Читать книгу Prime Ministers and Some Others: A Book of Reminiscences - George William Erskine Russell - Страница 6

Table of Contents

LORD DERBY

My opportunities of observing Lord Derby at close quarters, were comparatively scanty. When, in June, 1866, he kissed hands as Prime Minister for the third time, I was a boy of thirteen, and I was only sixteen when he died. I had known Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons and Lord Russell in private life; but my infant footsteps were seldom guided towards the House of Lords, and it was only there that "the Rupert of debate" could at that time be heard.

The Whigs, among whom I was reared, detested Derby with the peculiar detestation which partisans always feel for a renegade. In 1836 Charles Dickens, in his capacity of Parliamentary reporter, had conversed with an ancient M.P. who allowed that Lord Stanley—who became Lord Derby in 1851—might do something one of these days, but "he's too young, sir—too young." The active politicians of the sixties did not forget that this too-young Stanley, heir of a great Whig house, had flung himself with ardour into the popular cause, and, when the Lords threw out the first Reform Bill, had jumped on to the table at Brooks's and had proclaimed the great constitutional truth—reaffirmed over the Parliament Bill in 1911—that "His Majesty can clap coronets on the heads of a whole company of his Foot Guards."

The question of the influences which had changed Stanley from a Whig to a Tory lies outside the purview of a sketch like this. For my present purpose it must suffice to say that, as he had absolutely nothing to gain by the change, we may fairly assume that it was due to conviction. But whether it was due to conviction, or to ambition, or to temper, or to anything else, it made the Whigs who remained Whigs, very sore. Lord Clarendon, a typical Whig placeman, said that Stanley was "a great aristocrat, proud of family and wealth, but had no generosity for friend or foe, and never acknowledged help." Some allowance must be made for the ruffled feelings of a party which sees its most brilliant recruit absorbed into the opposing ranks, and certainly Stanley was such a recruit as any party would have been thankful to claim.

He was the future head of one of the few English families which the exacting genealogists of the Continent recognize as noble. To pedigree he added great possessions, and wealth which the industrial development of Lancashire was increasing every day. He was a graceful and tasteful scholar, who won the Chanceller's prize for Latin verse at Oxford, and translated the Iliad into fluent hexameters. Good as a scholar, he was, as became the grandson of the founder of "The Derby," even better as a sportsman; and in private life he was the best companion in the world, playful and reckless, as a schoolboy, and never letting prudence or propriety stand between him and his jest. "Oh, Johnny, what fun we shall have!" was his characteristic greeting to Lord John Russell, when that ancient rival entered the House of Lords.

Furthermore, Stanley had, in richest abundance, the great natural gift of oratory, with an audacity in debate which won him the nickname of "Rupert," and a voice which would have stirred his hearers if he had only been reciting Bradshaw. For a brilliant sketch of his social aspect we may consult Lord Beaumaris in Lord Beaconsfield's Endymion; and of what he was in Parliament we have the same great man's account, reported by Matthew Arnold: "Full of nerve, dash, fire, and resource, he carried the House irresistibly along with him."

In the Parliament of 1859–1865 (with which my political recollections begin) Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister and Lord Derby Leader of the Opposition, with Disraeli as his lieutenant in the House of Commons. If, as Lord Randolph Churchill said in later years, the business of an Opposition is to oppose, it must be admitted that Derby and Disraeli were extremely remiss. It was suspected at the time, and has since been made known through Lord Malmesbury's Memoirs, that there was something like an "understanding" between Palmerston and Derby. As long as Palmerston kept his Liberal colleagues in order, and chaffed his Radical supporters out of all the reforms on which their hearts were set, Derby was not to turn him out of office, though the Conservative minority in the House of Commons was very large, and there were frequent openings for harassing attack.

Palmerston's death, of course, dissolved this compact; and, though the General Election of 1865 had again yielded a Liberal majority, the change in the Premiership had transformed the aspect of political affairs. The new Prime Minister was in the House of Lords, seventy-three years old, and not a strong man for his age. His lieutenant in the House of Commons was Gladstone, fifty-five years old, and in the fullest vigour of body and mind. Had any difference of opinion arisen between the two men, it was obvious that Gladstone was in a position to make his will prevail; but on the immediate business of the new Parliament they were absolutely at one, and that business was exactly what Palmerston had for the last six years successfully opposed—the extension of the franchise to the working man. When no one is enthusiastic about a Bill, and its opponents hate it, there is not much difficulty in defeating it, and Derby and Disraeli were not the men to let the opportunity slide. With the aid of the malcontent Whigs they defeated the Reform Bill, and Derby became Prime Minister, with Disraeli as Leader of the House of Commons. It was a conjuncture fraught with consequences vastly more important than anyone foresaw.

