Lord John Russell Part 9

Meanwhile, Lord Palmerston, on the strength of the vote of confidence in the Commons, was somewhat of a popular hero. People who believe that England can do no wrong, at least abroad, believed in him. His audacity delighted the man in the club. His pluck took the platform and much of the press by storm. The mult.i.tude relished his peremptory despatches, and were delighted when he either showed fight or encouraged it in others. In course of time 'Pam' became the typical fine old English gentleman of genial temper but domineering instincts. Prince Albert disliked him; he was too little of a courtier, too much of an off-handed man of affairs. Windsor, of course, received early tidings of the impression which was made at foreign Courts by the most independent and and cavalier Foreign Minister of the century. Occasionally he needlessly offended the susceptibilities of exalted personages abroad as well as at home. At length the Queen, determined no longer to be put in a false position, drew up a sharply-worded memorandum, in which explicit directions were given for the transaction of business between the Crown and the Foreign Office. 'The Queen requires, first, that Lord Palmerston will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she is giving her royal sanction; secondly, having once given her sanction to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must consider as failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her const.i.tutional right of dismissing that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what pa.s.ses between him and the Foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken, based upon that intercourse; to receive the foreign despatches in good time; and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off.'

No responsible adviser of the Crown during the reign had received such emphatic censure, and in August 1850 people were talking as if Palmerston was bound to resign. He certainly would have done so if he had merely consulted his own feelings; but he declared that to resign just then would be to play into the hands of the political adversaries whom he had just defeated, and to throw over his supporters at the moment when they had fought a successful battle on his behalf. Lord Palmerston, therefore, accepted the Queen's instructions with unwonted meekness. He a.s.sured her Majesty that he would not fail to attend to the directions which the memorandum contained, and for a while harmony was restored. In the autumn of 1851 Louis Kossuth arrived in England, and met with an enthusiastic reception, of the kind which was afterwards accorded in London to another popular hero, in the person of Garibaldi.

Lord Palmerston received Kossuth at the Foreign Office, and, contrary to the wishes of the Queen and Prime Minister, deputations were admitted, and addresses were presented, thanking Palmerston for his services in the cause of humanity, whilst in the same breath allusions to the Emperors of Austria and Russia as 'odious and detestable a.s.sa.s.sins' were made. Almost before the annoyance created by this fresh act of indiscretion had subsided, Lord Palmerston was guilty of a still more serious offence.

[Sidenote: THE _COUP D'eTAT_]

Louis Napoleon had been elected President of the French Republic by five and a half million votes. He was thought to be ambitious rather than able, and he had pledged himself to sustain the existing Const.i.tution.

He worked for his own hand, however, and accordingly conciliated first the clergy, then the peasants, and finally the army, by fair promises, popular acts, and a bold policy. On December 2, 1851, when his term of office was expiring, Napoleon suddenly overthrew the a.s.sembly, which had refused a month or two previously to revise the Const.i.tution in order to make the President eligible for re-election, and next morning all Europe was startled with tidings of the _Coup d'etat_. Both the English Court and Cabinet felt that absolute neutrality must be observed during the tumult which followed in Paris, and instructions to that effect were accordingly transmitted to Lord Normanby. But when that diplomatist made known this official communication, he was met with the retort that Lord Palmerston, in a conversation with the French Amba.s.sador in London, had already declared that the _Coup d'etat_ was an act of self-defence, and in fact was the best thing under the circ.u.mstances for France. Lord Palmerston, in a subsequent despatch to Lord Normanby, which was not submitted either to the Queen or the Prime Minister, reiterated his opinion.

[Sidenote: 'THERE WAS A PALMERSTON!']

