Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub
[graphic]
[graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Biographical Notices of Lord Melbourne. London: 1848.

THERE are some men, of whom, if we value their memory, it is important to produce, as soon as possible after the world has heard that they are no more, a just appreciation. We mean men in whose characters the lights and shadows were in a certain degree vague and unsettled, and whose manner was frequently confounded with a nature or mind of which it was but a false and superficial index. Certain gentlemen in the House of Commons who get up early, who have always their watch in their hand, who rush from committee room to committee room, and rarely miss any division on any subject, are generally considered by their family, and sometimes by their acquaintances, and even ordinary lookers-on, as men of business and activity. The Peer whom we are now mourning, was not a man of this class: his external habits were, in appearance, those of indolence; he went into society in the evening; he had the air of a lounger in the morning; he attended indifferently to things of small importance; and consequently he was called idle, and for many years of his life decried as idle, by a vast variety of persons

[blocks in formation]

who were far less usefully employed than himself. During this time he read more and thought more than perhaps any person of his own station and standing. His knowledge of the classical languages rendered their most difficult authors as familiar to him as if they had written in French or in English; and his mind was imbued with, and constantly brooding over those writings which best record the eloquence and wisdom of antiquity. In modern history and literature there was hardly any work with which he was not acquainted; and all the nice points and dogmas of theology were perpetually turned over by his inquisitive and speculative mind. His morning's ride, indeed, was often as serious an occupation to him, as were, to Pliny, the two hours which he passed in a dark room, and which he considered, though he was merely thinking, the most important portion of his day's labors. By this quiet process of study and thought he gradually brought his mind to an elevated level, all beneath which he considered mean and worthless; all above, visionary and extravagant. Popular clamor and aristocratic pretension were alike dis

tasteful to him; mere honors he despised; "the grand simple" which the famous Duke of Queensbury, then Earl of March, gave to George Selwyn as the beau-ideal of taste, was the characteristic of his understanding.

Such was the statesman whose career and character we are now about to sketch-a statesman whom it was almost impossible for the public to understand from afar, and whom it was even difficult for those who had only casual opportunities of approaching him to judge with correctness.

The late Viscount Melbourne was born on the 18th of March, 1779; being at this time the second son of the first Lord Melbourne, a nobleman not particularly remarkable himself, but married to a lady celebrated in her day for the charm of her manners and the strength of her understanding. The eldest son, Mr. Peniston Lamb, lived much in the world, but took little interest in politics. Mr. William Lamb, intended for a profession, was sent in the mean time to Eaton, Glasgow, and Cambridge; and so distinguished himself at these places by his abilities, that in 1802 Mr. Fox, ever the gracious and politic patron of rising merit, drew the attention of Parliament to the youthful scholar by quoting a passage from one of his university compositions.*

In 1805 Mr. Peniston Lamb died, and Mr. William Lamb having thus become the representative of his family, was brought into the House of Commons. His talents, as we have seen, were already known there, and as he took his seat on the ministerial benches, he was selected by the Grenville Administration to move the address to the Crown at the opening of the session of 1806. With an appearance strikingly handsome, a delivery bold and energetic, and a style evidently formed with care, but not (as is frequently

*Mr. Fox, March 16, 1802. Character of the Duke of Bedford. The passage is one taken from an essay on the "Progressive Improvements of Mankind," an oration delivered by Mr. Lamb in the chapel of Trinity College, on the 17th December, 1798. Mr. Fox says "I will conclude with applying to the present occasion a beautiful passage from the speech of a very young orator. It may be thought, perhaps, to savor too much of the sanguine views of youth to stand the test of a rigid philosophical inquiry; but it is at least cheering and consolatory, and that in this instance it may be so exemplified, is, I am confident, the sincere wish of every man who hears me. Crime,' says he, is a curse only to the period in which it is successful; but virtue, whether fortunate or otherwise, blesses not only its own age, but remotest posterity, and is as beneficial by its example, as by its immediate effects.'"

the case with young orators) too studied and adorned, he made on this occasion a great impression; and if the Whigs had remained in power, he would have been named to an important situation under them. As it was, he followed the party into opposition; and there remained for some time-the bitter and not undistinguished antagonist of the men who had ridden into authority on the old King's prejudices.*

