Lady John Russell Part 30

It was a critical time in the history of the franchise. Neither Lord Derby nor his followers liked Reform, but the workmen of England were at last set upon it, and Disraeli realized that only a party prepared to enlarge the franchise had any chance of power. Unlike his colleagues, he had no fear or dislike of the people. His imagination enabled him to foresee what hardly another statesman, Conservative or Radical, supposed possible, that the power of the Democracy might be increased without kindling in the people any desire to use it. He divined that the glamour which wealth and riches have for the majority of voters would make it easy to put a hook in the nose of Leviathan, and that the monster might be ultimately taken in tow by the Conservative party. His first move in the process of "educating his party" was to offer the House a series of Resolutions upon the principles of representation. These were intended to foreshadow the nature of the Government's proposals and also to prepare their way. By this device he hoped to raise the Bill above party conflict, and to lead the more Conservative of his followers up a gently graduated slope of generalities till they found themselves committed to accepting a somewhat democratic measure. His plan was frustrated by the determination of the Opposition to force the Government to show their hand at once.

He consequently placed before his colleagues a measure which based the franchise on the occupation of houses rated at 5, coupled with several antidotes to the democratic tendencies of such a change in the shape of "fancy franchises," which gave votes to men of certain educational and financial qualifications. His proposals seem to have been accepted by the Cabinet with reluctant and hesitating approval. On examining more carefully the effects of the 5 franchise upon town const.i.tuencies Lord Cranborne (afterwards Lord Salisbury) retracted his previous a.s.sent, and Lord Carnarvon followed his lead.

On the very day that Lord Derby and Disraeli were pledged to define their measure they found themselves threatened with the resignation of two most important members of the Government. At a hasty Cabinet Council, held just before they were to speak, it was agreed, after about twenty minutes'

discussion, that the borough rental should be raised to 6. The Opposition, however, declared a 6 franchise to be still too high, and they were now backed by a considerable section of the Conservative party itself, who felt that when once they were committed to Reform it would at least be wise to introduce a measure likely to win them popularity as reformers. Lord Derby and Disraeli yielded to pressure from within their party, and Lord Cranborne, Lord Carnarvon, and General Peel resigned. The subsequent history of the Bill consisted in a series of surrenders on the part of Disraeli. All the clauses and qualifications which had originally modified its democratic character were dropped, and Gladstone succeeded in carrying nearly all the amendments his first speech upon the Bill had suggested.

When the Bill finally pa.s.sed Lord Salisbury described it as a measure based upon the principles of Bright and dictated by Gladstone; and what many Conservatives thought of Disraeli's conduct is reflected in the speeches of their ally Lowe: "Never, never was tergiversation so complete. Such conduct may fail or not; it may lead to the retention or loss of office; but it merits alike the contempt of all honest men and the execration of posterity." [64] Gladstone, writing to Dr. Pusey at the end of the year, said: "We have been pa.s.sing through a strange, eventful year: a deplorable one, I think, for the character and conduct of the House of Commons; but yet one of promise for the country, though of a promise not unmixed with evils." The feeling of romantic Tories in the country is expressed in Coventry Patmore's poem "1867," which begins:

In the year of the great crime, When the false English n.o.bles and their Jew, By G.o.d demented, slew The Trust they stood twice pledged to keep from wrong.

[64] Morley's "Life of Gladstone," vol. ii, p. 235.

The last and longest struggle took place over the compound householder. On May 17th Mr. Hodgkinson proposed and carried an amendment that in a Parliamentary borough only the occupier should be rated, thus basing, in effect, the franchise upon household suffrage, and forcing upon Disraeli a principle which he had begun by announcing he would never accept. To make the following letters intelligible it is only necessary to add that in 1866 Lord Amberley had been returned to Parliament as Radical member for Nottingham:

_Lord Russell to Lady Georgiana Russell_ [65]

PEMBROKE LODGE, _January_ 22, 1867

MY DEAREST GEORGY,--I have been very negligent in not writing to you before, as I meant to do, but laziness after exertion is very pleasant. My exertion was not small, as, besides speaking at the beginning of the evening, I sate up for the division, and did not get home till near four in the morning. The triumph was very great; Derby and Cairns and the foolish and wicked Tories were beat, and the wise and honest Tories, like Salisbury and Carnarvon, helped the Liberals to defeat them.... We shall have a great fight in Committee; but I still trust in a reasonable majority for not pushing amendments too far, and then the Bill will be a great triumph of sense over nonsense.... We had d.i.c.kens Sat.u.r.day and Sunday--very agreeable and amiable....

Your affectionate father, R.

[65] This letter ought to be dated July 22, 1869, and addressed to Lady Georgiana Peel. It refers to the debate on the Irish Church Bill.

_Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell_

37 CHESHAM PLACE, BELGRAVE SQUARE, S.W.,

_February 21, 1867_

... Your Papa and I dined yesterday with Lord and Lady Cork. I heard some funny stories of Mrs. Lowe.... Here's the best. Mr. Lowe was talking of the marriage service, of the absurdity of making everybody say, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow"--"For instance, I had not a penny." _Mrs. L_.: "Oh, but Robert, you had your brains!" _Mr. L. (sharply)_: "I'm sure I didn't endow you with _them_." Very funny; but very cruel, too, in answer to what was meant so affectionately.... Now, I must get ready to walk with your Papa. He keeps well and strong, in spite of the cloudy political atmosphere (hazy, perhaps, rather than cloudy)--n.o.body thinking or feeling anything clearly or warmly, except him and Gladstone and a score or two of others. He feels that the Government has so discredited itself and the Tory party generally, that the Whig party might be in a capital position if it chose. But the general indifference of Whig M.P.'s to Reform, and their selfish fear of dissolution, come in the way of public spirit and combined action.

Your Papa is writing to Mr. Gladstone, from whom he has just received an account of the debate. Disraeli's clever and artful speech appears to have had more effect on the House (and even on our side of it) than is creditable.... Johnny has made a very good impression--so we hear from Mr. Brand, Hastings, [66] Mr.

Huguesson, and Gladstone--by his maiden speech. All these, except Gladstone, heard it, and concur in warm praise, both of matter and manner. It is a great event in his life, and I am so thankful it is well over.

[66] Afterwards Duke of Bedford.

_Lord Russell to Lady Minto_

LONDON, _May 21_, 1867

MY DEAR NINA,--As you have been so much bothered with the compound householder, you will be glad to learn that he is dead and is to be buried on Thursday. It was supposed he was the last and best product of civilization; but it has been found out that he was a son of Old Nick, and a valiant knight of the name of Hodgkinson has run him through the body.

The Duke of Buccleuch, with whom f.a.n.n.y and I have been having luncheon, says that Dizzy is like a clever conjuror. "Is that the card you wished for, sir?-and is that yours, and yours, and yours?"

But politics are rather disgusting than otherwise. ... f.a.n.n.y and I went yesterday to see the Queen lay the first stone of the Hall of Science and Art. [67] It was a grand sight--great respect, but no enthusiasm, nor occasion for it.

Lotty is going to give us dinner to-morrow. I call her and Mary, L'Allegra e la Penserosa. _f.a.n.n.y_: "And what am I?" "L'Allegra e Penserosa." I have no more nonsense to tell you. I should like to go to Paris in July or August, but can we? Let me know when you will be there.

Your faithful

TRUSTY TOMKINS

[67] The Albert Hall.

A few weeks later he wrote again to Lady Minto: "Our Reform Bill is now brought to that exact shape in which Bright put it in 1858, and which he thought too large and democratic a change to be accepted by the moderate Liberal party. However, nothing is too much for the swallow of our modern Tories."

In August, 1867, Lord Russell's eldest daughter, Georgiana, married Mr.

Archibald Peel, [68] son of General Peel, and nephew of the statesman, Sir Robert Peel.

[68] The marriage service was at Petersham, in the quaint old village Church, hallowed by many sacred memories.

The daughters, who had now left the old home, were sadly missed, but intimate and affectionate intercourse with them never ceased. Lady Russell's own daughter, the youngest of three families--ten in all--thought in her early childhood that they were all real brothers and sisters, a striking proof of the harmonious happiness of the home. In November, 1867, Lady Victoria Villiers wrote to Lady Russell: "How I long to make our home as pure, as high in its tone and aims, as free from all that is low or even useless for our children, as our dear home was to us."

On Lord Russell's birthday, August 18, 1867, Lady Russell wrote in her diary:

My dear, dear husband's birthday. Each year, each day, makes me feel more deeply all the wonderful goodness of G.o.d in giving me one so n.o.ble, so gentle, so loving, to be my example, my happiness, my stay. How often his strength makes me feel, but try to conquer, my own weakness; how often his cheerfulness and calmness are a reproach to my anxieties. Experience has not hardened but only given him wisdom. Trials have taught him to feel for others; age has deepened his religion of love. All that so often lowers commoner natures has but raised his.

In February, 1868, Lord Derby resigned, owing to ill health. "With Lord Derby [says Sir Spencer Walpole [69]] a whole race of statesmen disappeared. He was the last of the Prime Ministers who had held high office before the Reform Act of 1832; and power, on his fall, was to be transferred to men not much younger in point of years, but whose characters and opinions had been moulded by other influences. He was, moreover, the last of the Tories. He had, indeed, by his own concluding action made Toryism impossible; for, in 1867, he had thrown the ramparts of Toryism into a heap, and had himself mounted the structure and fired the funeral pile." Disraeli succeeded him as Prime Minister.