Under these circ.u.mstances, Lord John Russell had no alternative except to dismiss Lord Palmerston. He did so, as he explained when Parliament met in February, on the ground that the Foreign Secretary had practically put himself, for the moment, in the place of the Crown. He had given the moral approbation of England to the acts of the President of the Republic of France, though he knew, when he was doing so, that he was acting in direct opposition to the wishes of the sovereign and the policy of the Government. Lord John stated in the House of Commons that he took upon himself the sole and entire responsibility of advising her Majesty to require the resignation of Lord Palmerston. He added that, though the Foreign Secretary had neglected what was due to the Crown and his colleagues, he felt sure that he had not intended any personal disrespect. Greville declared that, in all his experience of scenes in Parliament, he could recall no such triumph as Lord Russell achieved on this occasion, nor had he ever witnessed a discomfiture more complete than that of Palmerston. Lord Dalling, another eye-witness of the episode, has described, from the point of view of a sympathiser with Palmerston, the manner in which he seemed completely taken by surprise by the 'tremendous a.s.sault' which Lord John, by a damaging appeal to facts, made against him. In his view, Russell's speech was one of the most powerful to which he had ever listened, and its effect was overwhelming. Disraeli, meeting Lord Dalling by chance next day on the staircase of the Russian Emba.s.sy, exclaimed as he pa.s.sed, with significant emphasis, 'There _was_ a Palmerston!' The common opinion at the clubs found expression in a phrase which pa.s.sed from lip to lip, 'Palmerston is smashed;' but, though driven for the moment to bay, the dismissed Minister was himself of another mind.

Lord Palmerston was offered the Irish Viceroyalty, but he declined to take such an appointment. He accepted his dismissal with a characteristic affectation of indifference, and in the course of a laboured defence of his action in the House of Commons, excused his communication to the French Amba.s.sador on the plea that it was only the expression of an opinion on pa.s.sing events, common to that 'easy and familiar personal intercourse, which tends so usefully to the maintenance of friendly relations with foreign Governments.' Lady Russell wrote down at the time her own impressions of this crisis in her husband's Cabinet, and the following pa.s.sage throws a valuable sidelight on a memorable incident in the Queen's reign: 'The breach between John and Lord Palmerston was a calamity to the country, to the Whig party, and to themselves; and, although it had for some months been a threatening danger on the horizon, I cannot but feel that there was accident in its actual occurrence. Had we been in London or at Pembroke Lodge, and not at Woburn Abbey, at the time, they would have met, and talked over the subject of their difference; words spoken might have been equally strong, but would have been less cutting than words written, and conciliatory expressions on John's part would have led the way to promises on Lord Palmerston's.... They two kept up the character of England, as the st.u.r.dy guardians of her rights against other nations, and the champions of freedom and independence abroad. They did so both before and after the breach of 1851, which was, happily, closed in the following year, when they were once more colleagues in office. On matters of home policy Lord Palmerston remained the Tory he had been in his earlier days, and this was the cause of many a trial to John.'

The Russell Administration, as the Premier himself frankly recognised, was seriously weakened by the dismissal of Lord Palmerston; and its position was not improved when Lord Clarendon, on somewhat paltry grounds, refused the Foreign Office. Lord John's sagacity was shown by the prompt offer of the vacant appointment to Lord Granville, who, at the age of thirty-six, entered the Cabinet, and began a career which was destined to prove a controlling force in the foreign policy of England in the Victorian era.

[Sidenote: ROME AND OXFORD]

Meanwhile fresh difficulties had arisen. In the autumn of 1850--a year which had already been rendered memorable in ecclesiastical circles by the Gorham case--Pius IX. issued a Bull by which England became a province of the Roman Catholic Church. Dr. Wiseman was created Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, and England was divided into twelve sees with territorial t.i.tles. The a.s.sumption by Pius IX. of spiritual authority over England was a blunder; indeed, no better proof in recent times of the lack of infallibility at Rome could well be discovered. One swallow, proverbially, does not make a spring; and when Newman took refuge in flight, other leaders of the Oxford Movement refused to accept his logic and to follow his example. Englishmen have always resented anything in the shape of foreign dictation, and deep in the national heart there yet survives a rooted hostility to the claims of the Vatican. Napoleon's _Coup d'etat_, which followed quickly on the heels of this dramatic act of Papal aggression, scarcely took the nation more completely by surprise. No Vatican decree could well have proved more unpopular, and even Canon Liddon is obliged to admit that the bishops, with one solitary exception, 'threw the weight of their authority on the side of popular and short-sighted pa.s.sion.'[20]

