163, 165, 166;
+  as King, 188-191, 194
+
+German literature, 146, 147
+
+Germany, 106, 107, 116, 118, 145, 260, 262, 310, 317
+
+Gibbon, 3, 134, 263, 264
+
+Giffen, Sir Robert, 307, 308
+
+Gladstone, W.E., 214, 246, 249, 250, 283, 286-288
+
+Goethe, 107, 147
+
+Gordon, General, 286
+
+Goulburn, 196, 197
+
+Grattan, 78, 81, 82, 84, 161, 163, 164, 166, 168-171, 174, 186, 187,
+    195, 197
+
+Grenville, George, 36, 56, 57
+
+Grenville, Lord, 158, 161, 162, 166
+
+Greville, Charles, 206, 207, 209, 243
+
+Grey, Lord, 166, 280
+
+Grote, 251, 269
+
+Guizot, 151, 244
+
+Gustavus III., King of Sweden, 138
+
+
+Hallam, A., 96, 251, 269
+
+Harcourt, Sir William, quoted, 290
+
+Hastings, Warren, 54, 55
+
+Haussonville, M. d', 134, 138
+
+Hawkesbury, Lord, 161
+
+Hawtrey, Provost, 265
+
+Heber, Bishop, 255
+
+High Church movement, 90, 92, 249-251, 270
+
+Hippisley, Sir John, 163, 169
+
+Historians, qualities requisite, 2, 4-6, 10-12;
+  motto for, 10;
+  scientific school, 2-4;
+  literary, 3;
+  methods, 7, 8, 22, 23;
+  applied to religion, 97-99;
+  eighteenth century, 22, 23;
+  fatalist school, 29, 30;
+  individualist school, 29, 31
+
+History:
+  biographical element, 7, 9;
+  individual influences, 12, 13;
+  fiction and, 20;
+  accident as affecting, 31, 100;
+  of institutions, 27, 28;
+  of revolutions, 29, 30, 34-38;
+  speculations, 32, 33;
+  advantages of studying, 38-40;
+  moral lessons, 40, 42
+
+Hobbes, 94, 98, 99
+
+Home Rule, _see under_ Ireland
+
+Homer, 16, 22
+
+
+Ideals, varying popular, 14-19
+
+Imperial Institute, 43
+
+Imperialism, 46-51, 63, 64, 296
+
+India, 44, 46-48, 54, 55, 57, 58, 61, 62, 277
+
+Ireland (_see also_ Ulster):
+  invasions, 69;
+  rebellions, 71, 82, 83, 85, 157;
+  influence of the Reformation, 70;
+  under the Stuarts, 71;
+  trade, 71, 72, 75, 78;
+  effects of English Revolution, 71, 72;
+  of American Revolution, 77, 78;
+  of French Revolution, 82;
+  Young's views on, 76, 77;
+  Catholics and Protestants, 70-79, 81-87;
+  Volunteer movement, 78, 87;
+  political agitation, 77, 78, 82, 87, 88;
+  union with Great Britain, 74, 75, 81, 83-85, 157;
+  Catholic Emancipation, 81-86, 157-174, 189, 194-198;
+  corruption, 175-179, 181, 183;
+  discontent, 165, 183, 184, 189, 194;
+  tithe commutation, 185-187;
+  Church disestablishment, 214, 215, 250, 283;
+  land tenure, 70, 75-77, 86, 87;
+  landlords, 75-77, 79, 86, 87;
+  Home Rule, 25, 87-89, 234, 246, 286, 296;
+  Queen Victoria's visit, 290, 291;
+  present condition, 86, 87;
+  representation in Parliament, 86
+
+Irish Acts of Parliament,
+  of settlement, 71;
+  octennial, 77;
+  of 1793, 85, 158, 159;
+  of union, 74, 75, 81, 83-85
+
+Irish Parliament, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77-83, 85
+
+Irishmen, United, 81, 84, 85
+
+Isabella of Spain, Queen, 295
+
+Italian art, 103
