Historical and Political Essays Part 7

'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 emanc.i.p.ation. 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 Cla.s.s in cla.s.sics. 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sions 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 ill.u.s.trating 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sions 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 a.s.siduously cultivated. His appet.i.te 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 cla.s.s, 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.