'-IP . Book —^ POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES TVith Other Essays by The Right Hon. GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 597-599 FIFTH AVENUE J1A530 .>: ^/n /<-, {All rights rcseived) (PRINTED IN GREAT BRITATN) 1 TO LANCELOT RIDLEY PHELPS Provost of Oriel In Honour of a Friendship Which began when we were Freshmen NOTE This book owes its existence to the kindness of Mr. Fisher Unwin, who happened to see some of the papers which compose it, and judged them' worthy of reproduction. My best thanks for permission to repro- duce them are due to the Editors of the Daily News, the Manchester Guardian, the Nation, and the Cornhill Magazine. G. W. E. R. June 26, 1917. CONTENTS I.— POLITICS AND THE CONSTITUTION I. TYRANNICIDE II. A FORGOTTEN PHRASE . III. ARISTOCRACY IV. THE HAWARDEN KITE . V. JOHN BULL IN IRELAND VI. M.P. OR DELEGATE ? VII. SCAPEGOATS VIII. DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY IX. REPUBLICANISM X. ROYALTY XI. DICTATORSHIP . XII. THE WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION XIII. FRANCE IN ENGLAND . PACE 15 23 31 39 46 53 60 67 75 82 93 100 III II.— IDEALS AND WAR I. CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY . II. CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE 121 128 9 CONTENTS III. THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY IV. THRIFT . V. CHIVALRY VI. THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE VII. WATERLOO VIII. GREECE. FAG . 187 III.— PERSONALITIES, ANCIENT AND MODERN I. A QUEEN READY-MADE . . . I97 II. AN UNCROWNED KING .... 217 III. MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE . . 229 IV. A NEST OF WHIGGERY .... 250 V. DEMAGOGUES . . . • • 262 VI. FROM ROME TO LONDON . . • 270 VII. THE POWER OF SPEECH . . . 277 VIII. CONSCIENCE AND ACTION . . . 285 IV.— MISCELLANEA I. DESTINY II. THE SPIRITS IN PRISON III. EDUCATION 10 295 304 311 CONTENTS IV. A DISREGARDED PROPHET v. GHOSTS . VI. WHY THURSDAY ? VII. IN HONOUR BOUND VIII. HATFIELD IX. BISHOPS AND ECONOMY X. CONSIDERATION 334 341 348 355 362 II I POLITICS AND THE CONSTITUTION I TYRANNICIDE I WAS lately addressing, an audience of working men on the ethical aspects of war. After the address there Was a discussion, and the question which excited the keenest debate was : " What are we to do with the Kaiser when the war is over?" In vain I reminded my friends of the adage about catching your hare before you cook him. Some— a few— were for St. Helena; the great majority were for capital punishment —either by shooting, as befits an officer and a gentleman, or by hanging, as the appropriate doom of one who has placed himself outside the pale of humanity. These interesting dissertations turned my thoughts to the venerable theme of Tyrannicide— to those who have practised it, and to those others who, in prose or in verse, have extolled it. One of the strangest incidents in Lord 15 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Beaconsfield's strange career was his Revo- lutionary Epick. It was his first and last venture in poetry, and v^as pubUshed in 1834, with an amazing, preface: — Standing upon Asia and gazing upon Europe, with the broad Hellespont alone between us, and the shadow of Night descending on the mountains, these mighty continents appeared to me as it were the Rival Principles of Government that at present contend for the mastery of the world. What ! I exclaimed, is the Revolution of France a less important event than the Siege of Troy ? Is Napoleon a less interesting character than Achilles ? For me remains the Revo- lutionary Epick. He accepted the task thus magnificently suggested, but discharged it with such in- different success that the book fell flat, and the disgusted author, to use his own quaint phrase, "hurled his lyre to Limbo." But of this unappreciated Epick a few lines survived, and were reproduced, to their author's consternation, thirty years later :— Pharaoh's doom Shall cool those chariot-wheels now hot with blood ; And blessed be the hand that dares to wield The regicidal steel that shall redeem A nation's sorrow with a tyrant's blood. 16 TYRANNICIDE In the session of 1864 John Bright, extenuating the charge of incitem'ent to Tyrannicide which had been brought against Mazzini, referred to this remarkable passage ; but, unfortunately, he had not armed him- self with the quotation, and Disraeli promptly disavowed it ; but he qualified the disavowal by publishing, after a decent interval, a new edition of the EpiCk, in which this passage about the regicidal steel and the tyrant's blood was discreetly watered down. Some tiresome investigator — I think Mr. T. P. O'Connor— detected the alteration, and A, M. Sullivan made effective use of the unaltered passage in defending the German Socialist, Johann Most, who was charged in 1881 with inciting to the murder of European sovereigns. Like all good Whigs, I revere the sacred year 1688, and among the many blessings which it has brought us is a singular immunity from Royal tragedies. Shake- speare, poor man, had only the materials of a ruder age out of which to construct his historical dramas. Could he have lived B 17 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES to see the beneficent reign of Whiggery he would have put something more ■ cheerful into Richard's mouth than those dismal lines about the deaths of kings :— How some have been deposed ; some slain in war ; Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed ; Some poisoned by theii" wives ; some sleeping kill'd ; All murder'd. For murder he would have shown a moiae excellent way. He would have described the nocturnal flight of James II from White- hall, by the horse -ferry at Lambeth, to the Old Kent Road, and so to the coast and to hospitable France. He Would have dwelt with picturesque emphasis on the fatal act of dropping the Great Seal into