+
+Italy, 97, 98, 145, 146
+
+
+Jefferson, quoted, 37, 38
+
+Jeffrey, 107
+
+Jewish type,
+  stability of, 120, 121;
+  trade, 118, 119, 121;
+  writings, modern investigation of, 8, 9, 257-259, 261, 262, 271, 272
+
+Jews,
+  calumnies against, 117, 118;
+  characteristics, 118-130;
+  code, 121;
+  compared with other tribes, 119;
+  continuity of race, 119, 120;
+  distinguished, 126-129;
+  persecution of, 116-121, 123-126;
+  return of, to Palestine, 129, 130;
+  Milman's 'History of the', 257, 258, 262, 272
+
+
+Kant, Immanuel, 92, 147, 247
+
+Keats, John, 256
+
+Keble, John, 250, 270
+
+Kruger, President, 226-228
+
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, quoted, 22
+
+Leroy, Beaulieu, M. Anatole, 116-128
+
+Lewis, Sir G. Cornewall, 45, 153, 246, 273
+
+Liverpool, Lord, 156, 166, 168, 182, 188, 192-194, 197-199
+
+Lloyd, Dr., 192
+
+Locke, 96, 101
+
+Lockhart, 255
+
+Loughborough, Lord, 186
+
+Louis Napoleon, _see_ Napoleon III.
+
+Lyall, Sir Alfred, 240
+
+
+Macaulay, Lord, 3, 6, 8, 55, 204, 246, 251, 268, 269, 272, 273
+
+Macleod, Norman, 294
+
+Malmesbury, Lord, 206, 210
+
+Manchester School, 44, 45, 47, 50, 299
+
+Marie Antoinette, Queen, 140, 141
+
+Martin, Sir Theodore, 287
+
+Masson's 'Life of Milton,' 132
+
+Melbourne, Lord, 282, 296
+
+Mill, James, 43, 55
+
+Mill, John Stuart, 90, 96, 206, 210, 251
+
+Milman, Dean,
+  career, 253, 256, 262, 263, 271-274;
+  dramatist, 253;
+  poet, 254, 255;
+  translator, 256;
+  hymns, 255;
+  historian, 257-270;
+  critic, 252, 256-261, 263-267, 269;
+  learning, 269;
+  style, 268, 269;
+  views on miracles, 258-260;
+  on German criticism, 260-262;
+  on Christianity, 268;
+  on Tractarian movement, 270;
+  on clerical subscription, 271;
+  Mr. Reeve and, 246;
+  Dean Stanley and, 271;
+  friendships, 252, 273;
+  private correspondence, 253;
+  social gifts, 272, 273;
+  characteristics, 252, 253, 257, 265, 266, 268, 269, 271, 272-274;
+  works, 252-270, 272, 273;
+  portrait, 274
+
+Milman, Arthur, 252
+
+Milner, Bishop, 163, 164
+
+Milton, 132
+
+Mohammedanism, rise of, 32, 101
+
+Molyneux, 74
+
+Monasticism, 24
+
+Montesquieu, 132, 136
+
+Montmorin, Mme, de, 139
+
+Moral standard, changes in, 14-19, 266
+
+Murray, 254
+
+
+Napoleon I., 142-146, 149
+
+Napoleon III., 280, 288
+
+Narbonne, Louis de, 138-141
+
+Necker, Mme., 134, 135, 142
+
+Necker, Monsieur, 133, 138, 140, 144, 146, 149
+
+Necker, Germaine, _see_ Stael, Mme. de
+
+Newcastle, Duke of, 45, 189
+
+Newman, Cardinal, 90, 96, 249-251, 269, 270
+
+
+O'Connell, 164, 165, 171, 174, 189, 192, 193, 286
+
+Old-age pensions, 307, 309, 311-316;
+  proposals for, 300, 309, 310, 313;
+  Royal Commission, 303;
+  Rothschild Committee, 304, 305;
+  Chaplin Committee, 305, 307
+
+Orangemen, 84, 173, 189, 190
+
+
+Palestine, return of Jews to, 129, 130
+
+Paley, 95, 260
+
