Lord John Russell, Stuart J. Reid [types of ebook readers TXT] 📗
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[6] Correspondence of Mr. Joseph Jekyll, 1818-1838. Edited, with a brief Memoir, by the Hon. Algernon Bourke. Pp. 272-273.
[7] Flood’s Reform proposals were made in 1790. His idea was to augment the House of Commons by one hundred members, to be elected by the resident householders of every county.
[8] Life of George Grote, by Mrs. Grote, p. 80.
CHAPTER VTHE DAWN OF A NEW ERA
1833-1838
The turn of the tide with the Whigs—The two voices in the Cabinet—Lord John and Ireland—Althorp and the Poor Law—The Melbourne Administration on the rocks—Peel in power—The question of Irish tithes—Marriage of Lord John—Grievances of Nonconformists—Lord Melbourne’s influence over the Queen—Lord Durham’s mission to Canada—Personal sorrow.
High-water mark was reached with the Whigs in the spring of 1833, and before the tide turned, two years later, Lord Grey and his colleagues had, in various directions, done much to justify the hopes of their followers. The result of the General Election in the previous December was seen when the first Reformed Parliament assembled at Westminster, on January 29, 1833. Lord Althorp, as Leader of the House of Commons, found himself with 485 members at his back, whilst Sir Robert Peel confronted him with about 170 stalwart Tories. After all, the disparity was hardly as great as it looked, for it was a mixed multitude which followed Althorp, and in its ranks were the elements of conflict and even of revolt. The Whigs had made common cause with the Radicals when the Reform Bill stood in jeopardy every hour, but the triumph of the measure imperilled this grand alliance. Not a few of the Whigs had been faint-hearted during the struggle, and were now somewhat alarmed at its overwhelming success. Their inclination was either to rest on their laurels or to make haste slowly. The Radicals, on the contrary, longed for new worlds to conquer. They were full of energy and enthusiasm, and desired nothing so much as to ride abroad redressing human wrongs. The traditions of the past were dear to the Whigs, but the Radicals thrust such considerations impatiently aside, and boasted that 1832 was the Year 1 of the people. It was impossible that such warring elements should permanently coalesce; the marvel is that they held together so long.
Even in the Cabinet there were two voices. The Duke of Richmond was at heart a Tory masquerading in the dress of a Whig. Lord Durham was a Radical of an outspoken and uncompromising type, in spite of his aristocratic trappings and his great possessions. Nevertheless, the new era opened, not merely with a flourish of trumpets, but with notable work in the realm of practical statesmanship. Fowell Buxton took up the work of Wilberforce on behalf of the desolate and oppressed, and lived to bring about the abolition of slavery; whilst Shaftesbury’s charity began at home with the neglected factory children. Religious toleration was represented in the Commons by the Jewish Relief Bill, and its opposite in the Lords by the defeat of that measure. Althorp amended the Poor Laws, and, though neither he nor his colleagues would admit the fact, the bill rendered, by its alterations in the provisions of settlement and the bold attack which it made on the thraldom of labour, the repeal of the Corn Laws inevitable. Grant renewed the charter of the East India Company, but not its monopoly of the trade with the East. Roebuck brought forward a great scheme of education, whilst Grote sought to introduce the ballot, and Hume, in the interests of economy, but at the cost of much personal odium, assailed sinecures and extravagance in every shape and form. Ward drew attention to the abuses of the Irish Church, and did much by his exertions to lessen them; and Lord John Russell a year or two later brought about a civic revolution by the Municipal Reform Act—a measure which, next to the reform of Parliament, did more to broaden and uplift the political life of the people than any other enactment of the century. Ireland blocked the way of Lord Grey’s Ministry, and the wild talk and hectoring attitude of O’Connell, and his bold bid for personal ascendency, made it difficult for responsible statesmen to deal calmly with the problems by which they were confronted.
It is true that Lord John was not always on the side of the angels of progress and redress. He blundered occasionally like other men, and sometimes even hesitated strangely to give effect to his convictions, and therefore it would be idle as well as absurd to attempt to make out that he was consistent, much less infallible. The Radicals a little later complained that he talked of finality in reform, and supported the coercive measures of Stanley in Ireland, and opposed Hume in his efforts to secure the abolition of naval and military sinecures. He declined to support a proposed investigation of the pension list. He set his face against Tennyson’s scheme for shortening the duration of Parliaments, and Grote had to reckon with his hostility to the adoption of the ballot. But in spite of it all, he was still, in Sydney Smith’s happy phrase, to all intents and purposes ‘Lord John Reformer.’ No one doubted his honesty or challenged his motives. The compass by which Russell steered his course through political life might tremble, but men felt that it remained true.
