Letters of Lord Acton Part 20

Odo Russell[235] leaves a larger gap than he filled, and he is difficult to replace at a moment of peculiar soreness and strain. In the service, I should prefer Dufferin; out of it--Bedford! I understand that he would not accept. I find Lord Granville quite feels that our strongest diplomatist, Morier, is out of the question at Berlin, but it will be ten times worse to send Carlingford, and an indication of weakness.

Many, very many, thanks for your letter, which did not seem to me to suffer from the distractions and dissipations of Dalmeny. The best part of it is the good report of your father's health and spirits.

[Sidenote: _Cannes Nov. 12, 1884_]

Your delightful letter came from Munich this evening after I had posted mine.

It is an exquisite pleasure to look forward to meeting in such a short time. I should so much wish to have a glimpse of you, and a chat, before the plot thickens with us, so as to get the bearings. If all goes well, I have some chance of arriving pretty early on Monday, and my first business will be to ask if there is a line from you at the Athenaeum. There is an uncertainty about the through trains, as there are no travellers yet, and so I may be disappointed.

It is a very important crisis, as there is a possibility of such complete and perfect success for Mr. Gladstone's policy of Reform; and I do so hope he may have it in all fulness. There never was such personal ascendency; and I trust nothing will happen in Africa to disturb it.

{196}

Yes, I would give a trifle to have heard the discussion of our Revolution by our greatest statesman[236] and our greatest historian.[237] The latter betrayed his uncompromising Conservatism by half a parenthesis at Keble. It is very superficially disguised in his book, and he ought to have been more grateful to me than he was for abusing Macaulay. Brewer was just like him in judging those events, and Gardiner contrives only by an effort not to revile the good old Cause. We are well out of the monotonous old cry about Hampden and Russell.

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Nov. 12, 1884_]

We have had a long journey from St. Martin, and are hardly settled down in the midst of a vast solitude, when the unreasonable success of the Government compels me to pack my bag once more.

What makes it a pleasure, I need not say. If all things go as I expect, I shall be in town on Monday night or early on Tuesday.

If you are so very kind as to send a line to the Athenaeum suggesting the right end and object and reward of travel, please put outside, _to wait arrival_.

I do not stay with the Granvilles this time, that I may vote against Ministers at my ease. And I do not bring M----, which is a grief; still, I look forward to a deal of riotous living, and to many sources of public and private satisfaction.

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Dec. 9, 1884_]

... M-- received an account which pleased her, of my bath of goodness and spirituality at Oxford; and the writing to her about scenes and people she knows, {197} and trying to explain thoughts and facts, has been half the pleasure of my solitary journey.

The meeting at your door[238] of the professors of heterodoxy[239] and chatterboxy[240] in political economy is delightful, and I hope it will fructify. But my friend the "nice little old gentleman"[241] will always be too strenuous and urgent for the Fra Angelico of Economists; and besides, we live in the Gladstonian era--and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. That, however, might be a bond of union between those Sophisters.

In London I could not escape a luncheon with ----, who threatens me with a friendly visit next month at Cannes. Next week I expect Bryce with Robertson Smith. Did I tell you of my pleasant dinner with them on Wednesday, and meeting Creighton?[242] He is an agreeable and superior man, whom you would like; and he is full of general knowledge.

But I am afraid you will find his book[243] a severe study.

Thursday--Rather an uninteresting dinner at ----; but one goes there to eat. Lord G. not in very good spirits. I conciliated Enfield, who ...

was a little shocked to find that I agree with Courtney.

There was not a gap of time for a farewell in Downing Street, and I had to decline dinners with the Granvilles, Mays, and Pagets, and a visit to Seac.o.x--Hamlet left out.

The journey succeeded beautifully, for it was the roughest pa.s.sage I remember, and I was none the {198} worse for it. At Calais one gets into a sleeping-car and gets out of it at Cannes, after dining and sleeping comfortably. A young Englishman described the Gra.s.se Hotel to me, where he had lived with Cross, who was writing a book. He did not discover that it[244] was the book in my hand. I have sent it back with some considerable suggestions.