+Palmerston, Lord, 46, 178, 206-209, 211, 246, 279-282
+
+Parker, editor of Peel Correspondence, 153, 156, 192
+
+Parnell, C.S., 186
+
+Parnell Commission, 88, 89
+
+Parsons, 73, 84
+
+Pasteur, 121
+
+Pauperism, diminution of, 298-309
+
+Peel, Sir Lawrence, 156
+
+Peel, Sir Robert,
+  education, 154, 155;
+  career, 151, 153-156, 168, 172, 177, 187, 188, 194;
+  abolition of Corn Laws, 152, 153;
+  Irish Secretary, 156, 157, 167, 174-187;
+  relations with O'Connell, 174;
+  correspondence, 153, 173, 175-185, 189, 190, 191, 197-199;
+  Croker and, 177, 178;
+  advocates unsectarian education for Ireland, 185, 190;
+  Catholic Emancipation, 152, 153, 168-174, 187, 189-191, 193-195, 197-199;
+  financial measures, 187, 194, 195;
+  patronage, 178-183, 191, 192;
+  police force organised, 184, 185;
+  Home Secretary, 188-198;
+  parliamentary skill, 152, 153, 157, 181, 191;
+  debating powers, 172, 173;
+  Queen Victoria and, 282, 286;
+  recantations, 152, 153, 187, 193, 194;
+  estimate of his character and abilities, 151-154, 156, 157, 172, 181, 191
+
+Perceval, 155, 156, 159-161, 165, 166
+
+Pitt, William, _see_ Chatham
+
+Pliny, quoted, 102
+
+Plunket, 84, 168, 174, 188
+
+Pobedonosteff, 117
+
+Pole, Wellesley, 168
+
+Poor-law relief,
+  improvement in, 316, 317;
+  principles of, 298, 299
+
+Portland, Duke of, 159-161
+
+Portugal, Jews in, 120, 121
+
+Prince Consort, 278-280, 282, 284
+
+Prince Regent, _see_ George IV
+
+Prison reform, Carlyle's views on, 114
+
+Pusey, 250
+
+
+'Quarterly Review,' 256, 257
+
+
+Rationalism in Europe, author's History of, 103
+
+Redesdale, Lord, 175, 181, 182, 186
+
+Reeve, Henry:
+  education, 243;
+  career, 243, 245, 246;
+  editor of _Edinburgh Review_, 242, 246, 247;
+  historical knowledge, 246;
+  views on Home Rule, 246;
+  linguistic talent, 243;
+  literary judgment, 246, 247;
+  religious and philosophical views, 247;
+  political and social influence, 242, 244-246;
+  friendships, 243, 244, 247, 248;
+  writings of, 242-244, 247;
+  closing days, 248
+
+Reform Bills, 210, 211, 213
+
+Reformation,
+  causes of the, 29, 30;
+  effect in Ireland, 70
+
+Revolution,
+  American, 34-37;
+  effects of, in Ireland, 77, 78
+
+Revolution,
+  English, effect of, in Ireland, 71, 72;
+  on trade, 72, 74
+
+Revolutions, history of, 29, 30, 34-38
+
+Richmond, Duke of, 165, 167, 187
+
+Ristori, Mme., 245
+
+Rocca, 148, 149
+
+Rogers, Sir Frederick, 45, 46
+
+Roumania, anti-Semite movement in, 116, 118
+
+Rousseau, 96, 132, 136
+
+Ruskin, 251
+
+Russell, Lord John, 46, 47, 211-213, 241, 246, 263, 280, 281, 285
+
+Russia, anti-Semite movement in, 116-118, 124
+
+
+Salisbury, Lord, 276, 296
+
+Saurin, 165, 168, 169, 174, 183, 188
+
+Schiller, 147
+
+Schleswig-Holstein question, 281, 284, 285
+
+Scotland, Act of Union with, 74
+
+Shaftesbury, Lord, 206, 217
+
