Lady John Russell Part 16

Generation after generation have grown up in ignorance and misery, while those who lived upon the product of their labours have laughed and rioted through life as though they had not known that from them alone could light and civilization descend upon these poor wretches. I had often heard, as every one has, of the evils of absenteeism, but till I came and saw its effects I had no notion how great a crime it is.... They [the absentee landowners] thought only of themselves and their own enjoyments, they left their people to grow up and multiply like brute beasts, they stifled in them by their tyranny all hope and independence and desire of advancement, they made them cowards and liars, and have now left them to die off from the face of the earth. Neither can any one living at a distance have any notion of the utter absence of all public spirit among the upper cla.s.ses.... Legislation can do nothing when there is nothing for it to act upon. Parliament to Ireland is what a galvanic battery is to a dead body, and it is in vain to make laws when there is no machinery to work them. A people must be worked up to a certain point in their dispositions and understandings before they can be affected by highly civilized legislation.... It is only individual exertions, and the personal superintendence of wise and good men, that can ever drill the Irish people into a legislatable state.... One or two things, however, seem to me pretty certain--

1. That under proper management the Irish peasant can be made anything of.

2. That, generally speaking, the present cla.s.s of proprietors must and will be swept from off the surface of the earth.

3. That in the extreme West the surface is overcrowded, but not at all so a few miles inland.

4. That reclaiming waste lands and bogs at present is to throw money away.

I begin to fear I have written a strange rigmarole, but still I will send it, for though Irish matters cannot interest you as they do me, yet still a letter is always a pleasant thing to receive, even only that one may have the satisfaction of looking at the Queen's head and breaking the seal.

The next entry from Lady John's Diary is dated October 9, 1849.

After tea John told me that he had informed the Cabinet of his plan for the extension of the suffrage--to be proposed next session. All looked grave. Sir Charles Wood and Lord Lansdowne expressed some alarm.... To grant an increase of weight to the people of this country when revolutions are taking place on all sides, when a timid Ministry would rather seek to diminish that which they already have, is to show a n.o.ble trust in them, of which I believe they will n.o.bly prove themselves worthy.

Lord John's determination to carry through this measure himself, rather than to leave it in the hands of others, was afterwards the cause of the first defeat of the Whig Government.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

LONDON, _February_ 19, 1850

The weeks are galloping past so much faster even than usual that there is no keeping pace with them.

I neither read, write, teach, learn, nor do anything--unless indeed revising visiting books and writing invitations is to be called something. I want to be with my Mama, to be with my husband, to be with my children, to be with friends, and to be alone, all at the same time. I want to read everything, and to write to everybody, and to walk everywhere, in no time at all. And what is the result?

Why, that I lose the very _power_ not only of _doing_, but of _thinking_, to a degree that makes me seriously uneasy and unfits me to be a companion to anybody older or wiser than Wee-wee, or Baby, whose capacities exactly suit mine. All this sounds as if I led a life of bustle, which I do _not_--but it is _too full,_ and there is an end of it. I dare say it is mistaken vanity to suppose that if it was emptier I should do anything worthier of record in the political, literary, or educational line--and at all events it would be hard to find a happier or, I trust, more thankful heart than mine, my troubles being in fact the result of many blessings.

The next session opened with the Greek crisis, which Greville described as "the worst sc.r.a.pe into which Palmerston has ever got himself and his colleagues. The disgust at it here is universal with those who think at all about foreign matters: it is past all doubt that it has produced the strongest feelings of indignation against this country all over Europe, and the Ministers themselves are conscious what a disgraceful figure they cut, and are ashamed of it."

Palmerston had ordered the blockade of the Piraeus to extort compensation from the Greek Government on behalf of Mr. Finlay (afterwards the historian of Greece), whose land had been commandeered by the King of Greece for his garden, and on behalf of Don Pacifico, a Maltese Jew (and therefore a British subject), whose house had been wrecked by an Athenian mob. The Greek Government had been prepared to pay Compensation in both cases, but not the figure demanded, which turned out, indeed, on investigation, to be in gross excess of fair compensation. Palmerston's action nearly threw Europe into war; Russia protested, and France, who had offered to mediate, was aggravated by a diplomatic muddle to the verge of breaking off negotiations. A vote of censure was pa.s.sed by the Opposition in the House of Lords, which had the effect of making Lord John take up the cause of Palmerston in the Commons. The question was discussed in a famous four days' debate. "It contained," says Mr. Herbert Paul, "the finest of all Lord Palmerston's speeches, the first great speech of Gladstone, the last speech of Sir Robert Peel, and the most elaborate of those forensic harangues, delivered successively at the Bar, in the Senate, and on the Bench, by the accomplished personage best known as Lord Chief Justice c.o.c.kburn." Lord John, who was always good at a fighting speech, spoke also with great force. Mr. Roebuck's motion of confidence in the Ministry was carried, but this success was largely due to the fact that a coalition between the Peelites and the Protectionists seemed impossible. Had it not been carried the Whigs would have resigned, and neither of the other two parties feeling strong enough to succeed them, they did not oppose in force the motion of confidence.