the Thames (which constitutional pedants called an act of abdication), and would have shown the world that regicide is not the only method by which an irritated nation can change a dynasty . i Macaulay said : " In all honest and re- flecting minds there is a conviction, daily i8 TYRANNICIDE strengthened by experience, that the means of effecting every improvement which the Constitution requires m^y be found within the Constitution itself." Macaulay, as we all know, had his heightened and emphatic way of saying things, but in this passage he saves himself from' the peril of over- statement by the judicious use of " honest and reflecting." There were movements, both in the eighteenth and in the nineteenth century, which seemed to challenge the capacity of the Constitution to effect all needful changes ; but Macaulay would have said that the minds which directed those movements were neither " honest " nor " reflecting." Certainly the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820, which aimed at estab- lishing a Republic, and hoped to attract popular sympathy by parading the streets with the heads of the Cabinet Ministers borne on poles, showed little honesty and less reflection. The conspiracy failed, as it deserved to fail ; and, though the half- suppressed murmur of revolutionary voices was heard, on and off, during the next 19 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES ten years, the auspicious event of June 20, 1837, effectually hushed them'. But it is not always rem'embered that, again and again tragedy in its blackest form' came very near the young Queen's path. To the end of her long life she could never drive down Constitution Hill without a shudder- ing recollection of the attempt made on that spot, within six months of her marriage, to murder herself and her husband ; and on a similar attempt in 1849 Lord Shaftes- bury wrote in his diary : " The profligate George IV passed through a life of selfish- ness and sin without a single proved attempt to take it. This mild and virtuous young woman has four times already been exposed to imminent peril." That is the fact ; and it is significant. The horrible tragedies of Royalty, so merci- fully averted in England and so sadly realized in other countries, do not usually fall under the category of Tyrannicide. No one who heard it can ever forget the organ - voice of pathetic indignation in which Glad- stone, on the assassination of the Czar who 20 TYRANNICIDE had emancipated the serfs, declaimed the majestic lines :— Let tyrants govern with an iron rod ; Oppress, destroy, and be the scourge of God ; Since he, who hke a father held his reign — So soon forgot — was just and mild in vain. When Abraham Lincoln fell, shot through the head, in the theatre at Washington, the assassin sprang on to the stage, exclaiming, "Sic semper tyrannis ! " and the strange inaptness of the phrase threw a new light upon political assassination. Carnot and Garfield and McKinley are names that tell the same tale ; and, nearer home, the assassins of the Phoenix Park butchered an eminently humane administrator, and with him an English stranger who had not an enemy in the world. The " regicidal steel " may inspire the excited authors of Revolutionary Eplcks, and Charlotte Corday may have her right- ful place in the Kalendar of Humanitarian - ism ; but, before we can justify Tyrannicide 31 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES we must be sure that we have found a Tyrant, and tyrants do not readily emerge from the well-ordered freedom of the modern world. II A FORGOTTEN PHRASE " Peace. Retrenchment, and Reform." These words carry us back to the first quarter of the nineteenth century. They formulate the desire of a people exhausted by the French War, taxed to bursting-point, and scandalously misgoverned. Peace was the ideal of the humanitarians and philosophers ; Reform the ideal of the politicians ; and, between the two, the economists, speaking by the mouth of Joseph Hume, inserted Retrenchment of a profligate and crushing expenditure. The phrase hit the popular fancy, and it held its own as an epitome of Liberal aspirations for thirty years after the Reform Bill had become law. But gradually the old ideals lost their attractiveness, and new theories of national prosperity made them- 23 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES selves heard. To Matthew Arnold, sur- veying English politics with the dispassionate gaze of the critical outsider, the sacred formula seemed nothing but the " creed outworn " of a comfort -worshipping Philis- tinism, destitute of intelligence and ideas ; and he suggested as an amendment and expansion of it—" Peace to our nonsense, Retrenchment of our profligate expenditure of claptrap, and Reform of ourselves." This counsel, given first in 1866, seem'ed harsh and unpalatable to young and ardent Liberals, just delivered from Palmerston's paralysing influence and rejoicing in the imminent triumph of democracy. To be told, and told by a writer on the Liberal side, that our political philosophy was nonsense, that our eloquence was claptrap, and that we had better try to reform ourselves before 'we attempted to right the world, was a painful experience ; but we refused to be daunted. We pinned our faith upon Bright and Gladstone, and we honestly believed that, if only the artisans could get the vote, we should soon see 24 A FORGOTTEN PHRASE a new heaven and a new earth. For a while our faith seemed to be justified. The artisans came into their kingdom in 1868, and' for the next five years we saw, at any rate, some approximation to the triumph of our principles. The democ- racy made Gladstone Prime Minister ; and, whatever else he did or failed to do, he kept England at peace when Europe was drenched in blood and the United States were clamouring for redress ; he retrenched expenditure with an even meticulous care ; and he effected som'e reforms which touched the bases of national life. The adminis- tration of 1868-74 left its permanent mark on our politics, and the Imperialist re- action under Lord Beaconsfield was a protest against the policy which had " shaken the citadel of privilege to its base." Gladstone's later administrations added very little to his earlier achievements ; and, as the Glad- stonian spirit subsided, the reaction, which had begun under Lord Beaconsfield, extended itself, at first insensibly, to the Liberal Party . 