Pius IX. knew nothing of the English character, but Cardinal Wiseman, at least, could not plead ignorance of the real issues at stake; and therefore his grandiloquent and, under all the circ.u.mstances, ridiculous pastoral letter, which he dated 'From out of the Flaminian Gate at Rome,' was justly regarded as an insult to the religious convictions of the vast majority of the English people. Anglicans and Nonconformists alike resented such an authoritative deliverance, and presently the old 'No Popery' cry rang like a clarion through the land. Dr. Newman, with the zeal of a pervert, preached a sermon on the revival of the Catholic Church, and in the course of it he stated that the 'people of England, who for so many years have been separated from the See of Rome, are about, of their own will, to be added to the Holy Church.' The words were, doubtless, spoken in good faith, for the great leader of the Oxford Movement naturally expected that those who had espoused his views, like honest men, would follow his example. Dr. Pusey, however, was a more astute ecclesiastical statesman than Cardinal Wiseman. He was in favour of a 'very moderate' declaration against Rome, for the resources of compromise were evidently in his eyes not exhausted. The truth was, Pusey and Keble, by a course of action which to this day remains a standing riddle to the Papacy on the one hand, and to Protestantism on the other, threw dust in the eyes of Pius IX., and were the real authors of Papal aggression. Lord John Russell saw this quite clearly, and in proof of such an a.s.sertion it is only necessary to appeal to his famous Durham Letter. He had watched the drift of ecclesiastical opinion, and had seen with concern that the tide was running swiftly in the direction of Rome.

England had renounced the Papal supremacy for the s.p.a.ce of 300 years, and had grown strong in the liberty which had followed the downfall of such thraldom. Oxford had taught Rome to tempt England; the leaders of the so-called Anglican revival were responsible for the flourish of trumpets at the Vatican. Lord John's ecclesiastical appointments called forth sharp criticism. He was a Protestant of the old uncompromising type, with leanings towards advanced thought in Biblical criticism. He knew, moreover, what Puritanism had done for the English nation in the seventeenth century, and made no secret of his conviction that it was the Nonconformists, more than any other cla.s.s, who had rendered civil and religious liberty possible. He moreover knew that in his own time they, more than any other part of the community, had carried the Reform Bill, brought about the abolition of slavery, and established Free Trade. He had been brought into contact with their leaders, and was beginning to perceive, with the nation at large, how paltry and inadequate were the claims of a rigid Churchmanship, since the true apostolical succession is a matter of alt.i.tude of spiritual devotion, and borrows none of its rights from the pretensions of clerical caste.

[Sidenote: THE DURHAM LETTER]

The Durham Letter was written from Downing Street, on November 4, 1850.

It gained its name because it was addressed to the Premier's old friend Dr. Maltby, Bishop of Durham, and appeared in the newspapers on the day on which it was dated. Lord John declared that he had not only promoted to the utmost of his power the claims of Roman Catholics to all civil rights, but had deemed it not merely just, but desirable, that that Church should impart religious instruction to the 'numerous Irish immigrants in London and elsewhere, who, without such help, would have been left in heathen ignorance.' He believed that this might have been accomplished without any such innovation as that which the Papacy now contemplated. He laid stress on the a.s.sumption of power made in all the doc.u.ments on the subject which had come from Rome, and he protested against such pretensions as inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy, with the rights of the bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual independence of the nation. He confessed that his alarm was not equal to his indignation, since Englishmen would never again allow any foreign prince or potentate to impose a yoke on their minds and consciences. He hinted at legislative action on the subject, and then proceeded to take up his parable against the Tractarians in the following unmistakeable terms: 'There is a danger, however, which alarms me much more than the aggression of a foreign sovereign. Clergymen of our Church who have subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles and have acknowledged in explicit terms the Queen's supremacy, have been the most forward in leading their flocks, step by step, to the verge of the precipice. The honour paid to saints, the claim of infallibility for the Church, the superst.i.tious use of the sign of the Cross, the muttering of the Liturgy so as to disguise the language in which it was written, the recommendation of auricular confession, and the administration of penance and absolution--all these things are pointed out by clergymen as worthy of adoption, and are now openly reprehended by the Bishop of London in his Charge to the clergy of his diocese. What, then, is the danger to be apprehended from a foreign prince of no power, compared to the danger within the gates from the unworthy sons of the Church of England herself? I have but little hope that the propounders and framers of these innovations will desist from their insidious course; but I rely with confidence on the people of England, and I will not bate a jot of heart or life so long as the glorious principles and the immortal martyrs of the Reformation shall be held in reverence by the great ma.s.s of a nation, which look with contempt on the mummeries of superst.i.tion, and with scorn at the laborious endeavours which are now being made to confine the intellect and enslave the soul.'