Mrs. Green writes an amusing account of Dr. Stubbs's violent language in politics when she approaches him with her history. I have advised her to sacrifice everything and everybody to the object of securing his help. Leviathan will not aid her.

I have strongly urged May to write a new chapter of Const.i.tutional History, coming down to this our era of Good Feeling, as Americans call the last administration of Monroe.[245] It is the greatest landmark in English Politics; and it has the merit of all well-defined epochs, that it is not going to last.

At the British Museum, Gardiner was working, and I wished him joy on the endowment of Research.

[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 18, 1884_]

If sleeplessness comes on again do represent the merits of Cannes in their proper light. January is often the finest month, and this is the finest season ever known. Also it is the emptiest. I hear that Th.o.r.enc is not to let, in the hope that the Wolvertons may take it.

Such rest and change as he would get here, after so much hard work, might be quite invaluable, especially if it is in his thoughts that the Session of 1885 is to be his last in office. That would be {199} worth refres.h.i.+ng for; and we shall do our best to occupy and distract him, and all of you, during your stay.

Croker[246] was so large and promising a morsel that I postponed temptation and read no part of him carefully; besides it is a question hot with hidden fire. Have you not discovered, have I never betrayed, what a narrow doctrinaire I am, under a thin disguise of levity? The Duke of Orleans nearly described my feelings when he spoke, testamentarily, of his religious _flag_ and his political _faith_.

Politics come nearer religion with me, a party is more like a church, error more like heresy, prejudice more like sin, than I find it to be with better men. And by these canons I am forced to think ill of Peel, to think, if you won't misunderstand me, that he was not a man of principle. The nature of Toryism is to be entangled in interests, traditions, necessities, difficulties, expedients, to manage as best one may, without creating artificial obstacles in the shape of dogma, or superfluous barriers of general principle. "Perissent les colonies plutot que les principes" (which is a made-up sentence, no more authentic than "Roma locuta est"), expresses the sort of thing Liberalism means and Toryism rejects. Government must be carried on, even if we must tolerate some measure of wrong, use some bad reasons, trample on some unlucky men. Other people could recognise the face and the sanct.i.ty of morality where it penetrated politics, taking the shape of sweeping principle, as in Emanc.i.p.ation, Free Trade, and so many other doctrinaire questions. Peel could not until he was compelled by facts. Because he was reluctant to admit the sovereignty of considerations which {200} were not maxims of state policy, which condemned his own past and the party to which he belonged.

But if party is sacred to me as a body of doctrine, it is not, as an a.s.sociation of men bound together, not by common convictions but by mutual obligations and engagements. In the life of every great man there is a point where fidelity to ideas, which are the justifying cause of party, diverges from fidelity to arrangements and understandings, which are its machinery. And one expects a great man to sacrifice his friends--at least his friends.h.i.+p--to the higher cause.

Progress depends not only on the victory, the uncertain and intermittent victory, of Liberals over Conservatives, but on the permeation of Conservatism with Liberal ideas, the successive conversion of Tory leaders, the gradual desertion of the Conservative ma.s.ses by their chiefs--Fox, Grenville, Wellesley, Canning, Huskisson, Peel--Tory ministers pa.s.sing Emanc.i.p.ation, Free Trade, Reform--are in the order of historic developments. Still the complaints of Croker are natural. He had been urged along a certain line, and being a coa.r.s.e, blatant fellow, he overdid it, and wrote things from which there was no release. It was not in his brutal nature to appreciate the other side of questions. He did not begin by seeing the strong points of his enemy's case, and so far he was dishonest.

My impression is that Peel was justified towards his party in 1846 by what occurred in 1845. He explained his views; some of his friends declared against them; and he resigned. After the exchange of Stanley for Mr. Gladstone, it was a new Ministry, a new departure on distinct lines. n.o.body was betrayed. Peel did not carry his friends with him {201} because he had not the ascendency which his great lieutenant possesses. The Radicals have been made to look as foolish as Croker.