25 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES It wt)uld be invidious to indicate the per- sonal channels through which this poison of Imperialism' made its way into the body of the Liberal Party. What is noteworthy, and lamentable, is that a pernicious in- fluence, communicated from above, found a ready lodgment in the very class to which reformers had looked for a resolute main- tenance of the old ideals. For twenty years the Liberal Party, sterilized and im- potent, saw its watchwords scouted ; and its appointed work performed, if performed at all, by its political opponents. The General Election of 1906 gave promise of better things. As a Party-triumph it was complete, but the victory had been won on an economic issue. The constituencies had been stirred into unusual activity by the menace of " Tariff Reform." They would have nothing to do with what Lord Goschen aptly called " a gamble in the food of the people " ; and, if only a candidate was sound on that immediate and most prac- tical issue, his sentiments on other ques- tions, equally fundamental but less urgent, 26 A FORGOTTEN PHRASE were not taken into account. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was a staunch adherent of the old watchwords ; but, when Mr. Balfour suddenly resigned, circumstances forced "C.-B." to take into his adminis- tration a good many men whose opinions about Peace and Retrenchment differed widely from his own. The Prime Minister and all his colleagues, whether " Imperial- ists " or " Little Englanders," were re- formers, and we have reaped, and are still reaping, the fruits of their reforming zeal. But some of them' had contracted the in- fection of militarism, and had justified the carnage and rapine of South Africa. War and Retrenchment are incompatible ideals, and so two words of the vital three have gradually slipped out of the Party-motto. But war is not the only form of outlay against which it behoves the advocates of Retrenchment to protest. Every six months sees the birth of some newi Board or Department or Commission or Committee ; each of these institutions creates a large array of chairmen, secretaries, clerks, and 27 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES inspectors ; and these good men, though no doubt they love their country, have no notion of serving it for naught. The proposed nationalization of the Liquor-Traffic would mean the formation of a new and vast army of Civil Servants, with a Minister of State at its head. For my owli part, I hate being governed and inspected and examined ; and when I feel that I have to pay (even in part) the spectacled gentle- man in seedy black who calls on behalf of the Inland Revenue, or the pert youth in blue serge and brown boots who wants to know if my kitchen-maid is insured, I long to lead an insurrection against our new bureaucracy. \ ' When we look from the lower to the higher ranks of these expensive tyrannies, I seem, not seldom, to perceive the taint of political jobbery — " My agent is a capital fellow— very keen for the Unionist Party, but not too scrupulous. He very nearly got me into a scrape last time. Couldn't you make him a Commissioner of something?" "Mr. Chadband's chapel is 28 A FORGOTTEN PHRASE a centre of Liberal activity in my division. He has a very clever daughter, who would make a capital Inspector." But, after all, we are only living, again the experiences of triumphant Liberalism under Grey and Melbourne and Althorp and the great men of 1830-41. (Sydney Smith, who had fought for Peace, Retrenchment, and Re- form when the cause was unpopular, smiled at the sequel of the victory when he saw Melbourne at the head of the adminis- tration — Strange and ludicrous are the changes in human affairs. The Tories are now on the treadmill, and the well-paid Whigs are riding in chariots, with many faces, however, looking out of the windows (including that of our Prime Minister) which I never remember to have seen in the days of the poverty and depression of Whiggism. Liberalism is now a lucrative business. Whoever has any institution to destroy may consider himself as a Commissioner and his fortune as made. . . . The whole earth is in commission, and the human race, saved from the flood, is delivered over to barristers of six years' standing. The burden of proof now lies upon any man who says he is not a Commissioner ; the only doubt on seeing a new man among the Whigs is, not whether he is a Com- missioner or not, but whether it is of Tithes, Poor 29 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Laws, Boundaries of Boroughs, Church Leases, Charities, or any of the thousand human concerns which are now worked by Commissioners to the infinite comfort and satisfaction of mankind. Change the titles of these offices for their modern equivalents, and you have a fair picture of triumphant bureaucracy in these latter days. 30 Ill ARISTOCRACY Interpretation by etymology is always precarious. Long ago the acute .Whately illustrated this truth by, the instance of the Sycophant, who, etymologically, was a discoverer of figs, but in real life is a toady. Cowper contemned— The works of learn'd philologists, who chase A panting syllable through Time and Space ; Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's ark. Yet the study of words has its uses ; and