[Sidenote: 'NO POPERY']

Lord John's manifesto was as fuel to the flames. All over the kingdom preparations were in progress at the moment for a national carnival--now fallen largely into disrepute. Guy Fawkes was hastily dethroned, and the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman were paraded in effigy through the streets of London, Exeter, and other cities, and burnt at nightfall amid the jeers of the crowd. Pet.i.tions began to pour in against Papal aggression, and the literature of the subject, in controversial tract, pamphlet, and volume, grew suddenly not less bewildering than formidable. The arrival in London of Father Gavazzi, an ex-priest of commanding presence and impa.s.sioned oratory, helped to arouse still further the Protestant spirit of the nation. The Press, the pulpit, the platform, formed a triple alliance against the Vatican, and the indignant rejection of the Pope's claims may be said to have been carried by acclamation. Clamour ran riot through the land, and spent its force in noisy demonstrations.

The Catholics met the tumult, on the whole, with praiseworthy moderation, and presently signs of the inevitable reaction began to appear. Lord John's colleagues were not of one mind as to the wisdom of the Durham Letter, for if there is one taunt before which an ordinary Englishman quails, it is the accusation of religious bigotry.

The Durham Letter was an instance in which Lord John's zeal outran his discretion.[21] Lord Shaftesbury, who was in the thick of the tumult, and has left a vivid description of it in his journal,[22] declared that Cardinal Wiseman's manifesto, in spite of its audacity, was likely to prove 'more hurtful to the shooter than to the target.' Looking back at the crisis, after an interval of more than forty years, the same criticism seems to apply with added force to the Durham Letter. Lord John overshot the mark, and his accusations wounded those whom he did not intend to attack, and in the recoil of public opinion his own reputation suffered. He resented, with pardonable warmth, the att.i.tude of the Vatican, and was jealous of any infringement, from that or any other quarter, of the Queen's supremacy in her own realms. The most damaging sentences in the Durham Letter were not directed against the Catholics, either in Rome, England, or Ireland, but against the Tractarian clergymen--men whom he regarded as 'unworthy sons of the Church of England.' The Catholics, incensed at the denial of the Pope's supremacy, were, however, in no mood to make distinctions, and they have interpreted Lord John's strictures on Dr. Pusey and his followers as an attack on their own religious faith. The consequence was that the manifesto was regarded, especially in Ireland, not merely as a protest against the politics of the Vatican, but as a sweeping censure on the creed of Rome. Lord John's character and past services might have shielded him from such a construction being placed upon his words, for he had proved, on more than one historic occasion, his devotion to the cause of religious liberty. Disraeli, writing to his sister in November, said: 'I think John Russell is in a sc.r.a.pe. I understand that his party are furious with him. The Irish are frantic. If he goes on with the Protestant movement he will be thrown over by the Papists; if he shuffles with the Protestants, their blood is too high to be silent now, and they will come to us. I think Johnny is checkmated.'[23]

[Sidenote: UNDER WHICH FLAG?]

