EARL RUSSELL.
EARL RUSSELL,—or rather Lord John Russell, for the greater part of his public life was passed as "Lord John,"—was certainly not the greatest statesman of his day, nor quite the most earnest and far-sighted Liberal of his day ; but this he was,—the most thoroughly popular of the aristocratic chiefs of his day,—the statesman who while, above everything else, a representative of the English aristocracy, cared more for that position because it gave him additional power to serve the people, than for any other of its advantages. Lord John Russell reformed the House of Commons, but it was the magic of his name, and of names like his, which saved the House of Lords from being reformed away. But for members of the privileged class who fight not merely tenaciously, but with something like a special gallantry, when they are the champions of the people against other members of the same order, the privileged class would hold its privileges no longer. Lord John Russell,—and not Lord John Russell merely, but through him the House of Russell, including its head,—has always done this, and it was by and through Lord John that the Russells were always represented in that struggle. It is he, and men like him, who have not merely reconciled the English people to the existence of a large and privileged class disposed to obstruct materially a great many reforms, but have almost brought the people positively to enjoy being led by the few popular leaders among the aristocracy to that inevitable victory which they always attain over the unpopular party in the Peers. Lord John not only gallantly led the people against the timid and selfish members of his own class, but he enjoyed that duty, and threw into it far more verve than he ever threw into any other kind of work. He was one who showed to the best possible effect in attack or defence, to much less effect in administrative or legislative action proceeding out of his own resources and resolves. When he said, during the deep Tory sleep of 1817, "We talk muchi—I think a great deal too much,—about the wisdom of our ancestors. I wish we could imitate the courage of our ancestors. They were not ready to lay their liberties at the foot of the Throne upon every vain or imaginary alarm," he struck a note which he again and again took up, till it became the key-note of his own political career.
But he needed the active pressure of public opinion behind
him to stimulate his imagination. He did not go before it. Even as to Parliamentary reform, when he first brought forward the subject in Parliament, it was with fear and trembling. He did all in his power to distinguish himself from the more advanced party. In 1819, for instance, when Sir Francis Burdett tried to pledge the House to take the general state of the representation into its more serious con- sideration early in the next Session of Parliament, Lord John declined to support him. Though admitting that corrupt boroughs ought to be disfranchised, he declined to support a motion "that went the length of proposing an inquiry into the general state of the Representation, because such an inquiry was calculated to throw a slur upon the representation of the country, and to fill the minds of the people with vague and
indefinite claims." Nothing could have been more character- istic of Lord John. He fought like a lion, when he was in his own mind convinced that the people were behind him,— even if the people, as sometimes happened, were wrong ; but he was as timid and cold as any other member of his class, if he doubted the people's being behind him. He had not the largeness of view which enabled him to bring the people up to him, instead of following them. Even in this matter of Parliamentary Reform, every one knows how gradual his progress was,—how he limited himself, first, to proposing to suppress the writs for the four boroughs of Grampound, Penryn, Barnstaple, and Camelford ; how he theri limited himself (in 1821) to declaring that the people were dissolis- fled with their representation, and that "means should be taken to effect a representation of wealthy and populous places which had as yet no voice in the Legislature, and that boroughs guilty of corruption should be disfranchised ;" and how, even in 1828, he had not got further than transferring to Manchester and Birmingham the seats of Penryn and East Retford ; and how, even as late as 1830, he had only got to moving for an in- crease in the number of representatives, and giving the additional ones to large towns and populous counties. And as it was with Parliamentary Reform, so it was with Free-trade. Every- body knows how about the time when Lord Melbourne said in the House of Lords that he had heard of many mad things in his life, "but before God, the idea of repealing the Corn Laws was the maddest he ever heard of," Lord John Russell discouraged the proposal even to receive evidence about the Corn Laws, and voted against Mr. Villiers' motion for the repeal. This was in 1839. Then he declared for an 8s. fixed duty, and declared that he was equally unwilling to support the sliding scale and to support the complete repeal,—and this as late as 1844. Then he went down to a 4s. or 5s. duty, and not till November, 1845, just before Sir Robert Peel was driven to the repeal of the Corn Duty, did Lord John find himself pushed on to the plain policy of total abolition. And all this was not due to want of resolution in the very least de- gree. It was due to an inadequate appreciation of what the people really needed, and what popular support would really endorse. Had Lord John seen either how much Free-trade would do for the people, or how much enthusiastic support it would bring him, his sincere patriotism in the one case, and his strong conviction that it was his function in life to become the mouthpiece of public opinion, in the other, would have made him the most fearless of leaders. But the Whig tradi- dition was a tradition of compromise. The principles of "Lord Somers" and of "Charles James Fox" were prin- ciples of compromise. And Lord John would hardly have thought himself a Whig leader at all, if he had not proposed a compromise between the extreme views.
