Kitabı oku: «Historical Characters», sayfa 32

Ever ready to praise his subordinates, and to consult the tastes of his associates, he was honoured as a chief as much as he was relished as a companion. His accomplishments were various, and of a kind which may leave disputes open as to the degree of their excellence, but they were all of that brilliant and genial description which was sure to attract sympathy and procure reputation. How many must have chuckled over the following light and lazy piece of satire:

 
“I am like Archimedes for science and skill,
I am like the young prince who went straight up the hill;
And to interest the hearts of the fair be it said,
I am like a young lady just bringing to bed.
If you ask why the eleventh of June I remember
So much better than April, or March, or December,
’Tis because on that day, as with pride I assure ye,
My sainted progenitor took to his brewery.
On that day in the month he began making beer;
On that night he commenced his connubial career.
On that day he died when he had finished his summing,
And the angels all cried ‘here’s old Whitbread a coming.’
So that day I still hail with a smile and a sigh,
For his beer with an e and his bier with an i;
And that day every year, in the hottest of weather,
The whole Whitbread family dine altogether.
My Lords, while the beams of the hall shall support
The roof which o’ershades this respectable court
(Where Hastings was tried for oppressing the Hindoos),
While the rays of the sun shall shine in these windows
My name shall shine bright as my ancestor’s shines,
Emblazoned on journals as his upon signs.”
 

How many must have felt their minds respond and their hearts bound at the following argumentative and spirited declamation:

“When the elective franchise was conceded to the Catholics of Ireland, that acknowledgment and anticipation, which I now call upon the House formally to ratify and realize, was, in point of fact, irrevocably pronounced. To give the latter the elective franchise was to admit him to political power; for, to make him an elector and at the same time to render him incapable of being elected, is to attract to our sides the lowest orders of the community, at the same time that we repel from us the highest orders of the gentry. This is not the surest or safest way to bind Ireland to the rest of the Empire in ties of affection. And what is there to prevent our union from being wrought more closely? Is there any moral – is there any physical obstacle? Opposuit natura? No such thing. We have already bridged the channel! Ireland now sits with us in the Representative Assembly of the Empire; and when she was allowed to come there, why was she not also allowed to bring with her some of her Catholic children? For many years, alas! we have been erecting a mound, not to assist or improve the inclinations of Providence, but to thwart them. We have raised it high above the waters, and it has stood there frowning hostility and effecting a separation. In the course of time, however, chance and design – the necessities of man and the sure workings of nature – have conspired to break down this mighty structure, till there remains of it only a narrow isthmus standing

 
‘between two kindred seas,
Which mounting view each other from afar,
And long to meet.’
 

What, then, shall be our conduct? Shall we attempt to repair the breaches, and fortify the ruins? A hopeless and ungracious undertaking! or shall we leave them to moulder away by time and accident? a sure but distant and thankless consummation! Or shall we not rather cut away at once the isthmus that remains, allow free course to the current which our artificial impediments have constructed, and float upon the mighty waters the ark of our common constitution?”

And we are now to be told that this same man, so playful and jocose, so ornamented and brilliant, was a close arguer, and indefatigable in attendance at his office. But though always ready for business, he would not scruple to introduce a piece of drollery into the most serious affairs. For instance:

The embassy at the Hague is in earnest dispute with the King of Holland; a despatch addressed to Sir Charles Bagot arrives – it is in cypher. The most acute of the attachés set to work to discover the meaning of this particular document; they produce a rhyme! they are startled, thrown into confusion; set to work again, and produce another rhyme. The important paper (and it was important) contains something like the following doggrel:

 
“Dear Bagot, in commerce the fault of the Dutch
Is giving too little, and asking too much,
So since on this policy Mynheer seems bent,
We’ll clap on his vessels just 20 per cent.”
 

As a specimen of his more private and trivial pleasantries may be mentioned his observation to, I believe, Lord Londonderry, who had been telling a story of some Dutch picture he had seen, in which all the animals of antediluvian times were issuing from Noah’s Ark, “and,” said Lord Londonderry, “the elephant was last.” “That of course,” said Mr. Canning; “he had been packing up his trunk.”

