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plough was nearing the end of the furrow. His old courage and calmness remained to the end. Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone called at Pembroke Lodge on April 20, and he sent down word that he wished to see them. ‘I took them to him for a few minutes,’ relates Lady Russell. ‘Happily, he was clear in his mind, and said to Mr. Gladstone, “I am sorry you are not in the Ministry,” and kissed her affectionately, and was so cordial to both that they were greatly touched.’ He told Lady Russell that he had enjoyed his life. ‘I have made mistakes, but in all I did my object was the public good!’ Then after a pause: ‘I have sometimes seemed cold to my friends, but it was not in my heart.’ A change for the worse set in on May 1, and the last sands of life were slipping quietly through the glass when the Nonconformist deputation came on the 9th of that month to present Lord Russell with an address of congratulation on the occasion of the jubilee of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts.[45] Lady Russell and her children received the Deputation. In the course of her reply to the address Lady Russell said that of all the ‘victories won by that great party to which in his later as in his earlier years Lord John had been inseparably attached,’ there was none dearer to his memory at that moment than that which they had called to remembrance. ‘It was a proud and a sad day,’ is the entry in Lady Russell’s journal. ‘We had hoped some time ago that he might perhaps see the Deputation for a moment in his room, but he was too ill for that to be possible.’

A few days later, there appeared in the columns of ‘Punch’ some commemorative verses entitled ‘A Golden Wedding.’ They expressed the feeling that was uppermost in the heart of the nation, and two or three verses may here be recorded:—

The Golden Wedding of Lord John and Liberty his love—
‘Twixt the Russells’ House and Liberty, ’twas ever hand and glove—
His love in those dark ages, he has lived through with his bride,
To look back on them from the sunset of his quiet eventide.
His love when he that loved her and sought her for his own
Must do more than suit and service, must do battle, trumpet blown,
Must slay the fiery dragons that guarded every gate
On the roads by which men travelled for work of Church and State.
Now time brings its revenges, and all are loud to own
How beautiful a bride she was, how fond, how faithful shown;
But she knows the man who loved her when lovers were but few,
And she hails this golden wedding—fifty years of tried and true.
Look and listen, my Lord Russell: ’tis your golden wedding-day;
We may not press your brave old hand, but you hear what we’ve to say.
A blessing on the bridal that has known its fifty years,
But never known its fallings-out, delusions, doubt, or fears.
VICTORIOUS PEACE

The end came softly. ‘I fall back on the faith of my childhood,’ were the words he uttered to Dr. Anderson. The closing scene is thus recorded in Mr. Rollo Russell’s journal: ‘May 28 [1878].—He was better this morning, though still in a very weak state. He spoke more distinctly, called me by my name, and said something which I could not understand. He did not seem to be suffering ... and has, all through his long illness, been cheerful to a degree that surprises everybody about him, not complaining of anything, but seeming to feel that he was being well cared for. About midday he became worse ... but bore it all calmly. My mother was with him continually.... Towards ten he was much worse, and in a few minutes, while my mother was holding his hand, he breathed out gently the remainder of life.’ Westminster Abbey was offered as a place of burial, but, in accordance with his own expressed wish, Lord John Russell was gathered to his fathers at Chenies. The Queen’s sympathy and her sense of loss were expressed in the following letter:—

‘Balmoral: May 30, 1878.

‘Dear Lady Russell,—It was only yesterday afternoon that I heard through the papers that your dear husband had left this world of sorrows and trials peacefully and full of years the night before, or I would have telegraphed and written sooner. You will believe that I truly regret an old friend of forty years’ standing, and whose personal kindness in trying and anxious times I shall ever remember. “Lord John,” as I knew him best, was one of my first and most distinguished Ministers, and his departure recalls many eventful times.

‘To you, dear Lady Russell, who were ever one of the most devoted of wives, this must be a terrible blow, though you must have for some time been prepared for it. But one is never prepared for the blow when it comes, and you have had such trials and sorrows of late years that I most truly sympathise with you. Your dear and devoted daughter will, I know, be the greatest possible comfort to you, and I trust that your grandsons will grow up to be all you could wish.

‘Believe me always, yours affectionately,

Victoria R. and I.

HIS GREAT QUALITIES

Lord Shaftesbury wrote in his journal some words about Lord Russell which speak for themselves. After recording that he had reached the ripe age of eighty-six, and that he had been a conspicuous man for more than half a century, he added that to have ‘begun with disapprobation, to have fought through many difficulties, to have announced, and acted on, principles new to the day in which he lived, to have filled many important offices, to have made many speeches, and written many books, and in his whole course to have done much with credit, and nothing with dishonour, and so to have sustained and advanced his reputation to the very end, is a mighty commendation.’