In announcing his acceptance of office (which he had obtained by defeating a Reform Bill), Derby amazed his opponents and agitated his friends by saying that he "reserved to himself complete liberty to deal with the question of Parliamentary reform whenever suitable occasion should arise." In February, 1867, Disraeli, on behalf of the Tory Government, brought in the first really democratic Reform Bill which England had ever known. He piloted it through the House of Commons with a daring and a skill of which I was an eye-witness, and, when it went up to the Lords, Derby persuaded his fellow-peers to accept a measure which established household suffrage in the towns.

It was "a revolution by due course of law," nothing less; and to this day people dispute whether Disraeli induced Derby to accept it, or whether the process was reversed. Derby called it "a leap in the dark." Disraeli vaulted that he had "educated his party" up to the point of accepting it. Both alike took comfort in the fact that they had "dished the Whigs"—which, indeed, they had done most effectually. The disgusted Clarendon declared that Derby "had only agreed to the Reform Bill as he would of old have backed a horse at Newmarket. He hates Disraeli, but believes in him as he would have done in an unprincipled trainer: he wins—that is all."

On the 15th of August, 1867, the Tory Reform Bill received the Royal Assent, and Derby attained the summit of his career. Inspired by whatever motives, influenced by whatever circumstances, the Tory chief had accomplished that which the most liberal-minded of his predecessors had never even dreamed of doing. He had rebuilt the British Constitution on a democratic foundation.

At this point some account of Lord Derby's personal appearance may be introduced. My impression is that he was only of the middle height, but quite free from the disfigurement of obesity; light in frame, and brisk in movement. Whereas most statesmen were bald, he had an immense crop of curly, and rather untidy, hair and the abundant whiskers of the period. His features were exactly of the type which novelists used to call aristocratic: an aquiline nose, a wide but firmly compressed mouth, and a prominent chin. His dress was, even then, old-fashioned, and his enormous black satin cravat, arranged in I know not how many folds, seemed to be a survival from the days of Count D'Orsay. His air and bearing were such as one expects in a man whose position needs no advertizing; and I have been told that, even in the breeziest moments of unguarded merriment, his chaff was always the chaff of a gentleman.

Lord Beaconsfield, writing to a friend, once said that he had just emerged from an attack of the gout, "of renovating ferocity," and this phrase might have been applied to the long succession of gouty illnesses which were always harassing Lord Derby. Unfortunately, as we advance in life, the "renovating" effects of gout become less conspicuous than its "ferocity;" and Lord Derby, who was born in 1799, was older than his years in 1867. In January and February, 1868, his gout was so severe that it threatened his life. He recovered, but he saw that his health was no longer equal to the strain of office, and on the 24th of February he placed his resignation in the Queen's hands.

But during the year and a half that remained to him he was by no means idle. He had originally broken away from the Whigs on a point which threatened the temporalities of the still-established Church of Ireland; and in the summer of 1868 Gladstone's avowal of the principle of Irish Disestablishment roused all his ire, and seemed to quicken him into fresh life. The General Election was fixed for November, and the Liberal party, almost without exception, prepared to follow Gladstone in his Irish policy. On the 29th of October Bishop Wilberforce noted that Derby was "very keen," and had asked: "What will the Whigs not swallow? Disraeli is very sanguine still about the elections."

The question about the Whigs came comically from the man who had just made the Tories swallow Household Suffrage; and Disraeli's sanguineness was ill-founded. The election resulted in a majority of one hundred for Irish Disestablishment; Disraeli resigned, and Gladstone became for the first time Prime Minister.

The Session of 1869 was devoted to the Irish Bill, and Lord Derby, though on the brink of the grave, opposed the Bill in what some people thought the greatest of his speeches in the House of Lords. He was pale, his voice was feeble, he looked, as he was, a broken man; but he rose to the very height of an eloquence which had already become traditional. His quotation of Meg Merrilies' address to the Laird of Ellangowan, and his application of it to the plight of the Irish Church, were as apt and as moving as anything in English oratory. The speech concluded thus:

"My Lords, I am now an old man, and, like many of your Lordships, I have already passed three score years and ten. My official life is entirely closed; my political life is nearly so; and, in the course of nature, my natural life cannot now be long. That natural life commenced with the bloody suppression of a formidable rebellion in Ireland, which immediately preceded the union between the two countries. And may God grant that its close may not witness a renewal of the one and a dissolution of the other."

This speech was delivered on the 17th of June, 1869, and the speaker died on the 23rd of the following October.