In the rare cases where he could appeal to good Whig authority for a policy far in advance of the immediate public opinion of the day,—and in these only,—we find him far in advance of the immediate public opinion of the day. In February, 1837, Lord John introduced the Irish Municipal Reform Bill, and on that occasion he did more - than anticipate Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy of thirty years later. In abstract principle at least, he went even dangerously beyond it ; but then he had a speech of Mr. Fox's to confirm his too often rather hesitating purpose. "I will take leave," he said, "to quote the principle of our conduct from the - recorded words of a very great man Mr. Fox stated, in a very eloquent speech which he delivered in 1797, the- principles upon which he conceived the Government of Ireland should be conducted. He stated, in his usual frank,—it might be said incautious,—manner, that he conceived that concessions should be made to the people of Ireland ; he said if he found he had not conceded enough, he would concede more ; he said that he thought the only way of governing Ireland was to please the people of Ireland ; that he knew no better source of strength to this country, and he declared in one instance, which I will read to this House, his wish with respect
to the Government of Ireland. 'My wish is' said Mr. Fox, that the whole people of Ireland should have the same principles,
the same system, the same operation of government ; and though it may be a subordinate consideration, that all classes should have an equal chance of emolument ; in other words, I would have the whole Irish Government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices ; and I firmly believe, according to another Irish expression, the more she is under Irish Government, the more will she be bound to English interests.'" That would warrant not merely Home-rule, but any extrava- gance Ireland might wish for in respect of a separate financial system ; and goes far beyond anything Mr. Gladstone has ever laid down. But it was only when Lord Russell had a strong saying of Charles James Fox or of Lord Somers to fall back upon, that he advanced a principle far beyond the popular opinion of the day. For the most part, he adhered to the Whig tradition of wisdom,—compromise ; he thought that to split the difference between the views of the Radicals and the Tories, was the policy of true statesmanship.
But this was due to traditional teaching,—to anything but personal timidity. No statesman of our time has ever leaned so little on his colleages as Lord John Russell. He believed that he should be the spokesman of the people, and therefore he separated himself from his colleagues, when he saw, or thought he saw, public opinion repudiating them. But it was the force he wanted, not the sympathy,—the popular force to give efficiency to his policy, not the personal sanction of popular approbation. His frigid and almost cold independence of his colleagues often procured him severe condemnation, for dis- loyalty to them, when the truth probably was that he seriously and conscientiously felt his obligation to the people at large, much more keenly than he felt it to the knot of men with whom he had been acting. Thus, when he resigned during the Crimean troubles, on the ground that he could not defend the administrative collapse which had taken place, and certainly in that earlier crisis when he threw over Lord Palmerston, after the coup d'e?at of 1851, for not consulting the Queen before sending off his despatches,—he was supposed to be taking an unfair advantage of colleagues to whom he owed a loyal support. But we doubt whether Lord John Russell felt it at all in that light. He did not feel keenly the ties of common responsibility for joint action. He did feel very keenly what he owed to the people or the Constitution. And often when, in his frigid, insouciant way, he seemed to be tripping up a colleague from a keen ambition to beat him in the race, he was, we suspect, simply acting with that indiffer- ence to perscnal sympathy, and that strong sense of what he owed to popular or constitutional traditions, which had grown with his growth and strengthened with his strength. If Lord John had had as much prescience and sagacity as he had courage and self-reliance, he would have been the greatest statesman of his day.
Perhaps after all, the greatest of his achievements were those of his later years,—his foreign policy during the Italian Revo- lution of 1860, and his firm neutrality during the American Civil War. In both these crises his characteristic insouciance came to his aid. He had not the foresight to see how important it was to keep on good terms with France; and the selfish French annexation of Savoy and Nice so deeply mortified him, that he injudiciously threw off rather ostentatiously the French alliance, coldly snubbed Louis Napoleon's proposals for a Congress, and then, when Denmark came to be attacked in 1864, discovered that he should have no ally if he ventured to protect her. But though he blundered in running those many unnecessary pins into Louis Napoleon, which his despatches between 1860 and 1863 contained, the satisfaction which it gave him to hamper the French despot was one of the most powerful motives for his brilliant and successful Italian policy in 1860, and for ignoring all the tentatives which Louis Napoleon made for an intervention during the American Civil War. And in these parts of his foreign policy, Lord Russell was not only successful, but was successful very much because he was what he was,—the proud, aristocratic Englishman, who feared nothing in the world but English public opinion,—not the opinion of London and the Clubs, but the opinion of the people,—and who had an almost unrivalled power of administering curt rebukes to im- pertinent proposals which interfered with the policy that he thought sound. We can hardly say that Lord Russell was a great Foreign Minister, for he never conciliated any Power but Italy,—which was a very minor Power,—and managed to make himself very unpopular even with the Northern States of the American Union, whose cause he was really upholding all the time he was at the Foreign Office. But he was a great despatch-writer when a snub was needed,—which was not per- haps so often as it was administered ; and for crisp and lucid dis- couragement, which left his antagonist with a sense of humilia- tion, though without anything to complain of, Lord Russell's despatches are a perfect literary model. However, as we have said, to give others a painful sense of humiliation without giving them cause of offence, is not a very desirable power, in foreign policy, unless it is kept most rigidly under control, and Lord Russell certainly dispersed his curt and almost scornful criticisms too freely to all sorts of Powers. But if he was not exactly a great forecaster of domestic policy, nor yet a great Foreign Minister, he was a great Russell who always identified himself with whatever he believed to be the good of the people,—and did so without fear, or the possibility of fear, for any antagonist, whether democratic or aristocratic, native or foreigner, friend or foe. And it is because there are such families as his in the English aristo- cracy, that our aristocracy is looked upon by the people as a magazine of that strength by which the narrow and selfish ends of some of its own members can best be controlled and defeated.
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