The day after Peel made his speech he was thrown from his horse on Const.i.tution Hill, and on July 2nd he died.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

_June_ 20, 1850

... Day of great political excitement. After dinner I took John to the House and have utterly regretted since that I did not go up to hear him--for he made what I am quite sure you and Ralph will agree with me and all whom I have yet spoken to, was a most perfect answer; and I should have dearly liked to hear the volleys of cheering which he so well deserved. Now we shall either go out with honour or stay in with triumph--welcome either.

_Lord Charles Russell [35] to Lady John Russell_

_July_ 13, 1850

As you were not here to hear John move the monument [of Sir Robert Peel], I must tell you that he succeeded in the opinion of all.

Dizzy has just, in pa.s.sing my chair, said, "Well, Lord John did that to perfection. My friends were nervous, I was not; it was a difficult subject, but one peculiarly fitted for Lord John. He did as I was sure he would, and pleased all those who sit about me."

[35] Lord John's stepbrother.

PEMBROKE LODGE, _July_ 17, 1850

For the first time since the session began John spent a whole weekday here, and such a fine one that we enjoyed it thoroughly.

Our roses are still in great beauty, but it is a drying blaze. In the evening we cried over "David Copperfield" till we were ashamed.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Melgund_

MINTO, October 5, 1850

This whole morning having been spent fox-hunting, and the afternoon doing something else, I do not exactly remember what, I am obliged to write to you at the forbidden time (after dinner), instead of making myself agreeable. What a quant.i.ty I have to say to you, and what a pity to say it all by letter, or, rather, to say a very small part of it by letter, instead of having you here, as I had hoped and looked forward to, enjoying daily _gloomy_ talks with you, such as we always find ourselves indulging in when we are together.... Though I have scarcely walked a step about the place from obedience to doctors, I have driven daily with Mama--and such lovely drives! Oh! the place is in such beauty. I think its greatest beauty--the trees red, yellow, green, brown, of every shade, so that each one is seen separately, and the too great thickness on the rocks is less perceived. This was one of the brightest mornings, and you know what a hunt is on the rocks when the sun s.h.i.+nes bright, and the rocks look whiter against a blue sky, and men and horses and hounds place themselves in the most picturesque positions, and horns and tally-hos echo all round, and everybody, except the fox, is in spirits. The gentlemen had no sport, but the ladies a great deal, and I saw more foxes than I had ever seen before....

Our time here is slipping away fearfully fast--there are so many impossibilities to be done. I am hungry to see every brother and sister comfortably and alone, and hungry to be out all day seeing every old spot and old face in the place and village, and hungry to be always with Papa and Mama, and hungry to read all the books in the library--and none of these hungers can be satisfied. We are all much pleased with Mr. Chichester Fortescue. He is agreeable and gentlemanlike and good, and Lotty and Harriet got on very well with him, which is more than I am doing with my letter, for they are singing me out of all my little sense--"Wha's at the window" was distracting enough, but "Saw ye the robber" ten times worse.

In September the Papal Bull dividing England into Roman Catholic sees threw the country into a state of needless excitement. The year had been a very critical one for the Church of England. The result of the Gorham case, which marked the failure of the High Church clergy to get their own way within the Church, hastened the secession to Rome of Manning, James Hope, and other well-known men. Lord John's letter to the Bishop of Durham, in which he expressed his own strong Protestant and Erastian principles, increased his popularity; but it was unfortunate in its effect. It encouraged the bigoted alarmist outcries which had been started by the Papal Bull, although his own letter differed in tone from such protests.

The Ecclesiastical t.i.tles Bill, which the Government brought forward in response to popular feeling, seems to have been one of the idlest measures that ever wasted the time of Parliament. It remained a dead-letter from the day it pa.s.sed, yet at the time no Minister had a chance of leading the country who was not prepared to support it.

The Budget made the Ministry unpopular at the beginning of the session; and in February Mr. Locke King succeeded in pa.s.sing, with the help of the Radicals, a measure for the extension of the franchise, in spite of opposition from the Government. Lord John had a measure of his own of a similar nature in view, as we have seen; but, in spite of his a.s.surance that he would introduce it during the following year, the Radicals voted against him on Mr. King's motion, and on February 20th he resigned.

The state of parties was such that no rival coalition was possible. Lord Stanley was for widening the franchise, but being a Protectionist he could not work with the Peelites; while Lord Aberdeen would not consent to the Ecclesiastical t.i.tles Bill, and was impossible as a leader so long as the anti-Catholic hubble-bubble continued. Lord John was therefore compelled to resume office.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _November_ 22, 1850

I am very glad you and Ralph liked John's letter to the Bishop of Durham. It was necessary for him to speak out, and having all his life defended the claims of the Roman Catholics to perfect toleration and equality of civil rights with the other subjects of the Queen, I should hardly have expected that they would take offence because he declares himself a Protestant and a despiser of the superst.i.tious imitation of Roman Catholic ceremonies by clergymen of the Church of England. Such, however, has not been the case: and Ireland especially, excited by her priests, has taken fire at the whole letter, and most of all at the word "mummeries."

