LORD JOHN RUSSELL

THESE volumes are not intended -for -the general reader, and the general reader is not likely to find much amusement or

interest in them. True, Mr. Gooch provides an admirable general introduction, bid Lord John Russell, who had many gifts, had not that of writing lively letters upon public affairs. Nor, it must be admitted, had his colleagues. Very few of the specimens in this volume compare favourably with the letters of Disraeli on similar subjects ; but then Disraeli regarded almost every occupation, including letter-writing, as -an art, and not, like his Whig opponents, as a business. The letters Palmerston wrote to -Russell, it is true, are some- times very entertaining. But this is' not because Palmerston affected any graces of style, but because he was frequently very angry with Lord John Russell and always said what he thought with refreshing directness. - Thus in 1840, when Palmerston was practically alone in the Cabinet in holding out for a strong line with Mehemet Ali, and in his 'confidence

that the-bluff of Thiers and the French was no more than bluff,- he writes characteristically :- " I look upon the question for decision to be, whether England is to remain a substantive Power, or is to declare. herself a dependency of France. In the event of the latter decision you had better abolish the office of Secy. for Foreign Affairs and have in London an Under Secy. for the. English Department deputed from the Foreign Office at Paris."

And in 1851, when Russell, largely at the instance of the Court, was dismissing Palmerston from the Foreign Office for excessive independence, there is a note from the aggrieved Minister which makes no attempt whatever to conceal hii feelings :—

" 1 haYe received youi letter of yesterday and shall attend your summons to deliver up the seals' whenever I receive it. With regard to what you say about the last week you do not, of course, imagine that 1 do not feel that just indignation at the whole transaction which the circumstances of the case must naturally inspire."

We wonder less than ever after reading this correspondence that Palmerston was usually less understood by the Whig politicians, and always -better liked by the' country. than

Lord John.

But although this correspondence may have little appeal for the general reader, it is of great interest and importance to the student of history. For, after all, Lord John Russell was one of the great figures of the nineteenth century. Of his several considerable claims, upon our gratitude, perhaps the

greatest is that alone of the genuine Whigs of the old school during the central decades of the nineteenth century he did believe in Reform. His friends and colleagues were some- times ready to pay lip-service to the principle, but in their hearts they feared and dreaded it. When it was necessary to appear to welcome a Reform Bill they were ready with equivocal phrases and elaborate plans for changes which should make no change. " I could propose a very conserva- tive and yet Liberal scheme," writes Lord Shaftesbury. Lord Minto advises dealing soberly with the suffrage without dis- turbing the existing distribution of seats. 1832 went as far as they cared to go. They were all at heart " finality men." " If we begin ourselves to unsettle the arrangements of the Reform Bill . . we open the door to any number of other changes," warns Palmerston, who hated Reform almost as soundly as he hated the Tsar. Amidst all the frigid insinceri-

ties with which his colleagues supported Lord John's Reform proposals in 1853 it is refreshing .to find one touch of manliness and statesmanship. " I want the new Bill to be such as will look wise and courageous twenty years hence," writes John Bright. Lord John, of course, -was not a Radical ; perhaps he was scarcely even a bold Reformer, but it seems to have

been with genuine emotion that in April, 1854, as the war clouds drifted nearer iri the East, he announced that he had

reluetantly consented to withdraw his Bill. The Whigs heaved a long- sigh of relief and showered upon Lord John notes of symtiathy which scarcely. pretended to conceal their satisfaction.

In foreign polky Lord John was, of course, eclipsed by Palmerston.. Here it was Palmerston who had the courage, a poker player's courage. Time.after tinie he trifimphantly called his adversary's bluff. -Lord John -had not that sort of

-courage. Thus this correspondence only serves to show 'once more what Greville's Journal, for example, so strikingly Illustrates, how Palmerston carried the whole Cabinet on his shoulders through the Mehemit Ali crisis of 1840. The

Near Eastern problem of 1853 and 1854 does not furnish so .

many or so instructive letters as we could have Wished. But

those we have serve to confirm the familiar view, so hotly 'combated by Kinglake . and the 'biographer of Stratford :Canning, that the responsibility for the Crimean War rests not upon the Emperor of France but upon Stratford Canning, or rather _perhaps upon Clarendon, who, believing that the Great

-Mehl, contrary to his instructions, was Working. for war at Constantinople, yet allowed him to remain there. Thus the puzzled and suspicious letter from Lord. Aberdeen, when he 'first learnt that the Turks had rejected the Vienna Note, is

clearly written by' a man who mistrusts and fears his own aMbassador '

" We must naturally be impatient to see how Lord Stratford explains the conduct of the Turks, and whether he -has sanctioned it or not. I confess, the more I consider it, the more inexplicable it appears to me except on the supposition that peace is not really -desired."

Lord John Russell was one of the foremost of public figures for forty -years, and his Correspondence necessarily throws some light upon most of the political problems of those four critical decades. It is largely impersonal and it does not much increase our sympathy or affection for Lord John. But it does leave us with a clear impression of an able and con-

scientious public servant, who stood for what was best in the Whig tradition and who, though he was never a Radical, was yet in a real sense a link between Gladstone and Charles James