Lord John Russell, Stuart J. Reid [types of ebook readers TXT] 📗

When Lord John was once asked at the Colonial Office by an official of the French Government how much of Australia was claimed as the dominion of Great Britain, he promptly answered, ‘The whole.’ The visitor, quite taken aback, found it expedient to take his departure. Lord John vigorously assailed the view that colonies which had their own parliaments, framed on the British model, were virtually independent, and, therefore, had no right to expect more than moral help from the Mother Country. During his tenure of office New Zealand became part of the British dominions. By the treaty of Waitangi, the Queen assumed the sovereignty, and the new colony was assured of the protection of England. Lord John assured the British Provinces of North America that, so long as they wished to remain subjects of the Queen, they might confidently rely on the protection of England in all emergencies.

Mr. Gladstone has in recent years done justice to the remarkable prescience, and scarcely less remarkable administrative skill, which Lord John brought to bear at a critical juncture in the conduct of the Colonial policy of the Melbourne Government. He lays stress on the ‘unfaltering courage’ which Russell displayed in meeting, as far as was then possible, the legitimate demand for responsible self-government. It is not, therefore, surprising that, to borrow Mr. Gladstone’s words, ‘Lord John Russell substituted harmony for antagonism in the daily conduct of affairs for those Colonies, each of which, in an infancy of irrepressible vigour, was bursting its swaddling clothes. Is it inexcusable to say that by this decision, which was far ahead of the current opinion of the day, he saved the Empire, possibly from disruption, certainly from much embarrassment and much discredit.’[11] Lord John was a man of vision. He saw, beyond most of his contemporaries, the coming magnitude of the Empire, and he did his best to shape on broad lines and to far-reaching issues the policy of England towards her children beyond the seas. Lord John recognised in no churlish or half-hearted spirit the claims of the Colonies, nor did he stand dismayed by the vision of Empire. ‘There was a time when we might have stood alone,’ are his words. ‘That time has passed. We conquered and peopled Canada, we took possession of the whole of Australia, Van Dieman’s Land, and New Zealand. We have annexed India to the Crown. There is no going back. For my part, I delight in observing the imitation of our free institutions, and even our habits and manners, in colonies at a distance from the Palace of Westminster.’ He trusted the Colonies, and refused to believe that all the wisdom which was profitable to direct their affairs was centred in Downing Street. His attitude was sympathetic and generous, and at the same time it was candid and firm.

Lord Stanmore’s recollections of his father’s colleague go back to this period, and will be read with interest: ‘As a boy of ten or twelve I often saw Lord John. His half-sister, Lady Louisa Russell, was the wife of my half-brother, Lord Abercorn, and Lord John was a frequent guest at Lord Abercorn’s villa at Stanmore, where my father habitually passed his Saturdays and Sundays during the session, and where I almost wholly lived. My first conscious remembrance of Lord John dates from the summer of 1839, and in that and the following years I often saw him at the Priory. Towards the close of 1839 Lord John lost his first wife, and the picture of his little figure, in deep mourning, walking by the side of my father on the gravel walks about the house in the spring and summer of 1840 is one vividly impressed on my recollection. His manner to children was not unpleasant, and I well remember his pausing, an amused listener to a childish and vehement political discussion between his step-daughter, Miss Lister, and myself—a discussion which he from time to time stirred up to increased animation by playfully mischievous suggestions.’