The wisest and most moderate of them, however, here, and in Ireland with Archbishop Murray I hope at their head, will do what they can to put out the flame. No amount of dislike to any creed can, happily, for a moment shake one's conviction that complete toleration to every creed and conviction, and complete charity to each one of its professors, is the only right and safe rule--the only one which can make consistency in religious matters possible at all times and on all occasions. Otherwise it _might_ be shaken by the new proofs of the insidious, corrupting, anti-truthful nature and effects of the Roman Catholic belief.

They have shown themselves for ages past in the character and conditions of the countries where it reigns, and now the Pope's foolish Bull is the signal for double-dealing and ingrat.i.tude among his spiritual subjects--and consequently for anger and intolerance among Protestants--wrong, but not quite inexcusable.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

PEMBROKE LODGE, _November_ 29, 1850

Far from wondering at your vacillations of opinion about John's letter, both he and I felt, on the first appearance of Wiseman's pastoral letter, that the whole scheme was so ridiculous, the affectation of power so contemptible, the change of Vicars Apostolic into Bishops and Archbishops, so impotent for evil to Protestants, while it might possibly be of use to Roman Catholics, that ridicule and contempt were the only fit arms for the occasion.

But when he came to consider the chief cause of the measure--that is, the great and growing evil of Tractarianism--of an established clergy becoming daily less efficient for the wants of their paris.h.i.+oners, and more at variance with the laity and with the spirit of the Church to which they outwardly belong; when the whole Protestant country showed its anger or fear; when such a man as the Bishop of Norwich (Hinds), a man so tolerant as to be called by the intolerant a lat.i.tudinarian, came to him to represent the necessity for some expression of opinion on the part of the Government, and the immense evils that would result from the want of such an expression; when, after a calm survey of the state of religion throughout the country, he thought he saw that it was in his power to prevent the ruin of the Church of England, not by a.s.suming popular opinions, but merely by openly avowing his own--then, and not till then, he wrote his letter--then, and not till then, I felt he was right to do so.

It has quieted men's fears with regard to the Pope, and directed them towards Tractarianism. And we are told that a great many (I think one hundred) of the clergy omitted some of their "mummeries"

on the following Sunday. That word was perhaps ill-chosen, and he is willing to say so--but I doubt it. Suppose he had omitted it, some other would have been laid hold of as offensive to men sincere in their opinions, however mistaken he may think them.

The letter was a Protestant one, and could not give great satisfaction to Roman Catholics, except such as Lord Beaumont, who prefers the Queen to the Pope. John has all his life showed himself a friend to civil and religious liberty, especially that of the Roman Catholics--and would gladly never have been called upon to say a word that they could take as an insult to their creed. But it was a moment in which he had to choose between a temporary offence to a part of their body and the deserved loss of the confidence of the Protestant body, to which he heart and soul belongs. He could scarcely declare his opinion of the Tractarians, who remain in a Church to which they no longer belong, without indirectly giving offence to Roman Catholics. But it is against their practices that his strong disapprobation is declared, and of the mischief of those practices I dare say you have no idea. I believe many of them, most of them, to be as pious and excellent men as ever existed; but their teaching is not likely to make others as pious and excellent as themselves; and their remaining in the Church obliges them to a secrecy and hesitation in their teaching that is worse than the teaching itself, which would disappear if they became honest Dissenters. I could write pages more upon the subject but have no time, and I will only beg you not to confound John's letter with the bigotry and intolerance of many speeches at many meetings. I am keeping the collection of letters, addresses, etc., that he has received on the subject--a curious medley, being from all ranks and degrees of men, some really touching, some laughable.

_Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby_

LONDON, _February_ 11, 1851

I wonder what you will think of John's speech last Friday. I am quite surprised at the approbation it meets with here--not that I do not think it deserved, for surely it was a fine high-minded one, and at the same time one at no word of which a Roman Catholic, as such, could take offence--but so many people thought more ought to be done, and so many others that nothing ought to be done, that I expected nothing but grumbling. However, the _speech_ is by most persons distinguished from the _measure_. I have not yet quite succeeded in persuading myself, or being persuaded, that we might not have let the whole thing alone; treating an impertinence _as_ an impertinence, to be met by ridicule or indignation as each person might incline, but not by legislation. This being my natural and I hope foolish impulse, I rejoice that the Bill is so mild that n.o.body can consider it as an infringement of the principle of religious liberty, but rather a protest against undue interference in temporal affairs by Pope, Prelate, or Priest of any denomination. Lizzy and I went to the House last night. I never heard John speak with more spirit and effect. Do not you in your quiet beautiful Nervi look with amazement at the whirl of politics and parties in which we live? I am sometimes ashamed of the time I consume in writing invitations and other matters connected with party-giving--quite as much as John takes to think of speeches, which affect the welfare of so many thousands. But after all it is a part of the same trade, one which, though most dangerous to all that is best in man and woman, may, I trust, be followed in safety by those who see the dangers. I am sure I see them. G.o.d grant we may both escape them.