Ireland drew forth his sympathies, but he failed to see any way out of the difficulty. ‘I wish I knew what to do to help your country,’ were his words to Moore, ‘but, as I do not, it is of no use giving her smooth words, as O’Connell told me, and I must be silent.’ It was not in his nature, however, to sit still with folded hands. He held his peace, but quietly crossed the Channel to study the problem on the spot. It was his first visit to the distressful country for many years, and he wished Moore to accompany him as guide, philosopher, and friend. He assured the poet that he would allow him to be as patriotic as he pleased about ‘the first flower of the earth and first gem of the sea’ during the proposed sentimental journey. ‘Your being a rebel,’ were his words, ‘may somewhat atone for my being a Cabinet Minister.’ Moore, however, was compelled to decline the tempting proposal by the necessity of making ends meet by sticking to the hack work which that universal provider of knowledge, Dr. Lardner, had set him in the interests of the ‘Cabinet Encyclopædia’—an enterprise to which men of the calibre of Mackintosh, Southey, Herschell, and even Walter Scott had lent a helping hand.
Lord John landed in Ireland in the beginning of September 1833, and went first to Lord Duncannon’s place at Bessborough. Afterwards he proceeded to Waterford to visit Lord Ebrington, his colleague in the representation of Devonshire. He next found his way to Cork and Killarney, and he wrote again to Moore urging him to ‘hang Dr. Lardner on his tree of knowledge,’ and to join him at the eleventh hour. Moore must have been in somewhat reduced circumstances at the moment—for he was a luxurious, pleasure-loving man, who never required much persuasion to throw down his work—since such an appeal availed nothing. Meanwhile Lord John had carried Lord Ebrington back to Dublin, and they went together to the North of Ireland. The visit to Belfast attracted considerable attention; Lord John’s services over the Reform Bill were of course fresh in the public mind, and he was entertained in orthodox fashion at a public dinner. This short tour in Ireland did much to open his eyes to the real grievances of the people, and, fresh from the scene of disaffection, he was able to speak with authority when the late autumn compelled the Whig Cabinet to throw everything else aside in order to devise if possible some measure of relief for Ireland. Stanley was Chief Secretary, and, though one of the most brilliant men of his time alike in deed and word, unfortunately his haughty temper and autocratic leanings were a grievous hindrance if a policy of coercion was to be exchanged for the more excellent way of conciliation. O’Connell opposed his policy in scathing terms, and attacked him personally with bitter invective, and in the end there was open war between the two men.
Lord Grey, now that Parliamentary Reform had been conceded, was developing into an easy-going aristocratic Whig of somewhat contracted sympathies, and Stanley, though still in the Cabinet, was apparently determined to administer the affairs of Ireland on the most approved Tory principles. Althorp, Russell, and Duncannon were men whose sympathies leaned more or less decidedly in the opposite direction, and therefore, especially with O’Connell thundering at the gates with the Irish people and the English Radicals at his back, a deadlock was inevitable. Durham, in ill health and chagrin, and irritated by the stationary, if not reactionary, attitude of certain members of the Grey Administration, resigned office in the spring of 1833. Goderich became Privy Seal, and this enabled Stanley to exchange the Irish Secretaryship for that of the Colonies. He had driven Ireland to the verge of revolt, but he had nevertheless made an honest attempt to grapple with many practical evils, and his Education Bill was a piece of constructive statesmanship which placed Roman Catholics on an equality with Protestants. Early in the session of 1834 Althorp introduced the Poor Law Amendment Act, and the measure was passed in July. The changes which it brought about were startling, for its enactments were drastic. This great economic measure came to the relief of a nation in which ‘one person in every seven was a pauper.’ The new law limited relief to destitution, prohibited out-door help to the able-bodied, beyond medical aid, instituted tests to detect imposture, confederated parishes into unions, and substituted large district workhouses for merely local shelters for the destitute. In five years the poor rate was reduced by three millions, and the population, set free by the new interpretation of ‘Settlement,’ were able, in their own phrase, to follow the work and to congregate accordingly wherever the chance of a livelihood offered. One great question followed hard on the heels of another.
In the King’s Speech at the opening of Parliament, the consideration of Irish tithes was recommended, for extinguishing ‘all just causes of complaint without injury to the rights and property of any class of subjects or to any institution in Church or State.’ Mr. Littleton (afterwards Lord Hatherton), who had succeeded Stanley as Irish Secretary accordingly introduced a new Tithe Bill, the object of which was to change the tithe first into a rent-charge payable
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