In his celebrated contest with Lord Lyndhurst (then Sir John Copley), that noble lord having appeared in it with a speech borrowed for the most part from a popular pamphlet, written by the late Bishop of Exeter (then Doctor Philpotts), he was overthrown amidst shouts of laughter, by the appropriate recollection of the old song:

 
“‘Dear Tom, this brown jug that now foams with mild ale,
Out of which I now drink to sweet Nan of the Yale,’
Was once Toby Philpot.”
 

Again, who does not remember the celebrated sketch of Lord Nugent¹²⁶– who went out to join the Spanish patriots when their cause was pretty well lost – a sketch which furnished Mr. Canning’s most effective defence of the neutral policy he had adopted towards Spain, during the French expedition.

“It was about the middle of last July that the heavy Falmouth coach” – (here Mr. Canning was interrupted with loud and continued laughter) – “that the heavy Falmouth coach was observed travelling to its destination through the roads of Cornwall with more than its wonted gravity (very loud laughter). The coach contained two inside passengers – the one a fair lady of no inconsiderable dimensions, the other a gentleman who was conveying the succour of his person to the struggling patriots of Spain. I am further informed – and this interesting fact, sir, can also be authenticated – that the heavy Falmouth van (which honourable gentlemen, doubtless, are aware is constructed for the conveyance of cumbrous articles) was laden, upon the same memorable occasion, with a box of most portentous magnitude. Now, sir, whether this box, like the flying chest of the conjuror, possessed any supernatural properties of locomotion, is a point which I confess I am quite unable to determine; but of this I am most credibly informed – and I should hesitate long before I stated it to the House, if the statement did not rest upon the most unquestionable authority – that this extraordinary box contained a full uniform of a Spanish general of cavalry, together with a helmet of the most curious workmanship; a helmet, allow me to add, scarcely inferior in size to the celebrated helmet in the castle of Otranto (loud laughter). Though the idea of going to the relief of a fortress, blockaded by sea and besieged by land, in a full suit of light horseman’s equipments was, perhaps, not strongly consonant to modern military operations, yet when the gentleman and his box made their appearance, the Cortes, no doubt, were overwhelmed with joy, and rubbed their hands with delight at the approach of the long-promised aid. How the noble lord was received, or what effects he operated on the councils of the Cortes by his arrival, I (Mr. Canning) do not know. Things were at that juncture moving rapidly to their final issue; and how far the noble lord conduced to the termination by throwing his weight into the sinking scale of the Cortes, is too nice a question for me just now to settle.”¹²⁷

Mr. Canning’s wit, it is true, was not unfrequently too long and too laboured, and a happy combination of words would almost always seduce him into an indiscretion. The alliteration of “revered and ruptured,” as applied to the unfortunate Mr. Ogden, cost him more abuse, and procured him for a time more unpopularity, than the worst of his acts ever deserved. His description of the American navy (in 1812) as “half a dozen fir-frigates, with bits of bunting flying at their heads,” excited the American nation more than any actual grievance, and caused in a great measure the bitterness of that contest in which we were so insolent and so unsuccessful. His propensity to jokes made him also many enemies in private life. The late Duke of Bedford told a friend of mine that Mr. Canning, when staying with a party at Lord Carrington’s (a few weeks after Lord C. had been made a peer by Mr. Pitt), wrote in chalk, on the outside of the hall-door, the following lines: —

 
“One Bobby Smith lives here,
Billy Pitt made him a peer,
And took the pen from behind his ear.”
 

This unnecessary impertinence, I have heard, Lord Carrington never forgave.