When some one told Sir Stafford Northcote that Lord John was dead, the tidings were accompanied by the trite but sympathetic comment, ‘Poor Lord Russell!’ ‘Why do you call him poor?’ was the quick retort. ‘Lord Russell had the chance of doing a great work and—he did it.’

Lord John was not faultless, and most assuredly he was not infallible. He made mistakes, and sometimes was inclined to pay too little heed to the claims of others, and not to weigh with sufficient care the force of his own impetuous words. The taunt of ‘finality’ has seldom been less deserved. In most directions he kept an open mind, and seems, like Coleridge, to have believed that an error is sometimes the shadow of a great truth yet behind the horizon. Mr. Gladstone asserts that his old chief was always ready to stand in the post of difficulty, and possessed an inexhaustible sympathy with human suffering.

It is at least certain that Lord John Russell served England—the country whose freedom, he once declared, he ‘worshipped’—with unwearied devotion, with a high sense of honour, with a courage which never faltered, with an integrity which has never been impeached. He followed duty to the utmost verge of life, and—full himself of moral susceptibility—he reverenced the conscience of every man.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] History of the War in the Crimea, by A. W, Kinglake, vol. ii. sixth edition, pp. 249-50.

Lady Russell states that Lord John used to smile at Kinglake’s rhetorical exaggeration of the scene. Her impression is that only two of the Cabinet, and not, as the historian puts it, ‘all but a small minority,’ fell asleep. The Duke of Argyll or Mr. Gladstone can alone settle the point at issue.

[45] Amongst those who assembled in the drawing-room of Pembroke Lodge on that historic occasion were Mr. Henry Richard, M.P., Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., Mr. Edward Baines, Sir Charles Reed, Mr. Carvell Williams, M.P., who came on behalf of the Protestant Dissenting Deputies. The Congregationalists were represented by such men as the Rev. Baldwin Brown and the Rev. Guinness Rogers; the Baptists by Dr. Underhill; the Presbyterians by Dr. McEwan; and the Unitarians by Mr. Middleton Aspland.


INDEX
Abercromby, Mr., 103 Aberdeen, Lord, Foreign Secretary in Peel’s Cabinet, 125; and the repeal of the Corn Laws, 132; forms the Coalition Government, 203, 206; early political life and characteristics, 209; and the Secret Memorandum, 216, 225; friendly relations with the Emperor Nicholas, 217, 233; belief in the peaceful intentions of Russia, 225, 231; vacillation on the eve of the Crimean War, 229, 234; public prejudice against him, 233; home policy, 240; fall of his Government, 257; relations with Lord John Russell, 346, 347 Adelaide, Queen, 82, 83 ‘Adullamites,’ 329 Afghanistan, invasion of, 121, 170 ‘Alabama’ Case, the, 312-319 Albert, Prince, and Lord Palmerston, 177; letter on the defeat of the Turks at Sinope, 232; and Count Buol’s scheme, 261; letter on the position of affairs in the Crimea, 263; death, and characteristics, 308, 309; last official act, 310 Alexander II., 259, 321 Alien Acts, the, 27 All the Talents, Ministry of, 63, 64 Alma, the battle of, 246 Althorp, Lord, 48, 56, 67, 79; and his part in carrying the Reform Bill, 81, 82, 87; characteristics, 81, 82, 88, 92; introduces the Poor Law Amendment Act (Ireland), 93, 96; and the Coercion Act, 96; succeeds to the Peerage as Earl Spencer, 100. See also Spencer, Lord Amberley, Viscount, 356 America, war between England and, 21, 22; Napoleon’s opinion of the war, 31; and the ‘Trent’ affair, 310-312; Civil War, 310, 313; and the Alabama Case, 312-319 Anti-Corn-Law League, its founding 121, 126, 131 Argyll, Duke of, 295, 327 Armenia, massacres in, 269, 353 Arms Bill, 146, 147; of 1847, 154 Auckland, Lord, 96 Austria, revolt in Vienna of 1848, 171; and the retention of Lombardy and Venice, 172, 300; and the Vienna Note, 227; and the Crimean War, 243; proposed alliance with England and France to defend the integrity of Turkey, 261; her power in Italy, 300; campaign against France and Italy, and battles of Magenta and Solferino, 302, 303; and the peace of Villafranca, 303 Bagehot, Walter, 86, 323 Ballot, the: Grote’s attempts to introduce a bill,
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