LORD PALMERSTON AND MR. BRIGHT.
MR. BRIGHT'S letter to Glasgow, declining to speak there on Reform, expresses with all his old force the intensity of Mr. Bright's antipathy to our aged Premier, the depth of -silent wrath with which his whole nature is shaken when the image of Lord Palmerston crosses his ardent political dreams. "When the present Prime Minister leaves office," he writes, "no Ministry will be possible of the Liberal party which will man connected with the Liberal party who is at once both able and willing to betray it. One sentence from his lips would have passed the bill of 1860, and that sentence he -refused to utter. His colleagues preferred their places to their honour as public men, and they consented to the greatest political fraud of our times rather than leave the Treasury bench even for a season. Happily, the question does not -depend on the Prime Minister. He has never promoted its growth, and he cannot prevent its success." And be fore concluding, he again speaks passionately of the "de- gradation" of sitting as a supporter of an administration which "repudiates and has betrayed the first and greatest question or cause on which the whole policy of the Liberal party is founded." Lord Palmerston probably repays this "robust" political hatred with something of the flavour of aristocratic contempt. He told Mr. Cobden to "stick to his last,' not to attempt general polities, espe- cially the care of the navy ; and he no doubt feels towards Mr. Bright something of the hauteur of a Nicias towards a Clean. Yet to the political historian of our time both these men will be characteristic flgues, full of meaning and vigour, as different indeed in attitude and expression as can well be, but by no means engaged in that internecine conflict with each other in which Mr. Bright's ardent and graphic imagination always represents them whenever the shadow of Lord Pal- merston touches his shuddering mind. There are some men whose fancies always seem to run on a duel,—intellectual, social, or otherwise,—with some one haunting enemy whose existence mars their peace. And yet it does not really follow that they may not be, though working from totally different motives, working in great measure to the same result with their fancied antagonists. Mr. Bright is always fighting such a duel in his mind with Lord Palmerston. It is always a outrance ; he never fires his pistol in the air. As he re- hearses the future in his speeches or writings, the first thing of which he fiercely disencumbers the present is the political presence of Lord Palmerston. Yet though they have tittle or nothing in common, there is almost as little of pure opposition in the objects for which Lord Palmerston and Mr. Bright have struggled.
In genius, in unity of expression, in strength of feeling, in force of passion, in all that fits a man for a characteristic poli- tical portrait,—to represent impressively, that is, a single ele- ment in the political life of a nation,—Mr. Bright has vastly the advantage of his greater antagonist. He is himself essentially all that he represents, while Lord Palmerston, who represents much more than Mr. Bright, for the most part only represents it, and has not, could not have, lived it. Mr. Bright represents what little of the genius of true democracy there is now in Eng- land, as Lord Strafford represented the genius most opposed to it during the time of Charles I. A Vandyke would paint of Mr. Bright an historical picture never to be forgotten,—the broad Saxon face asserting its plebeianism as a privilege in spite of the clear light of genius, the smouldering fire just restrained sufficiently for the thinker to calculate the blow, the homely imagination disdaining -subtleties but vivid with a sort of domestic light, the solid and heavy attitude planted as it were on the earth, but yet an attitude that suggests less resistance than aggression, the hand lifted to give weight to deeply meditated wrath, -the lips formed to slow but weighty articulation, and send- ing forth their words like cannon-balls,--everything repre- sentative of his hostility to a dominant class, and of that sort -of hostility which springs from feeling profoundly the superi- ority of common home life, laborious industry, and domestic affections, over the shallower, less concentrated, less solidly rooted, more indolent, lamer, and more worldly wisdom, which he attributes to the aristocratic society supplying the greater number of our rulers. Lord Palmerston is no doubt a great contrast to, but in no respect the antithesis of, Mr. Bright. You see at once indeed what it is in him which concentrates on him so vividly the great democrat's wrath. In the first place, as we said, he has strongly marked that essential characteristic of a man of the world,—the power of recognizing and making his easy bow to much which has no particular value to him, much which perhaps he may even dislike or despise. Characters like Mr. Bright's have a keen hatred to this knack of getting all the advantage, as it were, of respect and admiration with- out feeling it. They call it levity, and no doubt to some extent it does indicate the absence of any strong discrimina- tion between good and evil, right and wrong. Then there is in Lord Palmerston, also 'conspicuous to discern, not only the pliancy of a man of the world, but the complacency of a man at the top of the world ; and that, too, is insufferable to Mr. Bright. Then there is the strong common-place conven- tional manner, the habit of taking up hackneyed phrases that are in every one's mouth, and which have no impress of his own experience upon them, and this Mr. Bright regards as buckram. Finally, there is the powerful will, the strong jaw with its vivid lines, the distinctly marked ambitions, all ex- pressing the force which Mr. Bright recognizes and yearns to defeat. Lord Palmerston has not the strongly marked character and genius of Mr.Bright. He would scarcely be Prime Minister if he had. An English Minister, above all an English Minister who has passed through so many phases of government as Lord Palmerston, must have much of the flexibility of the reed as well as its tenacious roots. He must be well tempered to respect in political life much that he does not respect in his own heart. He must not identify himself too passionately with any political cause, or he will narrow his influence and perhaps also wear himself out. He must be shrewd and take things easily, without wanting strength. Lord Palmerston long ago expressed his contempt for the belief entertained by the stiff Tories "that the firm and steady determination of a few men in power could bear down the opinions of the many, and stifle the feelings of mankind," and he has certainly always been on his guard against that error,—bowing quite as cheer- fully to 'the opinions of the many' when (as recently) they appeared opposed to reform, as he did more than thirty years ago when they were in favour of it. Something of flavourless- ness, something of indifference to personal convictions, must mark a man who can represent a composite public opinion like that of England, and represent it in the most different phases of political feeling. It is the privilege—if it be a privilege, and in some sense it is—of representing only a strong and homo- geneous but rather narrow class feeling, as does Mr. Bright, that you can take the whole of its natural creed into your heart of hearts, till it kindles the thoughts, passions, and sentiments into one white glow of conviction. No such privilege,—so far as it is a privilege,—can be enjoyed by a popular Prime Minister who has shared for two complete generations in the Government of England.