In the art of speaking, our orator’s progress, like that of Pulteney, Fox, and all our great parliamentary debaters, with the exception of the two Pitts, Bolingbroke, and Lord Derby, was slow and gradual; and though I have heard Lord Lansdowne (once known as Henry Petty) observe that he considered Canning in his best days even more effective than Fox or Pitt, he had at an earlier period been often accused, by no mean judges, now of being wordy and tedious, now of being rather elegant than argumentative. To time, practice, a proud spirit, and a continually developing understanding, he owed his triumph over these defects. Then it was that his eloquence approached almost to perfection, as we consider the audience, half lounging and sleepy, half serious and awake, to which it was addressed. Quick, easy, and fluent, frequently passionate and sarcastic, now brilliant and ornamented, then again light and playful; or, if he wished it, clear, simple, and incisive; no speaker ever combined a greater variety of qualities, though many have been superior in each of the excellences which he possessed. Remarkable as a general rule for the polish of his language (we have proof, even to the last, of the pains he bestowed upon it), those who knew him well assert that he would sometimes purposely frame his sentences loosely and incorrectly, in order to avoid the appearance of preparation. “Erat memoriæ nulla tamen meditationis suspicio.” His action exhibiting when calm an union of grace and dignity, became, as he warmed, unaffectedly fervent; and made natural by its vigour and animation the florid language and figurative decorations in which he rather too fondly indulged. His arguments were not placed in that clear, logical form, which sometimes enchains, but more often wearies, attention; neither did he use those solemn perorations by which it is attempted to instil awe or terror into the mind. His was rather the endeavour to charm the ear, to amuse the fancy, to excite the feelings, to lead and fascinate the judgment; and in these different attributes of his great art he succeeded in the highest degree, insomuch that though he might be said to want depth and sublimity, the faculties he possessed were elevated to such a pitch, that at times he appeared both profound and sublime.

A great merit, which he finally possessed, was that of seizing and speaking the general sense of the popular assembly he addressed. Sir Robert Peel, his distinguished rival, told me one day, in speaking of Mr. Canning as to this particular, that he would often before rising in his place, make a sort of lounging tour of the House, listening to the tone of the observations which the previous debates had excited, so that at last, when he himself spoke, he seemed to a large part of his audience to be merely giving a striking form to their own thoughts.

Neither were his despatches, though not so elaborately perfect as those of his successor (Lord Dudley), inferior to his orations; possessing precision, spirit, and dignity, they remain what they were justly called by no incompetent authority, “models and masterpieces of diplomatic composition.”¹²⁸

There are critics who have said that there was something in his character which tended to diminish our respect for his talents, though it softened our censure for his defects. And it is true that the same unstately love for wit – the same light facility for satire – the same imprudent levity of conduct, that involuntarily lowered our estimate of his graver abilities – involuntarily led us to excuse his graver errors. We at one time blame the statesman for being too much the child – at another we pardon the veteran politician in the same humour in which we would forgive the spoiled and high-spirited schoolboy.

Mr. Canning, indeed, was always young. The head of the sixth form at Eton – squibbing “the doctor,” as Mr. Addington was called; fighting with Lord Castlereagh; cutting jokes on Lord Nugent; flatly contradicting Lord Brougham; swaggering over the Holy Alliance; he was in perpetual personal quarrels – one of the reasons which created for him so much personal interest during the whole of his parliamentary career. Yet out of those quarrels he nearly always came glorious and victorious – defying his enemies, cheered by his friends – never sinking into an ordinary man, – though not a perfect one.

No imaginative artist, fresh from studying his career, would sit down to paint this minister with the broad and deep forehead – the stern compressed lip – the deep, thoughtful, concentrated air of Napoleon Bonaparte. As little would the idea of his eloquence or ambition call to our recollection the swart and iron features – the bold and haughty dignity of Strafford. We cannot fancy in his eye the volume depth of Richelieu’s – the volcanic flash of Mirabeau’s – the offended majesty of Chatham’s. Sketching him from our fancy, it would be as a few still living remember him, with a visage rather marked by humour and intelligence than by meditation or sternness; with something of the petulant mingling in its expression with the proud; with much of the playful overruling the profound. His nature, in short, exhibited more of the genial fancy and the quick irritability of the poet who captivates and inflames an audience, than of the inflexible will of the dictator who puts his foot on a nation’s neck, or of the fiery passions of the tribune who rouses a people against its oppressors.

Still, Mr. Canning, such as he was, will remain one of the most brilliant and striking personages in our historical annals. As a statesman, the latter passages of his life cannot be too deeply studied; as an orator, his speeches will always be models of their kind; and as a man, there was something so graceful, so fascinating, so spirited in his bearing, that even when we condemn his faults, we cannot avoid feeling affection for his memory, and a sympathetic admiration for his genius.