The bread has been taken out of their mouths, as they are not to devour the Lords. They have consolations in the future which the Protectionists have not; but they are in as false a position as the Protectionists were; and yet they stand fire on the whole well, and without secession.--But I am conscious of more nearly hating Croker than anybody, except Lord Clare, in English history. It was my one link with a late, highly-lamented statesman and novelist.[247]

[Sidenote: _La Madeleine Jan. 14, 1885_]

Yes! at last, foreign affairs are in a very wretched way, and are unjustly and unreasonably injuring Mr. Gladstone's own position. If Morier is still in England, I wish he could see him before Petersburg.

He is our only strong diplomatist; but he is only strong.

I have bored the P.M. to extinction with praise of Liddon, and as all I could say is obvious to others, I am not tempted to repeat the offence.

But the death of that uninteresting, good Bishop Jackson[248] disturbs my rest. It is clear, very clear to me, that it would not be right to pa.s.s Liddon over now that there are two important vacancies to fill; and one asks oneself why he should not be chosen for the more important of the two, and who is manifestly worthier to occupy the greatest see in Christendom? The real answer, I suppose, is that his appointment will give great offence, and that he is {202} a decided partisan, and a partisan of nearly the same opinions as the P.M. himself.

No doubt there would be much irritation on the thorough Protestant side, and in quarters very near Downing Street, and I feel, myself, more strongly than many people, that partisans.h.i.+p in Liddon runs to partiality, to one-sidedness, to something very like prejudice. And with all that strong feeling, I cannot help being agitated with the hope that the great and providential opportunity will not be lost.

a.s.suredly Liddon is the greatest power in the conflict with sin, and in turning the souls of men to G.o.d, that the nation now possesses. He is also, among all the clergy, the man best known to numbers of Londoners.

There must be a very strong reason to justify a Minister in refusing such a bishop to such a diocese.

The argument of continuity does not convince me, because it was disregarded when Philpotts died. Still more, because so eminent a representative of Church principles had not occupied the see of London within living memory, and there is a balance to redress. When I think of his lofty and gracious spirit, his eloquence, his radiant spirituality, all the objections which I might feel, vanish entirely.

The time has really come when the P.M. has authority to do what he likes, and to disregard cavil. He is lifted above all considerations which might weaken action at other times and in other men. No ill consequences of his use of patronage can reach him. He can be guided by the supreme motive, and by the supreme motive only. It may well be that these are the last conspicuous ecclesiastical appointments that {203} will be his to make. He is able now to bequeath an ill.u.s.trious legacy to the people of London.

And, speaking on a lower level, the shock of Liddon's elevation might be blunted by the contemporaneous choice for Lincoln.

One qualification ought to be remembered. He is more in contact than other churchmen with questions of the day. Not only politics and criticism, but science. Paget delights to relate how Owen was discoursing on the brevity of life in the days of the patriarchs, and how beautifully Liddon baffled him by asking whether there is any structural reason for a c.o.c.katoo to live ten times as long as a pigeon.

If it was my duty, which it is not, or my habit--which it is still less--to speak all my mind, I would say that there is, within my range of observation, some inclination to make too much of distinguished men in the Church. I name no names, but if I did, I might name Pusey, Wilberforce, Mozley, Church, Westcott, as men whom there has been some tendency to overestimate, at least in comparison with Liddon. Not that he is their superior, but that he seems to me to have fallen short of his due as much as they, in various ways, have been overpaid, in praise, confidence, and fame. If there have been reasons explaining this, I think they ought not to operate now.

Who are conceivable candidates? Temple, Westcott, Wilkinson, Butler, Lightfoot? Two of these are more learned and more indefinite theologians; but I can see no other point of rivalry. And I do not learn that Dunelm possesses unusual light in dealing with men. Fraser?

Who can say that he has the highest qualities in Liddon's measure?

Temple {204} is vigorous and open; but he is not highly spiritual, or attractive, or impressive as a speaker; he has an arid mind, and a provincial note in speech and manner. But he also understands science.