For the moment, however, pa.s.sion and prejudice everywhere ran riot, and on both sides of the controversy common sense and common fairness were forgotten. A representative Irish politician of a later generation has not failed to observe the irony of the position. 'It was a curious incident in political history,' declares Mr. Justin McCarthy, 'that Lord John Russell, who had more than any Englishman then living been identified with the principles of religious liberty, who had sat at the feet of Fox, and had for his closest friend the Catholic poet Thomas Moore, came to be regarded by Roman Catholics as the bitterest enemy of their creed and their rights of worship.'[24] It is easy to cavil at Lord John Russell's interpretation of the Oxford Movement, and to a.s.sert that the accusations of the Durham Letter were due to bigotry and panic.

He believed, in common with thousands of other distressed Churchmen, that the Tractarians were foes within the gates of the Establishment. He regarded them, moreover, as ministers of religion who were hostile to the work of the Reformation, and therefore he deemed that they were in a false position in the Anglican Church. Their priestly claims and sacerdotal rites, their obvious sympathies and avowed convictions, separated them sharply from ordinary clergymen, and were difficult to reconcile with adherence to the principles of Protestantism. Like many other men at the time, and still more of to-day, he was at a loss to discover how ecclesiastics of such a stamp could remain in the ministry of the Church of England, when they seemed to ordinary eyes to be in league with Rome. The prelates, almost to a man, were hotly opposed to the Tractarians when Lord John wrote the Durham Letter. They shared his convictions and applauded his action. Since then many things have happened. The Oxford Movement has triumphed, and has done so largely by the self-sacrificing devotion of its adherents. It has summoned to its aid art and music, learning and eloquence; it has appealed to the aesthetic and emotional elements in human nature; it has led captive the imagination of many by its dramatic revival of mediaeval ideas and methods; and it has stilled by its a.s.sumption of authority the restlessness of souls, too weary to argue, too troubled to rebel. The bishops of to-day have grown either quite friendly towards the Oxford Movement, or else discreetly tolerant. Yet, when all this is admitted, it does nothing towards proving that Lord John Russell was a mistaken alarmist. The Durham Letter and its impa.s.sioned protest have been justified by the logic of events. It is easy for men to be charitable who have slipped their convictions.

Possibly it was not judicious on Lord John's part to be so zealously affected in the matter. That is, perhaps, open to dispute, but the question remains: Was he mistaken in principle? He saw clergymen of the English Church, Protestant at least in name, 'leading their flocks step by step to the very verge of the precipice,' and he took up his parable against them, and pointed out the danger to the hitherto accepted faith and practice of the English Church. One of the most distinguished prelates of the Anglican Church in the Queen's reign has not hesitated to a.s.sert that the tenets against which Lord John Russell protested in the Durham Letter were, in his judgment, of a kind which are 'destructive of all reasonable faith, and reduce worship to a mere belief in spells and priestcraft.' Cardinal Vaughan, it is needless to say, does not sympathise with such a view. He, however, has opinions on the subject which are worthy of the attention of those who think that Lord John was a mere alarmist. His Eminence delivered a suggestive address at Preston on September 10, 1894, on the 'Re-Union of Christendom.' He thinks--and it is idle to deny that he has good ground for thinking--that, in spite of bishops, lawyers, and legislature, Delphic judgments at Lambeth, and spasmodic protests up and down the country, a change in doctrine and ritual is in progress in the Anglican Church which can only be described as a revolution. He a.s.serts that the 'Real Presence, the sacrifice of the Ma.s.s, offered for the living and the dead, no infrequent reservation of the Sacrament, regular auricular confession, Extreme Unction, Purgatory, prayers for the dead, devotions to Our Lady, to her Immaculate Conception, the use of her Rosary, and the invocation of saints, are doctrines taught and accepted, with a growing desire and relish for them, in the Church of England.'