SIR ROBERT PEEL

Part I

Family. – Birth. – Formation of character. – Education at Harrow and Oxford. – Entry into Parliament. – Line adopted there. – Style of speaking. – Becomes Secretary of Colonies. – Secretary for Ireland. – Language on the Catholic question. – Returned as member for the University of Oxford. – Resigned his post in Ireland.

I

The family of the Peels belonged to the class of yeomanry, which in England, from the earliest times, was well known and reputed, forming a sort of intermediate link between the gentry and the commonalty, as the gentry formed an intermediate link between the great barons and the burghers or wealthy traders. The yeoman was proud of belonging to the yeomanry, and if you traced back the descent of a yeoman’s family, you found it frequently the issue of the younger branch of some noble or gentle house. For some generations this family of Peel had at its head men of industry and energy, who were respected by their own class, and appeared to be gradually rising into another. The grandfather of the great Sir Robert inherited a small estate of about one hundred pounds a year, called Peel’s Fold, which is still in the family. He received a fair education at a grammar-school, and married (1747) into a gentleman’s family (Haworth, of Lower Darwen).

Beginning life as a farmer of his little property, he undertook, at the time that the cotton manufacture began to develop itself in Lancashire, the business of trader and printer.

The original practice had been to send up the fabricated article to Paris, where it was printed and sent back into this country for sale. Mr. Peel started a calico printing manufactory, first in Lancashire and afterwards in Staffordshire, and his success was the result of the conviction – that “a man could always succeed if he only put his will into the endeavour,” a maxim which he often repeated in his later days, when as a stately old gentleman he walked with a long gold-headed cane, and wore the clothes fashionable for moderate people in the days of Dr. Johnson.

The first Sir Robert Peel was a third son. Enterprising and ambitious, he left his father’s establishment, and became a junior partner in a manufactory carried on at Bury by a relation, Mr. Haworth, and his future father-in-law, Mr. Yates. His industry, his genius, soon gave him the lead in the management of this business, and made it prosperous. By perseverance, talent, economy, and marrying a wealthy heiress – Miss Yates, the daughter of his senior partner – he had amassed a considerable fortune at the age of forty.

He then began to turn his mind to politics, published a pamphlet on the National Debt, made the acquaintance of Mr. Pitt, and got returned to Parliament (1790) for Tamworth, where he had acquired a landed property, which the rest of his life was passed in increasing. He was a Church and King politician in that excitable time, and his firm contributed no less than ten thousand pounds in 1797 to the voluntary subscriptions for the support of the war. So wealthy and loyal a personage was readily created a baronet in 1800.

His celebrated son was born in 1788, two years before he himself entered public life, and on this son he at once fixed his hopes of giving an historical lustre to the name which he had already invested with credit and respectability.

II

It was the age of great political passions, and of violent personal political antipathies and partialities. The early elevation of Mr. Pitt from the position of a briefless barrister to that of prime minister had given a general idea to the fathers of young men of promise and ability that their sons might become prime ministers too. The wealthy and ambitious manufacturer soon determined, then, that his boy, who was thought to give precocious proofs of talent, should become First Lord of the Treasury. He did not merely bring him up to take a distinguished part in politics, which might happen to be a high position in opposition or office, he brought him up especially for a high official position. It was to office, it was to power, that the boy who was to be the politician was taught to aspire; and as the impressions we acquire in early life settle so deeply and imperceptibly into our minds as to become akin to instincts, so politics became instinctively connected from childhood in the mind of the future statesman with office; and he got into the habit of looking at all questions in the point of view in which they are seen from an official position; a circumstance which it is necessary to remember.

To say nothing of the anecdotes which are told in his family of the early manifestations which Mr. Peel gave of more than ordinary ability, he was not less distinguished at Harrow as a student for his classical studies, than he was as a boy for the regularity of his conduct. I remember that my tutor, Mark Drury, who, some years previous to my becoming his pupil, had Peel in the same position, preserved many of his exercises; and on one occasion brought some of them down from a shelf, in order to show me with what terseness and clearness my predecessor expressed himself, both in Latin and English.

Lord Byron says: “Peel, the orator and statesman that was, or is, or is to be, was my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove, in public school phrase. We were on good terms, but his brother was my intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel amongst us all, masters and scholars, and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar, he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal; as a schoolboy out of school, I was always in scrapes – he never.” This character as a lad developed itself, without altering in after life.