as we follow " Aristocracy," through Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle, from its first meaning — the Rule of the Best -born — till it comes to signify " the Rule of 31 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES the Best," we trace a certain development of human reason. To live under the rule of the Best-born is an ignominy which even so staunch a lover of the ancient ways as Edmund Burke repudiated. Of Aristocracy in this sense he said : " If the Constitution must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved into any other form than lost in that austere and insolent domi- nation." But to live under the Rule of the Best has been, time out of mind, the ambition of such as frame Utopias. Generally, they have been agreed with Sir Thomas More that the most certain way of choosing the Best is by popular elec- tion, and modern propagators of Utopian ideas have formulated their doctrine in some such words as these : " Away with the spirit of Party- 1 Bring the battle of kites and crows to an end. Let the nation, either directly or through a representative apparatus, choose thirty or forty of its best men to fill the chief offices of State ; and, that done, let it surrender all govern- ment into the chosen hands, knowing that 32 ARISTOCRACY nothing and nobody can improve on the Best." To this prescription an ordinary English- man, whatever his political convictions, is apt to reply : " Not so . Even the best is liable to corruption, and nothing is so certain to corrupt 'an administration as the knowledge that it holds a blank cheque, and can draw without restraint on the confidence and support of the State." It was because Gladstone had been all but deified by the General Election of 1880 that the Liberal Government entered on its mad career in Egypt, Ireland, and the Soudan. It was because Lord Salisbury could count on the support of both sides that the South African War was possible. When, as in 1906, a Liberal Government has such a vast majority that it can despise the Irish vote, it drops the question of Home Rule, and only picks it up again when a diminished majority gives scope for effective criticism. Even a Ministry of All the Talents and All the Virtues, such as that under which we just now have c 33 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES the happiness to 'live, will probably do its work all the better because the Irish leaders have stayed, outside and can speak their mind when alike independent Liberalism and Conservative opposition have been muzzled. So much for that abnegation of criticism, which dwellers in Utopia recommended ; but there is an antecedent, and a still graver, difficulty. How can your forty Best Men be brought to act together, when, with motives equally patriotic, they are sharply divided by their rival theories of the public good? In normal times, the answer is that it is impossible. Authority and Freedom — Privilege and Equality — Col- lectivism and Individualism— Free Exchanges and Close Monopolies — these ideas, and a dozen others which might be cited, may in theory be not absolutely incompatible ; but, in practice, realities are stronger than words, and principles, even when not verbally expressed, have a way of making themselves felt in action. This is the reason why in normal times 34 ARISTOCRACY a Government of the Best is only an Utopian dream. But we are living in a time not normal. Since August 19 14 the face of the political world has been made new. The questions which then separated one Englishman from another have fallen into a very distant background ; and the State has no difficulty in finding its forty Best Men of* one mind with regard to the supreme issue of the moment. Those who have been trained in the traditions of English public life do not love Coalitions ; but, if the Cabinet as now reconstituted really contains the most serviceable brains and calmest nerves and highest characters which Parliament can supply, then I wish it God -speed with all my heart, and every patriot will say Amen." An absolute unity of mind and purpose among men of otherwise conflicting senti- ments is possible where a great principle emerges, and dominates all secondary issues. To-day such a principle animates us all, and ' Mr. Asquith reconstituted his administration in May 1915. 35 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES it is the serious conviction that our one duty as a State is to crush the militarism of Germany. As far as that principle is concerned, there is no more likelihood that Englishmen will differ than that the sun will fail in the heavens, or the hills will melt. The risk lies in another quarter, and it is the part of good citizenship to guard against it. No difference will arise about the principle of our national action : the end which we all seek is one. But there is a possibility of difference about methods, and a frightful responsibility will rest on any one — politician, journalist, or colonial bishop " — who endeavours to create a schism in the Government and in Par- liament over the question of compulsory service. As Mr. Asquith said the other day, a truce between parties for the period of the war, and even close association for Imperial purposes, does not mean that we have abandoned our ideals. It must be remembered that the danger ' One of the South African Bishops was making ** Jingo " speeches at this time. 36 ARISTOCRACY of attack from without, and the defence- less condition of our shores, were never the true motives of the cry for Conscription. The true motive was political and anti- democratic. If you take an English lad from his home, his friends, his chosen avocation ; deprive him of his natural freedom ; and force him through the mangle of a barrack and a regiment ; you have, no doubt, taught him, unless his nature be exceptionally robust, the lesson of obe- dience — of submission to an authority which he has not helped to create ; of willingness to surrender his private judgment to com- mands which he does not understand. In fine, you have done all you can to extin- guish the virtues of self-governing citizenship, and have laid, so far as is in your power, the foundation of an insolent despotism. This, I believe, is the ideal of Empire, as it presents itself to the minds of our military and literary and episcopal con- scriptionists. Swinburne, who read the thoughts of those false prophets as clearly as Mr. Sargent reads the characters of 37 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES his sitters, put the creed of Jingoism into ringing verse : — But we know, we believe it, we see it — Force only has power upon earth — and he gave us our reply : — So be it ! and ever so be it For souls that are bestial by birth ! 