[69] "The History of Twenty-five Years," vol. ii, p. 287.

_Lady Russell to Mr. Rollo Russell_

CHESHAM PLACE, _February_ 18, 1868

...Lord Derby is supposed to be dying, I am sorry to say. It is horrible to hear the street criers bawling out in their catchpenny voices, "Serious illness of Lord Derby." I feel for his wife and all belonging to him without any of the flutter and anxiety about your father which a probable change of Ministry would have caused a few years ago. He will never accept office again. This is right, I know, and I am thankful that on the conviction of its being so he has calmly made up his mind--yet there is deep sadness in it. The newspapers are not favourable to his pamphlets on Ireland [three pamphlets published together afterwards under the t.i.tle, "A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue"]. He does not care much about this, provided men in Parliament adopt his views or something like them.

We find London very sociable and pleasant ... people all looking glad to meet, and fresh and pleasant from their country life, quite different from what they will be in July....

Lady Russell, as well as her husband, was always anxious to encourage perfect freedom and independence of thought in her children. The following pa.s.sages are from a letter to her daughter on her fifteenth birthday:

37 CHESHAM PLACE, _March_ 28, 1868

... Every day will now bring you more independence of mind, more capacity to understand, not merely to adopt the thoughts of others, to reason and to form opinions of your own. I am the more sure of this, that yours is a thoughtful and reflective mind. The voice of G.o.d may sometimes sound differently to you from what it sounds even to your father or to me; if so, never be afraid to say so--never close your mind against any but bad thoughts; for although we are all one in as far as we all partake of G.o.d's spirit, which is the breath of life, still the communion of each soul with Him is, and must be, for that soul alone.... Nothing great is easy, and the greatest and most difficult of all things is to overcome ourselves.... Life is short, and we do well to remember it, but each moment is eternal, and we do still better to remember that....

Heaven bless you and guide you through the pleasures and perplexities, the sorrows and the joys, of this strange and beautiful world, to the source of all light, and life, and goodness, to that Being whose highest name is Love.

The everlasting Irish question had been coming again to the front. During 1867 the Fenians had attempted to get the grievances of Ireland redressed by adopting violent measures. There had been an attempt upon the a.r.s.enal at Chester, numerous outrages in Ireland, an attack at Manchester upon the prison van, in which two Fenian leaders were being taken to prison, and a subsequent attempt to blow up Clerkenwell jail. The crisis had been met by suspending the Habeas Corpus Act in Ireland. Lord Russell, when Prime Minister, had replaced Sir Robert Peel, as Chief Secretary, by Mr.

Chichester Fortescue, who later received the same office from Mr.

Gladstone. In February, 1868, Lord Russell published his letter to Mr.

Fortescue advocating Disestablishment in Ireland, but declaring himself in favour of endowing the Catholic Church with part of the revenues of the disestablished Church. In April Gladstone succeeded in carrying three Resolutions against the Government on the Irish Church question, and though Disraeli tendered his resignation, dissolution was postponed until the autumn. The same month Lord Russell presided at a meeting in St. James's Hall in support of Disestablishment. At the general election in the autumn the Liberals came in with a large majority; Gladstone became Prime Minister, and in the following year carried his Bill for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. [70] Lady Russell's views on the question of Church and State are shown in the following letter:

_Lady Russell to Lady Dunfermline_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _May_ 20, 1868

MY DEAREST MARY,--...How can one write letters in such weather as we have had? A fine May is surely the loveliest of lovely things, and the most enjoyable, at least to lucky mortals like ourselves who are not obliged to be "in populous city pent"--and those who have never seen Pemmy Lodge in its May garments of lilac, laburnum, wild hyacinth, hawthorn, and the tender greens of countless shades on trees and shrubs, are not really acquainted with it.... I have been going through the contrary change from you as regards Church and State. I thought _I_ was strongly for the connection (at least of _a_ Church with the State, certainly not _the_ Church of England as it now is), but reflection on what the history of our State Churches has been, the speeches in St. James's Hall of the Bishops fostered by the State, and Arthur Stanley's pamphlet, which says the best that _can_ be said for connection, and yet seems to open my eyes to the fallacy of that best, and the conversations I hear, have opened my eyes to the bad principle at the very root of a State Church. If _all_ who call themselves teachers of religion could be paid, it might be very well, best of all perhaps; but I'm afraid there are difficulties not to be got over, and the objections to the voluntary system diminish on reflection.... This new political crisis raises John's hopes a little; but he has small faith in the public spirit of the Liberal party, and even now fears some manoeuvre to keep Dizzy in.