Cardinal Vaughan also declares that the present churches of the Establishment are 'often distinguishable only with extreme difficulty from those belonging to the Church of Rome.' Such statements are either true or false. If false, they are open to contradiction; if true, they justify in substance the position taken up in the Durham Letter. Towards the close of his life, Lord John told Mr. Lecky that he did not regret his action, and to the last he maintained that he was right in the protest which he made in the Durham Letter. Yet he acknowledged, as he looked back upon the affair, that he might have softened certain expressions in it with advantage. Parliament met on February 4, 1851, and the Queen's Speech contained the following pa.s.sage: 'The recent a.s.sumption of certain ecclesiastical t.i.tles conferred by a foreign Power has excited strong feelings in this country; and large bodies of my subjects have presented addresses to me expressing attachment to the Throne, and praying that such a.s.sumptions should be resisted. I have a.s.sured them of my resolution to maintain the rights of my crown and the independence of the nation against all encroachments, from whatsoever quarter they may proceed.'

[Sidenote: THE GIST OF THE WHOLE MATTER]

Three days later, Lord John introduced the Ecclesiastical t.i.tles Bill.

The measure prohibited the a.s.sumption of territorial t.i.tles by Roman Catholic bishops; but there is truth in the a.s.sertion that no enactment of the kind could prevent other persons from giving the dignitaries of the Catholic Church such t.i.tles, and, as a matter of fact, the attempt to deprive them of the distinction led to its ostentatious adoption. The proposal to render null and void gifts or religious endowments acquired by the new prelates was abandoned in the course of the acrimonious debates which followed. Other difficulties arose, and Ireland was declared to be exempt from the operation of the measure. The object of the bill, declared Lord John Russell, was merely to a.s.sert the supremacy of the Crown. Nothing was further from his thought than to play the part of a religious persecutor. He merely wished to draw a sharp and unmistakeable line of demarcation between the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope over the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church in the Queen's realms, and such an act of Papal aggression as was involved in the claim of Pius IX. to grant ecclesiastical t.i.tles borrowed from places in the United Kingdom.

The bill satisfied neither the friends nor the foes of Roman Catholicism. It was persistently regarded by the one as an attack on religious liberty, and by the other as quite inadequate as a bulwark of Protestantism. Nevertheless it became law, but not before the summer of 1851, when the agitation had spent its force. It was regarded almost as a dead letter from the first, and, though it remained on the Statute-book for twenty years, its repeal was a foregone conclusion.

When it was revoked in 1871 the temper of the nation had changed, and no one was inclined to make even a pa.s.sing protest. John Leech, in a cartoon in _Punch_, caught the droll aspect of the situation with even more than his customary skill. Lord John relished the joke, even though he recognised that it was not likely to prove of service to him at the next General Election. In conversation with a friend he said: 'Do you remember a cartoon in _Punch_ where I was represented as a little boy writing "No Popery" on a wall and running away?' The answer was a smile of a.s.sent. 'Well,' he added, 'that was very severe, and did my Government a great deal of harm, but I was so convinced that it was not maliciously meant that I sent for John Leech, and asked him what I could do for him. He said that he should like a nomination for his son to the Charterhouse, and I gave it to him. That is how I used my patronage.'

[Sidenote: A MINISTERIAL CRISIS]

Meanwhile, when the Ecclesiastical t.i.tles Bill was still under discussion, a Ministerial crisis had arisen. Finance was never the strong point of the first Russell Administration, and Sir Charles Wood's Budget gave widespread dissatisfaction. Mr. Locke King heightened the embarra.s.sment of the moment by bringing forward a motion for placing the county and borough franchise on an equal basis; and before the discussion of the Budget could be renewed this motion was carried against the Government, though in a small House, by a majority of almost two to one. Lord John Russell met the hostile vote by immediate resignation; and Lord Stanley--who four months later became Earl of Derby--was summoned to Windsor and attempted to form a Ministry. His efforts were, however, unsuccessful, for Peel had left the Tory party not merely disorganised but full of warring elements. Lord John, therefore, returned to office in March, and Locke King's measure was promptly thrown out by a majority of more than two hundred. The London season of that year was rendered memorable by the opening of the Great Exhibition, amid universal plaudits and dreams of long-continued peace amongst the nations. As the year closed Lord Palmerston's ill-advised action over the _Coup d'etat_ in France brought about, as we have already seen, his dismissal, a circ.u.mstance which still further weakened the Russell Cabinet.