3? IV THE HA WARDEN KITE It is exactly thirty years since the re- markable creature whose name stands at the head of this paper began its eventful flight.' For that name I have Lord' Morley's high authority ; but, as some of my readers may have forgotten it, and others may never have heard it, I will treat it historically. The General Election of 1885 was just over. The Liberal ^ Party had gone into the election pledged up to the eyes against Home Rule, and, though Gladstone had been secretly converted to it, his conver- sion was known only to a privileged few. The election had resulted in a tie. The Tories had been in office since the previous June. The Irish members were then acting ' Written in December 19 15. 39 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES with the Tories, and the Liberals were just too few to defeat the combination. Lord Salisbury and his colleagues, there- fore, retained office, but it was obvious that the life of their Administration hung on a thread. As soon as the results of the election were complete, a little knot of active Radicals assembled under the late Mr. Chamberlain's hospitable roof at Highbury, to discuss the Parliamentary situation thus created. Very soon the sentiments of this conclave began to ooze out ; and, if correctly reported, they amounted to a repudiation of Gladstone's leadership. Gladstone and Chamberlain had fought the election in complete independence of one another, and Chamberlain had no wish to see his former chief replaced in command. The policy of Highbury was to leave the Tories in office, and press them into measures of domestic reform, such as Chamberlain had proposed in his " unauthorized programme," and Gladstone had ignored . Now there was in those days a busy 40 THE HAWARDEN KITE journalist called Wemyss Reid, who edited the Leeds Mercury, and there was a zealous M.P. called Herbert Gladstone (now Lord Gladstone), who sat for Leeds. Nothing could be more natural than that these two should discuss the rumours of what had happened at Highbury. If the plot against Gladstone's authority was to be defeated, it must be by some bold stroke which would rally Liberal opinion to Gladstone's side. An earnest but maladroit attempt to deal this stroke was made by the Leeds M.P. in conversation with the Leeds Editor, and the manager of a Press Agency was called into council . " Unluckily," says Lord Morley, " it would seem to need at least the genius of a Bismarck to perform the delicate office of inspiring a modern oracle on the journalistic tripod." There never was anything Bismarckian about Lord Gladstone, who simply told his own opinions about his father's attitude towards Home Rule, and left his journalistic friends to use the information as they thought best for the Liberal cause. The result 41 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES was that in a communication from the National Press Agency on the night of December 1 6, and in the Standard and the Leeds Mercury of December 1 7, it was announced that Mr. Gladstone, if returned to power, was prepared to deal in a liberal spirit with the demand for Home Rule. Even after the lapse of thirty years I can feel the shock of that announcement. No Zieppelin has ever dropped a more startling or more disastrous bomb than that which fell from the " Hawarden Kite." Down to December 1885, English politi- cians who were favourable to Home Rule, or, indeed, had seriously considered it, might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Denunciations of Parnell's aims and methods had been the commonplaces of Liberal, as well as Conservative, oratory. In some districts the Liberals had won by defying the Irish vote, and swearing hostility to Home Rule. This, for example, was the case of Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James of Hereford) at Bury. " Mr. Glad- 42 THE HAWARDEN KITE stone," he said, " has been more than a leader to me — he has been a father. But, even if he were to go down on his knees, and beg me to vote for Home Rule, I should be constrained by conscience to say him Nay." Suddenly the Liberal party was called to approve what it had hitherto been taught to condemn, and no one knew for cer- tain on what authority the call was made. On the 17th of December Gladstone told the world by telegraph that the statement in the papers was not an accurate represen- tation of his views, but a speculation upon them ; and that it had been published without his knowledge or authority. Lord Morley has justly observed that the publi- cation was neither to Gladstone's advantage, nor consistent with his political strategy. " Never was there a moment when every consideration of political prudence more imperatively counselled silence." But the silence was broken beyond repair ; the Kite had mounted, and the bomb had fallen. 