At the University of Oxford the young man was the simple growth of the Harrow boy. He read hard, and took a double first-class, indicating the highest university proficiency both in classics and mathematics. But it is remarkable that he studiously avoided appearing the mere scholar: he shot, he boated, he dressed carefully, and, without affecting the man of fashion, wished evidently to be considered the man of the world.

As soon as he became of age, his father resolved to bring him into Parliament, and did so, in 1809, by purchasing a seat for him at Cashel.

III

The great men of the Pittite day were passing away. The leading men at the moment were Grey, Liverpool, Petty, Perceval, Tierney, Whitbread, Romilly, Horner, Castlereagh, Canning: the genius of Sheridan had still its momentary flashes; and Grattan, though rarely heard, at times charmed and startled the House of Commons by his peculiar manner and original eloquence.

Brougham, Palmerston, Robinson, were Peel’s contemporaries. The Duke of Portland was prime minister; Perceval, the leader of the House of Commons; Canning, minister of foreign affairs; and Lord Castlereagh, secretary of war. But this ministry almost immediately disappeared: the Duke of Portland resigning, Lord Castlereagh and Canning quarrelling, and Mr. Perceval, as prime minister, having to meet Parliament in 1810 with the disastrous expedition of Walcheren on his shoulders. Young Peel, not quite twenty-two, was chosen for seconding the address, and did so in a manner that at once drew attention towards him. He was then acting as private secretary to Lord Liverpool, who had become minister of war and the colonies. The condition of the Government was but rickety: Lord Carnarvon carried against it a motion for inquiry into the conduct and policy of the expedition to the Scheldt; and, subsequently, it could only obtain a vote of confidence by a majority of twenty-three, which, in the days of close boroughs, was thought equivalent to a defeat. Peel spoke in two or three debates, not ill, but not marvellously well; there was, in fact, nothing remarkable in his style; and its fluency and correctness were more calculated to strike at first than on repetition. He never failed, however, being always in some degree beyond mediocrity.

In the meantime his business qualities became more and more appreciated; and it was not long before he was appointed to the under-secretaryship of the colonies.

It was no doubt a great advantage to him that the government he had joined wanted ability.

Mr. Perceval’s mediocrity, indeed, was repulsive to men of comprehensive views; but, on the other hand, it was peculiarly attractive to men of narrow-minded prejudices. The dominant prejudice of this last class – always a considerable one – was at this time an anti-Catholic one; some denouncing Romanists as the pupils of the devil, others considering it sufficient to say they were the subjects of the Pope. Mr. Peel joined this party, which had amongst it some statesmen who, sharing neither the bigotry nor the folly of the subalterns in their ranks, thought, nevertheless, that it would be impossible to satisfy the Catholics in Ireland without dissatisfying the Protestants in England, and were therefore against adding to the strength of a body which they did not expect to content.

IV

Mr. Perceval’s unexpected death was a great blow to the anti-Catholics, and appeared likely to lead to the construction of a new and more liberal Cabinet. The general feeling, indeed, was in favour of a Cabinet in which the eminent men of all parties might be combined; and a vote in favour of an address to the Regent, praying him to take such measures as were most likely to lead to the formation of a strong administration, passed the House of Commons.

But it may almost be said that eminent men are natural enemies, who can rarely be united in the same Cabinet, and are pretty sure to destroy or nullify each other when they are. The attempt at such an union was, at all events, on this occasion a signal failure.

Thus, luckily for the early advancement of Mr. Peel, Lord Liverpool had to construct a government as best he could out of his own adherents, and the under-secretary of the colonies rose at once to the important position of Secretary for Ireland, to which the Duke of Richmond, a man more remarkable for his joviality than his ability, and a strenuous anti-Catholic, was sent as Lord Lieutenant.

V

The Catholic question was to be considered an open one in the new Cabinet, but the Irish Government, as I have shown, was altogether anti-Catholic. This was in fact the strong bias of the administration, and also of the Prince Regent, who, regardless of former promises and pledges, had now become an avowed opponent of the Catholic claims. These claims, moreover, were strongly opposed by the feelings, at that time greatly excited, of the English clergy, and, speaking generally, of the English people.