Yet, as we said, in spite of these very strong contrasts, Lord Palmerston and Mr. Bright have not been really fighting the perpetual duel which the latter supposes, for though Mr. Bright has fought long and hard against Lord Palmerston and his order, Lord Palmerston has scarcely fought at all against Mr. Bright. True, he has been and is an aristocrat at heart, though scarcely more so than the nation he serves. But for aristocratic privilege as such, he has fought very little, though he has assumed it when it was granted him. In many respects he is more truly a Liberal than Mr. Bright, who is not pro- perly a Liberal, but a Democrat. There are many aspects in which Liberalism proper belongs more naturally to the aris- tocracy, and is more thoroughly ingrained in their nature, than to either the middle or lower class ;—all the aspects indeed in which we connect Liberal ideas with such administrations as that of the Ifedicis at Florence. That easy, intellectual, artistic Liberalism which consists chiefly in opposing Obscurantism, which loves to remove religious distinctions, and to encourage the growth of the fine arts, and of commerce, and of all the creative faculties of the human mind, which does not care very much for the moralities, but does care for the intellectual light which feeds the moralities,—Liberalism of this kind,—and though not the highest, it is valuable of its kind,—is much more deeply rooted in the aristocracy of any really cultivated nation than in any other class. And to this kind of Liberalism Lord Palmerston has been a more consistent adherent than Mr. Bright. He began early with opposing the Catholic disabilities, and joined eagerly Canning's school of classical Liberalism. He was a convert to Mr. Huskisson's views on Free Trade long before Mr. Bright threw over that cause the spell of his passionate eloquence. Lord Palmerston's foreign policy has been dictated throughout his career by the wish to remove the nightmare lying on the intellectual powers and creative industries of the other nations of Europe. No doubt he has not shared Kr. Bright's zeal for raising from the dust those sections of the population which have not yet shown many gleams of intelligence and power. No doubt his atti- tude towards such classes has been chiefly one of humanity rather than one of indignant sympathy. He even feels a preference for an enlightened policy that is carried out by an aristocratic class; he will accept the alliance of the middle class to carry it out if it is necessary, but he would rather that it were not necessary: He probably cares far more for the sort of government than for the principle of self-govern- ment. He preferred a sagacious government of France by an Emperor to the distracted government of the people. He would have avoided the necessity even of our own Reform Bill by timely concessions if he could. His preferences are all aristo- cratic so long as the aristocracy are politic and enlightened, not reactionary and obstinate. Nevertheless he has never been the foe of Mr. Bright's great "cause," and he has done much to prepare the way for a Government far more popular in origin than his Own. He has smoothed the descent by spreading those general Liberal ideas common to the aristo- cracy and to the people. He has done much (without per- haps intending it) to reconcile the classes whom Mr. Bright has done much to estrange. In an easy and worldly way he has befriended the masses, promoted their comfort, stimulated their intelligence, smiled at their grudge against the aristo- cracy, and felt too secure of the strength of aristocratic influence to be even very averse to putting himself in their power.
The two men are in every way a curious contrast, but Mr. Bright's chronic impression that he has been engaged in a deadly struggle throughout his political life with Lord Pal- merston is an illusion and an illusion which no one sees through more clearly illusion, Lord Paltnerston himself. Lord Palmerston and Mr. Bright are opposed only as the complacent easy man of the world, who can be all things to all men, and the strong passionate representative of a single latitude of feeling and thought,—as Ciceronian liberalism to the demo- cracy of Graochus, as the polite liberalism of the French salons to the passion of the French Revolution. But could the latter have existed without the former ? Nay, if it had, would it not have been a still more fearful phenomenon without the former ? It is the permeation of the masses by the loose condescending Liberalism of aristocratic intelligence which renders them so amenable to reason when their sense of justice and their passions suddenly find a vent in the eloquence of such a political volcano as Mr. Bright.
Previous page