43 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES The explosion was followed by a storm of questions, contradictions, explanations, enthusiasms, and jeremiads. But amidst all the hurly-burly Gladstone held his peace. He would neither confirm nor deny. The public must wait and see. The subject was one which could only be handled by a responsible Ministry. The intriguers, the quidnuncs, and the busybodies had the time of their lives. They ran hither and thither seeking information, finding none but in- venting much, cross -questioning politicians and wire-pulling the Press. To one of this enquiring tribe Gladstone wrote on the 23rd of December— Of the conditions of any measure for Ireland, or of my own intentions about one, I have not given to any human being any binding indication : beyond this, that if the Government take up the question, my desire is to give them the best aid that, with a reasonable freedom of judgment, I may. The bewilderment and confusion of the Liberal Party were absolute. No one knew what was coming next ; who was on which side ; or whither his party— or, indeed, him- 44 THE HA WARDEN KITE self— was tending. For politicians, it was a troublous Christmas. By February 1886 Gladstone was again Prime Minister, pledged to Home Rule in a form scarcely distinguish- able from separation. Six strenuous months followed. The Liberal Party was rent asunder. The Home Rule Bill was thrown out. Another General Election took place. By August 1886 the constituencies had rejected Gladstone's Irish policy, and the Tories had entered on a lease of power which lasted till the end of 1905. Such is the history of the " Hawarden Kite." After thirty years' gyrations, it seems to be settling down ; though I understand that, just for the moment, it is suspended in mid -air. 45 V JOHN BULL IN IRELAND As a rule, I am wholly free from the dramatic illusion. To me a play* is! a performance, good ori bad as the case may be, but bearing little or no relation to reality. An exception to this rule was supplied by " John Bull's Other Island." When the Liberal Carpet-bagger proclaimed to the Irish peasants the immortal truth that " 'What Ireland wants is a strong Liberal Government," my own voice came back to me, echoed from the platform of the 'eighties. John Bull in Ireland is not seen at his best ; but, before we discuss his doings, let us consider his character . In the first place, we are no longer, as Ruskin used to say, that we were, " un- degenerate in race — a race mingled of the 46 JOHN BULL IN IRELAND best northern blood." Within the last fifty years abundant tributaries of foreign blood — French, German, Jewish, American — have flowed into the main life -current of the nation. Even I who pen these pages, though a thorough -going Briton, am' not of purely English blood. I am compounded of English and Celtic blood in the pro- portion of two' and^ two. And, when- ever the Celtic element is introduced, it modifies even visibly the phlegmatic tem- perament which used to characterize John Bull. Then, again, as to his external charac- teristics, the type has changed out of all recognition, as every one can see who compares a snapshot of a contemporary crowd with Punches John Bull of fifty years ago. When the external character- istics are completely changed, do the internal characteristics remain what they were? In some respects, yes. Burke professed his reliance on " the ancient and inbred integrity and piety, good nature and good humour of the English people " ; 47 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES and those qualities are still the bed-rock of national character. In spite of all that is said, England remains the most reli- gious country in Europe. I am old enough to remember the astonishment of the French newspapers when, at the crisis of King Edward's dangerous illness of 1871, the English people betook themselves, like one man, to prayer. And the phenomenon which then caused so much astonishment is a commonplace to-day. But while this characteristic of essential religiousness remains the same, it certainly has gathered round it, of late years, some less admirable attributes. The old John Bull was obstinate, pig-headed, narrow- minded ; but he was not hypocritical — • or rather, his was an inverted hypocrisy. He was ashamed of seeming as good as he really was, and was apt to keep his spiritual experiences to himself. Quite different is the aspect which he presents to a critical world to-day. Here is an American appreciation of him : " The Briton is the modern Pharisee, who has looted 48 JOHN BULL IN IRELAND the world, and for a pretence makes long prayers. He never ceases to boast that he whipped Krance at Waterloo and Tra- falgar, and bested the whole Continent at the Game of Grab." To what a pass have we come when John Bull's grandchildren thus satirize his methods ! Another characteristic of the traditional John Bull was his serene contentment with things as they are. He was, as Sydney Smith said, " delighted with every existing institution and almost every existing cir- cumstance." Such a one was Byron's typical John Bull : — He liked our taxes, when they're not too many ; He hked a sea-coal fire, when not too dear ; He hked a beef-steak, too, as well as any — Had no objection to a pot of beer. Fifty years later iWhyte -Melville, another social critic who saw life from the top, said of his typical Englishman : " He shaved scrupulously, drank port wine, and believed in the Times.'" To-day an Englishman may be as hairy as Esau ; his doctor assures him that port is poison ; and D 49 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES he has views about the Northcliffe Press. He travels — or did before the War — and comes back with unnatural pre- ferences for German stoves or Italian wood-fires ; thinks a skinny chicken and thin Moselle the true diet ; and is more than half inclined to prefer bureaucracy to self-government. John Bull honestly despised all foreigners. Lord Palmerston was never more typically and representatively