Under such circumstances, a Catholic policy was at the moment impracticable; that is, it could not be carried out: for to carry out a policy opposed by the sovereign, opposed by the premier (who had been selected because his most able opponents could not form a Cabinet), opposed by the English clergy, opposed by the general sentiment of the English people, was impracticable, whatever might be said theoretically in its favour.

Mr. Peel then, in taking up the anti-Catholic policy, took up the practical one.

The Catholics themselves, indeed, destroyed for a while all hope in their cause, for when the most considerable of their supporters, in order to dissipate the alarm of their co-religionists, proposed certain guarantees for maintaining the authority of the King and the State over the Catholic priesthood, although the English Catholics and the highest orders of Catholics in Ireland willingly agreed to these guarantees, the more violent of the Irish Catholics, with Mr. O’Connell at their head, joining the most violent anti-Catholics, vehemently opposed them. Moderate people were, therefore, crushed by the extremes. Even Grattan was for a moment put on one side.

This was unfortunate for Mr. Peel, who would willingly have been as moderate as his situation would permit him, but could only at such a crisis live with violent people, and thus obtained the nickname of “Orange Peel,” so that after different altercations with Mr. O’Connell – altercations which nearly ended in a duel – he found himself, almost in his own despite, regarded by both Protestants and Catholics as the great Protestant champion.

It was in this position that he made, in 1817 (on an unsuccessful motion of Mr. Grattan’s), a very remarkable speech, the success of which Sir James Mackintosh attributes to its delivery.

“Peel,” he says, “made a speech of little merit, but elegantly and clearly expressed, and so well delivered as to be applauded to excess. He now fills the important place of spokesman to the intolerant faction.”

The speech, however, had other merits than those Sir James acknowledged, and I quote a passage which subsequently formed the groundwork of all Mr. Peel’s anti-Catholic speeches.

“If you give them” (the Catholics) “that fair proportion of national power to which their numbers, wealth, talents, and education will entitle them, can you believe that they will or can remain contented with the limits which you assign to them? Do you think that when they constitute, as they must do, not this year or next, but in the natural, and therefore certain order of things, by far the most powerful body in Ireland – the body most controlling and directing the government of it; do you think, I say, that they will view with satisfaction the state of your church or their own? Do you think that if they are constituted like other men, if they have organs, senses, affections, passions, like ourselves; if they are, as no doubt they are, sincere and zealous professors of that religious faith to which they belong; if they believe your intrusive church to have usurped the temporalities which it possesses; do you think that they will not aspire to the re-establishment of their own church in all its ancient splendour? Is it not natural that they should? If I argue from my own feelings, if I place myself in their situation, I answer that it is. May I not then, without throwing any calumnious imputations upon any Roman Catholics, without proclaiming (and grossly should I injure them if I did) such men as Lord Fingal or Lord Gormanston to be disaffected and disloyal, may I not, arguing from the motives by which men are actuated, from the feeling which nature inspires, may I not question the policy of admitting those who must have views hostile to the religious establishments of the State to the capacity of legislating for the interests of those establishments, and the power of directing the Government, of which those establishments form so essential a part?”

VI

Have we not seen that every word I have been quoting is practically true? Are we not beginning to acknowledge the difficulty of maintaining a Protestant Church establishment in Ireland in the face of a large majority of Irish Catholic representatives? Are we not beginning to question the possibility of upholding an exclusive church belonging to a minority, without a government in which that minority dominates? Do we not now acknowledge the glaring sophistry of those who contended that the Catholics having once obtained their civil equality would submit with gratitude to religious inferiority? Mr. Peel saw and stated the case pretty clearly as it stood; the whole condition of Ireland, as between Catholic and Protestant, was involved in the question of Catholic emancipation, and as the avowed champion of Protestant ascendancy, he said, “do not resign your outworks as long as you can maintain them, if you have any serious design to keep your citadel.” But the very nature of his argument showed in the clearest manner that we were ruling against the wishes and interests of the large majority of the Irish people; that we were endeavouring to maintain an artificial state of things in Ireland which was not the natural growth of Irish society; – a state of things only to be maintained by force, and which, the day that we were unable or unwilling to use that force, tumbled naturally to pieces. It is well to bear this in mind.