THE LATE JOHN ARTHUR ROEBUCK.
MR. GLADSTONE, in a very graceful reference to one of the bitterest of his antagonists, has expressed his con- viction that Mr. Roebuck's eccentric political attitude was always perfectly honest and perfectly independent. No doubt. Thorns in the flesh are always independent of the organism in which they create so much disturbance ; and it is, in fact, their independence, quite as much as their sharpness, which creates the disturbance. Mr. Roebuck was almost by essence a thorn in the flesh of the party to which he nominally belonged. Whatever good he did in public life,—and he did some very good things, especially in the earlier part of his career,—he did by well establishing himself as a thorn in the tenderest region of his party's organisation, and shifting about there freely, as that party moved. It was as a thorn in the flesh of the Liberals that he long ago exposed the scandals of our Government of Canada. It was as a thorn in the flesh of the Liberals that he exposed the scandals of our administrative collapse in the Crimea. It was as a thorn in the flesh of the Liberals that he denounced Lord Palmerston's tendency to fraternise with French Imperialism, during the earlier years of Louis Napoleon's re'ginte. We can well believe that Mr. Gladstone's Administration in 1869-1874 would have been rather the better than the worse for such a thorn in the flesh, to remind it of its liability to the universal doom ; nay, that Mr. Roebuck's rejection for Sheffield in 1869, though a very wise and loyal protest on the part of Sheffield against Mr. Roebuck's strange vagaries, was not ultimately advantageous to the Ministry which it numerically strengthened. For certainly if MT. Roebuck ever served his country well, it was by giving voice to the irritation with which the country regarded certain errors of Liberal Governments.
But even this function,—a valuable one, in its way,—it can- not be doubted that Mr. Roebuck overdid. He believed so very much in "the contrary,"—he was so sharp in his fault- finding with almost every attempt to carry out a Liberal policy, sometimes even when, as in the case of the Disesta- blishment of the Irish Church, he had been deeply pledged to the same policy himself in earlier life, that his warnings came without authority, and his invectives without force. Mr. Roebuck's Radicalism was, indeed, more of a constitutional, political irritability, than of a constitutional sympathy with popular policy. He could not choose but be the "candid friend" of any party to which he belonged. And if he had over joined the Tories formally, he would have been as serious a thorn in the side of Lord Beaconsfield as he was for the last twenty years in the aide of Lord Palmerston and Mr. Gladstone. It was his mission to scold allies, rather than to assail foes. The rather warm partisanship for capital, and hostility to labour, which marked his speeches in all the struggles between capital and labour, was no doubt due to the feeling that, nominally at least, it was the labourer for whom he appeared. Perhaps his bitter attacks on the United States of America were due to the same feeling that they were a people of cousins, and that, as a relative and friend of the family, he was bound to confess the disagreeable impressions made upon him. Possibly the same explanation may be given of his curious advocacy of the cause of Austria against that of Italy, as no doubt it may of the much more defensible and intelligible attack on Lord John Russell for his Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill, and of not a few of his raids against the "ribaldry" of the Press. The cause of Italy, the cause of the Northern States, the cause of a free Press, the cause of Protestantism, were probably all causes which in his heart Mr. Roebuck felt bound, by his principles, to advocate ; but for that very reason he resented the bondage in which he found himself, and eagerly looked round for an excuse to pour forth his displeasure at certain aspects of these causes which fretted and oppressed him. The antagonistic currents of feeling in Mr. Roebuck were certainly excited more by faults in organisa- tions to which he belonged, than by faults in organisations to which he did not belong. There are men who are much more apt to imagine faults and blunders in any system for which they are responsible, than in any system for which they are not responsible, and Mr. Roebuck was one of them. When the late Mr. Hadfield and he jointly represented Sheffield,—as they did for many years,—they might have been termed the curds- and-whey of the Liberal party,—Mr. Hadfield furnishing all the solid and nutritious elements of steady-going Liberalism, Mr. Roebuck all those which are of advantage chiefly in case of a sudden attack of cold, when the Liberal party had need for such remedies as a hot and biting fluid, administered to an invalid with his feet in hot water, might provide.
And yet Mr. Roebuck was not prone to find fault, or even suspect fault in England, though he was prone to find and suspect fault in the party which, for much the greater part of his political life, administered the Govern- ment of England. The fault he most commonly found with that party was precisely this,—that they did not always take for granted that the aggrandisement of England in the earth was the one chief end of political, diplomatic, and international effort. Mr. Roebuck, as everybody knows, constituted himself the "watch-dog,"—the "Tear 'em,"— of England ; and that watch-dog's bark was heard whenever he thought that any foreign Power was either wishing ill to England, or even so much as likely eventually to cause ill to England, in case nothing should be done to prevent it. When Louis Napoleon was strengthening himself, "Tear 'em" barked his discontent. When Louis Napoleon had got firm in the saddle, and the Northern States of America were beginning to show their strength, " Tear 'em" barked still more furiously. Nay, Mr. Roebuck was willing and anxious to use the help of France for the purpose of breaking the United States in two. "Tear 'ern," who had so recently been almost at the throat of the Emperor of the French, now wagged his tail when the Emperor spoke, and did his best to effect an alliance between the Emperor and the Queen, for the purpose of recognising and establishing the independence of the Slave States. Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Lindsay even brought over to the House of Commons a message from the Emperor of the French, proposing joint action in the interest of the Southern States. .Again, since Lord Beaconsfield has been in power, Mr. Roebuck has never ceased to applaud him for his ostentatious displays of English power. Indeed, Mr. Roebuck, though he loved to pick holes in the party to which he regarded himself as belonging, and the Government entrusted by that party with power,never appar- ently dreamt for a moment that English power, if it were attained, might be indifferently used. Probably it never occurred to him to go behind the mere assertion and display of English power, to the purposes which that assertion and display were intended to subserve. To him, the great object of desire was that England 'should have power to use, not how she should use it. He was almost consistent in extolling all Ministries which made English power manifest to the world, except, indeed, the Ministry of Lord Palmerston in relation to the Chinese war, when, from one of those odd impulses peculiar to Mr. Roebuck, he chose to condemn that war. But he praised Lord Palmerston for his action in Greece in the Don Pacifico affair. He praised him for his active foreign policy generally, only regretting that it had not been more active. And when Lord Beaconsfield began to juggle with the Fleet and the Indian troops, Mr. Roebuck's heart was almost for the first time really satis- fied. He had no end and aim in politics so dear to him as seeing England make a noise in the world,—almost without relation to the kind of sounds which that noise went to swell. There is something paradoxical about this very greedy spirit in relation to the degree of English influence, when combined with Mr. Roebuck's apparent indifference as to the mode in which it should be used, so long only as it was used plentifully. The more there was of English power, the better he was pleased, though with those who wielded Eng- lish power he was seldom pleased at all. He seemed to be persuaded that, in the hands most likely to wield it, English influence would certainly be abused, and yet to desire earnestly to see it grow and swell. It was a very odd state of mind. Mr. Roebuck was, indeed, a pohtical misanthrope, who com- pensated himself for attacking almost all possible English Governments, by making an idol of England, steadily ignoring the fact that the Government which was pretty sure to be installed in England would be, in his opinion, cowardly, feeble, and bad.
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