British than when he called Germany " that country of d d professors." We were reared from our cradles in the creed that " Foreigners don't wash " ; and that statement seemed to hold the key of all international perplexities. We believed absolutely that no foreigner could ride, row, or shoot ; and, in spite of a good deal of experience to the con- trary, we half believed that foreigners could not fight . Even darker suspicions of his European neighbours haunted the unregenerate mind of John Bull. Foreigners were conspirators. Foreigners were debauchees. Foreigners 50 JOHN BULL IN IRELAND were either idolators or atheists. I have heard that, after my great-uncle, Lord 'Wilham Russell, was murdered by his Swiss valet, it was for many years impossible for a foreign servant to get a place in London. A greatly increased acquaintance with the world outside England has modified these insular prejudices of the traditional John Bull. »We have been forced to admit that foreigners can fight and Colonials ride. •We have learnt to behave ourselves with comparative decency in foreign churches. We no longer denounce the Roman Catholic religion as " a lie and a heathenish super- stition." America no longer has occasion to complain of that " condescension " on the part of English people which once stirred Lowell's indignation. It is chiefly in reference to Ireland that John Bull still vaunts himself with offensive superiority. Long ago Matthew Arnold pointed out that one of the chief reasons for the eternal misunderstanding between Ireland and England was the fact that the English were represented in Ireland chiefly by people 51 ^ POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES like Murdstone and Quinion in David Copperfield, and by the products of Salem House and Mr. Creakle. "The Irish people," he said, " are capable of feeling thoroughly the attraction of the power of manners," but they do not feel it in the case of those who compose the English garrison. " The genuine, unmitigated Murd- stone is the common middle-class English- man, who has come forth from Salem House, and Mr. Creakle. He is seen in full force, of course, in the Protestant north ; but throughout Ireland he is a prominent figure of the English garrison. Him the Irish see, see him only too much and too often ; and he represents to them the promise of English civilization." Thirty years have passed, and, as far as "his relations with Ireland are concerned, John Bull remains the same graceful figure that Matthew Arnold knew so well. All this time he has been governing Ireland, with the results which we saw at Easter 1 9 1 6 ; but perhaps he is now approaching the end of his reign. 52 VI M.P. OR DELEGATE? " The Union of Democratic Control " is a body about which I am very imperfectly informed. In so far as it seeks to bring the war-making and treaty-making powers of the Crown under the cognizance of Parliament, I am at one with it ; for that is a change in our constitutional arrange- ments which I have always favoured. There may, however, be. points in the policy of the Union to which I could by no means subscribe ; and I cannot be sur- prised that my friend Mr. Charles Tre- velyan should find himself at issue with his constituents. If I were a voter in the Elland Division I think it probable that I might be obliged to give my representative what is called "a bit of my mind " — even that proverbially disagree - 53 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES able " bit " which conscientious people reserve for their erring friends. But I am bound to say that, in my opinion, Mr. Trevelyan, in replying to his Liberal Association, took exactly the right line, and stated the constitutional relation between Member and Constitueets with force, dignity, and good temper. The parallel, tempting enough in some respects, which the Times drew between Mr. Trevelyan's letter and Mr. Gregsbury's reply to " his old friend Pugstyles " fails in one all- important particular. According to the unchallenged statement of the deputation which invited Mr. Gregsbury to resign his seat, that legislator had broken all the pledges on the strength of which he had been elected. Mr. Trevelyan seems to have broken none. He tells us that his votes and speeches have been in exact accordance with the declarations which he made when he was elected, and I have not seen his statement contradicted. It may be true that his present actions are distasteful to his constituents ; but, unless 54 M.P, OR DELEGATE? it can be shown that they are inconsistent with his pledges given at his election, the constituents have no right to demand his resignation. Here, I take it, is the difference between a Member of Parliament, and the Delegate of some alliance or confederation. The delegate, I believe, undertakes to vote as the body which elects him may from time to time desire. He abjures private judgment, and makes himself a voting- machine. The Member of Parliament is bound only by the professions which he made when he sought election. He secured his majority by professing such and such convictions ; and, so long as he maintains them and acts upon them, he is fulfilling his compact with the constituency. The constituents may change their minds, but they have no right to blame him because he stands fast to what he professed. Their opportunity comes with the next election. Then they can say, in the effective form of action : " The opinions which you hold are no longer ours, and we must seek a 55 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES representative who agrees with us." Our political history abounds in such sever- ances, and they irnply no discredit to either side. For example, no one alleged that Gladstone, in the Parliament of 1859, violated the pledges on which he had been elected by the University of Oxford, or that, in the Parliament of 1865, he had broken