The year 1852 opened darkly for Lord John. Difficulties, small and great, seemed thickening around him. He had been called to power at a singularly trying moment, and no one who looks dispa.s.sionately at the policy which he pursued between the years 1846 and 1852 can fail to recognise that he had at least tried to do his duty. There is a touch of pathos in the hara.s.sed statesman's reply to a letter of congratulation which reached him on the threshold of the new year from a near relative, and it is worthy of quotation, since it reveals the att.i.tude of the man on far greater questions than those with which he was beset at the moment: 'I cannot say that the new year is a happy one to me. Political troubles are too thick for my weak sight to penetrate them, but we all rest in the mercy of G.o.d, who will dispose of us as He thinks best.'[25]

When Parliament met in February, Lord Palmerston's opportunity came. On the heels of the panic about Papal aggression came widespread alarm as to the policy which Napoleon III. might pursue towards this country. The fear of invasion grew strong in the land, and patriotic fervour restlessly clamoured for prompt legislative action. Forty years ago, in every town and village of England there were people who could speak from personal knowledge concerning the reign of terror which the first Napoleon, by his conquering march over Europe and his threatened descent on the English sh.o.r.es, had established, and, as a consequence, though with diminished force, the old consternation suddenly revived.

[Sidenote: PALMERSTON'S 't.i.t-FOR-TAT']

Lord John Russell had no more real fear of Napoleon than he had of the Pope, but he rose to the occasion and brought before Parliament a measure for the reorganisation of the local Militia. He believed that such a force, with national enthusiasm at its back, was sufficient to repel invasion--a contingency which, in common with other responsible statesmen, he did not regard as more than remote. Lord Palmerston, however, posing as the candid friend of the nation, and the exceptionally well-informed ex-Foreign Minister, professed to see rocks ahead, and there were--at all events for the Russell Administration. In England, any appeal to the Jingo instincts of the populace is certain to meet with a more or less hysterical welcome, and Palmerston more than once took advantage of the fact. He expressed his dissatisfaction with Lord John's Militia Bill, and by a majority of eleven carried an amendment to it. Lord John met the hostile demonstration by resignation, and, though Palmerston professed to be surprised at such a result, his real opinion leaps to light in the historic sentence which he wrote to his brother on February 24: 'I have had my t.i.t-for-tat with John Russell, and I turned him out on Friday last.' One hitherto unpublished reminiscence of that crisis deserves to be recorded, especially as it throws into pa.s.sing relief Lord John's generosity of temper: 'I remember,' states his brother-in-law and at one time private secretary, the Hon. George Elliot, 'being indignant with Lord Palmerston, after he had been dismissed by Lord John, bringing forward a verbal amendment on the Militia Bill in 1852--a mere pretext by which the Government was overthrown. But Lord John would not at all enter into my feelings, and said, "It's all fair. I dealt him a blow, and he has given me one in return."'

Lord John's interest in the question of Parliamentary Reform was life-long. It was one of the subjects on which his views were in complete divergence with those of Lord Palmerston. Just before the 't.i.t-for-tat' amendment, the Premier brought forward a new scheme on the subject which he had reluctantly waived in 1849 in deference to the wishes of the majority of his colleagues, who then regarded such a proposal as premature. At the beginning of 1852 Lord John had overcome such obstacles, and he accordingly introduced his new Reform Bill, as if anxious to wipe out before his retirement from office the reproach which the sobriquet of 'Finality Jack' had unjustly cast upon him. He proposed to extend the suffrage by reducing the county qualification to 20_l._, and the borough to 5_l._, and by granting the franchise to persons paying forty shillings yearly in direct taxation. He also proposed to abolish the property qualification of English and Irish members of Parliament, and to extend the boundaries of boroughs having less than 500 electors. Lord Palmerston's hostile action of course compelled the abandonment of this measure, and it is worthy of pa.s.sing remark that, on the night before his defeat, Lord John made a chivalrous and splendid defence of Lord Clarendon, in answer to an attack, not merely on the policy, but on the personal character of the Viceroy of Ireland.