+Shelley, P.B., 256, 257
+
+Sidmouth, Lord, 158, 188
+
+Smith, Goldwin, 44, 151
+
+Socialism, 299, 310
+
+Spain, 73, 97, 98, 117, 120, 121, 124, 125
+
+Spencer, Herbert, 90, 109, 247
+
+Stael, Baron de, 138, 140, 142
+
+Stael, Mme. de., parentage, 133, 134;
+  personal appearance, 135;
+  career, 134-138, 142, 145, 148-150;
+  devotion to her father, 138;
+  friendships, 138, 139, 142, 145;
+  literary works, 136, 141, 142, 145-150;
+  Napoleon I., views on, 143, 144;
+  political influence, 139, 140, 142, 144;
+  religious views, 136, 149;
+  travels, 145, 146;
+  characteristics, 136, 137, 141, 145, 148, 149
+
+Stanley, Dean, 251, 260, 271, 294
+
+Stanley, Lord, _see_ Derby, 15th Earl of
+
+Stockmar, Baron, 278
+
+Sullivan, Sir Arthur, 254
+
+
+Tait, Archbishop, 283
+
+Talleyrand, 134, 139, 142, 144
+
+Taxation of American Colonies, 34-36, 56, 57;
+  democratic principles of, 300
+
+Taylor, Sir Henry, 45, 46
+
+Tennyson, Lord, 90, 251
+
+Tocqueville, 242-244
+
+Trade,
+  Colonial, 47, 56, 63-65;
+  Indian, 47;
+  Irish, 71, 72, 75, 78;
+  Jewish, 118, 119, 121;
+  affected by English Revolution, 72
+
+Transportation to Australia, 58
+
+Transvaal affairs, 225-232, 286
+
+Trinity College, Dublin, 90-92, 96-100, 103
+
+
+Ulster, 70, 77, 78, 83, 84
+
+United Irishmen, 81, 84, 85
+
+
+Voltaire, 7, 96, 121, 135
+
+Volunteer movement in Ireland, 78, 87
+
+Victoria, Queen:
+  relations with her Ministers, 279-283, 286-288, 296;
+  memorandum on foreign affairs, 279, 280;
+  political influence, 277, 278, 280, 282-286, 288;
+  patronage, 278;
+  views on foreign policy, 279-281, 283-286;
+  on Irish Church disestablishment, 283;
+  on women's suffrage, 294;
+  on Home Rule, 296;
+  wide experience, 276, 279, 287;
+  letters, 288, 289;
+  journals, 292, 293;
+  widowhood, 275, 292, 296;
+  moral influence, 291, 292;
+  rule of, 275, 277-279, 281-284, 293-295;
+  popularity, 289-291, 293, 296, 297;
+  characteristics, 274-276, 279, 281-283, 287-294, 296, 297;
+  jubilees, 290, 296, 297;
+  visit to Ireland, 290, 291;
+  closing days, 296, 297
+
+
+Walpole, Spencer, 151
+
+Ward, 250
+
+Watts, 274
+
+Wellesley, Lord, _see_ Wellington, Duke of
+
+Wellington, Duke of, 160, 161, 166, 167, 188-190, 198, 272, 289
+
+Whateley, Archbishop, 92-96, 100, 251
+
+Women rulers, 295
+
+Working classes, improvement in their condition, 300, 301, 308
+
+
+York, Duke of, 194, 197-199
+
+Young, Arthur, 76, 77
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE
+LONDON
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                   |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Page 322: added page number 322, to Murray entry.         |
+    | Page 324: Whateley replaced with Whately                  |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS***
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