Many years did not, however, elapse without producing great changes in the state of affairs. The illness of King George III., the appointment of the Prince of Wales as Regent, the assassination of Mr. Perceval, and the various attempts which were then made to form a mixed administration, gave a new color to questions, and a new position to persons. Great military successes abroad serious disturbances at home followed. Amidst these events Mr. Lamb gradually ceased to act as a party man, and he and Mr. Ward, afterwards Lord Dudley, became conspicuous for standing, as it were, on the verge of the two contending factions. The latter sat with the Tories, but frequently spoke for the Whigs; the former sat with Whigs, but spoke frequently for the Tories. Both, then young, were listened to with great attention, and held a high position in the House of Commons, where they were frequently complimented for their great respectability, talents, and independence. Their principles were the same-an inclination rather to support the prerogatives of Government than to give any great extension to popular power; but a strong conviction that the Government as constituted should be conducted with justice and intelligence; that all monopolies, whether in trade or religion, ought to be modified or abolished, and that the general policy of our civil administration at home, and of our affairs abroad, should be in accordance with the character of a great empire, eminently commercial and under the

* In 1807, he seconded Mr. Brand's motion relative to the late change of ministry. In 1810. See Mr. Fuller's motion for the abolition of sinecure offices.

See the debates on the Indemnity Bill, 11th March, 1818, and Lord Brougham's speech, of which the following is an extract: "It was a matter of much regret to him, and to those with whom his honorable friend was generally in the habit of acting, that a person of his (Mr. Lamb's) great respectability-that a person of so much weight in that House and in the country, from his accomplishments, his talents, and his character, should have lent himself to the support of such a measure as that which was now under consideration."

sway of free, but not of democratic institu- | events, appeared on the hustings and were tions.* successful.*

These opinions, though not precisely Whig nor Tory, were in reality becoming, about this time, the opinions of the day; and already in men's minds was shadowed out the idea of a new party, as the centre at which the Liberal Conservative and Conservative Liberal were at last to meet. In 1827 such a party was formed, and in power. Mr. Canning was its first leader; Mr. Huskinson its second; and Mr. Lamb, who had accepted the office of secretary for Ireland under the one, held it as long as the other continued to serve in the Duke of Wellington's administration—that is, until the vote on the question of East Retford in 1828. All the circumstances attending the rupture which then took place, have been so much before the public, that it would be superfluous here to dilate upon them; but we do think it worth while to mention a fact not generally knownviz: that, in the summer of 1830, Mr. Huskinson was asked whether he and his friends would accept office, and returned for answer a declaration that the support thus solicited could not be given to any ministry which did not include Lord Grey and Lord Lansdowne. This declaration is notable, inasmuch as it ranged a body of eminent political men, who had of late years stood between the Whigs and the Tories, frankly by the side of the acknowledged Whig leaders. It was also timely. The death of George IV. took place at this moment. It occasioned new elections, whilst the angry feelings created by the bill for granting Roman Catholic emancipation were still at their height. The Tory candidates had their old committees disorganized, and their old speeches thrown in their teeth. A more than usual number of Whigs, but especially a more than usual number of persons neither exclusively Whig nor Tory, and therefore open to the impression of passing

See Parliamentary Debates, 1816, 1817, 1815. This offer of Mr. Canning's was the more flattering, since Mr. Lamb, who had just retired from the representation of Staffordshire, for which he had been elected member in 1819, was not at the time in Parliament, and had to be returned for a Government borough.

We may mention as a fact that comes within our own personal knowledge, that when Mr. Lamb's resignation was pending, he received a message from a very high authority, stating that the king was very anxious that Mr. Lamb should remain in office, and observing, that in this case he would of course be elevated to a seat in the Cabinet. Mr. Lamb had not voted with Mr. Huskinson on the question of the East Retford franchise, but he declined at once listening to the suggestion.

It was when these elections were actually going on, that there arrived the startling news of the revolution in Paris; a revolution made in opposition to a deliberate attempt to put down the constituted liberties of France; and which, being achieved with a heroism and concluded with a moderation rare in history, created, even among the most mild and temperate men, such an enthusiasm, in favor of reforms calculated to extend the principle of self-government, as, since the great revolution of 1688, had not been felt within these realms.