[Sidenote: A CONFLICT OF OPINION]

Sudden as the fall of the Russell Administration was, it can hardly be described as unexpected, and many causes, most of which have already been indicated in these pages, contributed to bring it about. Albany Fonblanque, one of the shrewdest contemporary observers of men and movements, gathered the political gossip of the moment together in a paragraph which sets forth in graphic fashion the tumult of opinion in the spring of 1852. 'Lord John Russell has fallen, and all are agreed that he is greatly to blame for falling; but hardly any two men agree about the immediate cause of his fall. "It was the Durham Letter," says one. "Not a jot," replies another; "the Durham Letter was quite right, and would have strengthened him prodigiously if it had been followed up by a vigorous anti-Papal measure: it was the paltry bill that destroyed him." "The Ecclesiastical t.i.tles Bill," interposes a third, "did just enough in doing next to nothing: no, it was the house tax in the Budget that did the mischief." "The house tax might have been got over," puts in another, "but the proposal of the income tax, with all its injustices unmitigated, doomed Lord John." "Not a whit," rejoins a Radical reformer, "the income tax is popular, especially with people who don't pay it; Lord John's opposition to Locke King's motion sealed his fate."

"Locke King's division was a flea-bite," cries a staunch Protestant, "the Pope has done it all."'

Stress has been laid in these pages on the attempts of the Russell Administration to deal with an acute and terrible phase of the eternal Irish problem, as well as to set forth in outline the difficulties which it encountered in regard to its foreign policy through the cavalier att.i.tude and bid for personal ascendency of Lord Palmerston. The five or six years during which Lord John Russell was at the head of affairs were marked by a succession of panics which heightened immeasurably the difficulties of his position. One was purely commercial, but it threw gloom over the country, brought stagnation to trade, and political discontent followed in its train, which in turn reacted on the prospects of the Government. The Irish famine and the rebellion which followed in its wake taxed the resources of the Cabinet to the utmost, and the efforts which were made by the Ministry to grapple with the evil have scarcely received even yet due recognition. The Chartist movement, the agitation over the Papal claims and the fear of invasion, are landmarks in the turbulent and menacing annals of the time.

The repeal of the Navigation Act bore witness to Lord John's zealous determination to extend the principles of Free Trade, and the Jewish Disabilities Bill--which was rejected by the House of Lords--is itself a sufficient answer to those who, because of his resistance, not to the spiritual claims, but to the political arrogance of the Vatican, have ventured to charge him with a lack of religious toleration. He himself once declared that as a statesman he had received as much favour as he had deserved; he added that, where his measures had miscarried, he did not attribute the failure to animosity or misrepresentation, but rather to errors which he had himself committed from mistaken judgment or an erroneous interpretation of facts. No one who looks at Lord John Russell's career with simple justice, to say nothing of generosity, can doubt the truth of his words. 'I believe, I may say, that my ends have been honest. I have looked to the happiness of my country as the object to which my efforts ought to be directed.'

FOOTNOTES:

[19] _Life of Lord Palmerston_, by the Hon. Evelyn Ashley, vol. ii. p.

95.

[20] _Life of E. B. Pusey, D.D._, by H. P. Liddon, D.D., vol. iii. p.

292. Longmans & Co.

[21] Cobden described it as 'a Guy Fawkes outcry,' and predicted the fall of the Ministry.

[22] See _Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury_, by Edwin Hodder, pp. 429-435.

[23] _Lord Beaconsfield's Correspondence with his Sister_ (1832-1852), p. 249. London: John Murray.

[24] _History of Our Own Times_, by Justin McCarthy, M.P. vol. ii. pp.

85, 86.

[25] _Life of Lord John Russell_, by Spencer Walpole, vol. ii p. 143.

CHAPTER IX