[ocr errors]

Parliament met amidst the fall on all sides of governments which had abused or overstretched their authority, and amidst the almost universal rise of constitutions or the extension of constitutional privileges. Nowhere was the cause of the people lost amidst the excesses of the mob. The heart of England swelled with a generous emulation. "Why," said Englishmen, "when men throughout the world are asserting their rights and amending their institutions; why should we not improve and renovate ours?" That a ruined house or a decayed tree or a green mound should have a representative in Parliament, and that Birmingham and Manchester should not, was, in sooth, an inconsistency which, in a moment of general change, might seem well worthy of correction. Our country, it is true, had won its way to wealth and to greatness in spite of such defects or singularities in its form of government. For, in fact, if you establish a public assembly, and give to that assembly the free right of discussion; in whatever way it is created, out of whatever elements it is composed, the heart and mind of the nation in which it resides will become visible in it; and such assembly will assume, in moments of excitement, a popular character, and become, upon the whole, the advocate of popular rights. The council of Castille, the parliament of Paris, the early assemblies of our own warlike barons, are proofs of this general principle. But a great and civilized nation requires not only to have its wants supplied but its reason satisfied; and when a moment comes in which some absurdity in its condition is made manifest, and there appears a probability that that absurdity can safely be removed, no argument drawn from the past will withstand the instant cry for its abolition.

* A pamphlet by Lord Dover, in 1830, gives a very accurate account of these elections.

Thus, when the new parliament met, the demand for parliamentary reform was overwhelming. The Duke of Wellington felt that his government was not the government which ought to grant such a reform, and he retired. Lord Grey was entrusted with the formation of a new administration. The noble earl desired, at this critical moment, to construct his cabinet on the broadest basis.

*

Mr. Poulett Thompson, as representative of the Radical party, was made Vice President of the Board of Trade; Mr. Wynn, as representative of the once powerful Grenville party, became Secretary at War; the Whigs of eminence, as a matter of course, had stations allotted to them. Mr. Huskinson, unfortunately, had no longer to be provided for a melancholy accident had not long since deprived England of one of the most illustrious statesmen of the nineteenth century; but Lord Palmerston took the Foreign Office; Mr. Charles Grant the India Board; and Lord Melbourne, who had assumed this title since the demise of his father two years before, became Secretary of State for the Home Department. At this moment, the country was ravaged with mysterious fires; and there seemed all the symptoms of a general agrarian insurrection. The state of the metropolis itself was so alarming that the late premier-a man not given to unnecessary fears-had considered it unsafe, a few days previous to his quitting the government, for the king to attend the lord mayor's dinner in the city. Lord Grey could not safely have chosen an incapable man to guide the course of internal administration at such a time; and the wisdom of his selection soon became apparent. During the eventful period of which we have been speaking, and during the periods, as eventful, which shortly afterward succeeded, the peace of the country was steadily preserved.

In 1830 and 1831, the agricultural disturbances were suppressed. In 1832, the political unions in towns disappeared.

But where excitement has once existed it does not easily or immediately subside. The trade-unions followed the political unions, and in 1834 a petition from these societies was escorted through London by an assemblage of about 100,000 persons. But on its being carried to the Home Office, the petition was calmly refused acceptance, on account of the numbers by which it was accompanied;

*Lord Dudley, whose health was at this time already affected, was the only important member of Mr. Huskinson's party omitted in this distribution of office.

and the leaders of the procession, who had borne it triumphantly in by the front door of the department, had to beg permission to convey it out again by a back door into a hackney-coach. On this occasion, the resolute indifference of the Government, and the composure of the Home Secretary, who was looking out of the window of his office at Whitehall upon the scene beneath-the very absence from the streets of the soldiery and police, who were known to be prepared though invisible, awed the multitude into a sense of their insignificance; and if among the immense masses of men that were suffered to pass quietly through our tranquil and well guarded city, there were any who had hoped to work out from this demonstration any objects of violence, they went back to their homes and remained there for years under a full conviction of their impotence, and of the absurdity of the schemes they had meditated.

The conduct of Lord Melbourne at the time of which we are speaking, was the theme of universal praise indeed, we have dwelt upon it at some length, since we know that it weighed considerably with King William when he had subsequently to select a new prime minister.

We return from this digression.

Lord Grey had not been many weeks in office, when his famous Reform Bill was introduced to Parliament. In him this act was one of singular consistency; it closed a long political life, with a proposition almost identical with that with which his distinguished public career may be said to have opened. With many, however, in his administration the case was different. Neither Lord Melbourne, nor those with whom he was most connected, had ever been parliamentary reformers. Lord Melbourne especially had distinguished himself in more than one contest with Sir Francis Burdett on this very subject. Many were curious to see the course that he would now take. It was bold and statesman-like. "I have been against reform,”* was his argument, "when it was a question of theory; and speculative men were for unsettling the public mind, as to the merits of a constitution, which, however defective, was a noble work, under the benefit of which we have grown to a great eminence among nations; but when I find what was formerly a question of doctrine among a few theorists, has become the prevailing idea among great masses of the English people;

We have not space to quote his language, but we give its meaning.

« НазадПродовжити »