faith with South Lancashire. There were a great many of his constituents who extremely disliked his votes in both Par- liaments ; but no one asked him to resign. A disaffected constituent who had ventured on such a suggestion would have been promptly challenged to show the violated pledge ; and, failing to do so, he would have received a lecture on the relations between the representative and the repre- sented which would have enlarged his constitutional knowledge. In both cases, the constituency changed its mind during the life of the Parlia- ment, and, when the day of reckoning came, dismissed its Member, though he was the foremost man in the Liberal Party. But no M,P. OR DELEGATE? one ever suggested that Gladstone ought to resign before the Dissolution, because the opinions which were popular at his election had since lost their popularity. John Bright knew very well that his opposition to the Chinese War was unpopular in Manchester ; but he never dreamed of resigning his seat. He had been elected as an advo- cate of peace, and he stood his ground till Manchester dismissed him. To take a more recent instance, the same difficulty beset the Liberals who in 1885 had been returned as opponents of Homie Rule. After the General Election, Gladstone's conversion was announced, and the Caucus decreed that all Liberals were to follow their leader. Some weak-kneed brethren succumbed to pressure ; but men of robuster material said : " We were elected to oppose Home Rule, and we shall vote according to our pledges. We shall neither turn our coats nor resign our seats "—and the Election of 1886 in most cases ratified their decision. Exactly similar was the case of the Unionist Free Traders, who, when Tariff Reform 57 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES was broached, found that the wire-pullers expected them to renounce Free Trade. The stronger men stuck to their beliefs and their seats, and left the constituencies to decide the issue at the General Election of 1906. Obviously and entirely different is the case of the M.P. who, having been elected on a certain confession of faith, changes his mind during the life of the Parlia- ment, and finds that he can no longer pursue the p,olicy to which he pledged himself. In such circumstances an honest man does not wait for representations from his former supporters. He resigns his seat, and appeals from^ the Caucus to the constituency. Thus the late Sir -William Marriott, having been returned as a Liberal for Brighton in 1880, changed his opinions in 1884, resigned his seat, .and was triumphantly re-elected as a Conservative ; and, in more recent years, the same course has been pursued by Home Rulers who have turned Unionist, and Unionists who have turned Home Rulers. 58 M.P. OR DELEGATE? If, then, Mr. Trevelyan had changed the opinions which at the last Election commended him to the Elland Division, he would be bound by propriety and right feeling to resign and offer himself, for re-election. But, if he stands now where he stood then, he should keep his seat and vote, not as others wish, but as he himself thinks right. Surely no one will be so foolish as to suggest that Sir John Simon ought, because he has retired from the .Cabinet, to retire also from Walthamstow. Lord Kitchener, in support- ing the Compulsion Bill, suggested with admirable gravity, that men who doubted about their duty in the matter of military service would be only too glad to have their doubts settled for them by authority ; and what that gallant soldier thought about military service the Caucus seem to think about political duty. But there will always be a " remnant " who prefer to shape their own course, and who own no authority except conscience . 59 VII SCAPEGOA TS From time to time during the last two years " scapegoats " have figured prominently in the newspapers. One day Lord Derby gave us his opinion of these long-suffering animals, and his way of handling them suggests that the origin and significance of the Scapegoat has lapsed out of sight. Commenting on certain miscarriages in our military administration, his lordship said that, if the English people must have scapegoats, they had better make scapegoats of them'- selves. It might tend to clearness of thought if he would turn to the Book of Leviticus, and would investigate the origin of a phrase which, like so many images and aphorisms, found its way from the Bible into our common speech. He will find it in the Day of Atonement, as enjoined by Moses 60 SCAPEGOATS on the Israelites, and in the ritual of the Tabernacle. The ceremonies of the day were singularly elaborate and detailed, and at a certain point the High Priest presented two young goats at the door of the Tabernacle, and cast lots upon them. On one lot was inscribed " For Jehovah," on the other " For Azazel "—a mysterious appellation on which commentators have ex- pended volumes of curious learning. The goat dedicated to Jehovah was killed, and its blood sprinkled on the sacred shrine. This done, the High Priest laid his hands on the head of the goat " for Azazel," and confessed over it all the sins of the people. The goat was forthwith led into the wilderness, into " a land not inhabited," and was then let loose. There the prescribed observance ends. The sin-laden goat vanishes into the un- seen. It is true that the genius of Holman Hunt depicted it, the most forlorn, dejected, and broken-down creature in the world, stumbling across an arid desert to some unknown doom ; but that was only 6i POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES a flight of fancy, and not less fanciful are the innumerable and contradictory interpre- tations which Jewish and Christian exposi- tors have attached to the whole observance. Only one point seems to emerge quite clearly. An entire people cannot make scapegoats of them'selves ; for it is of the essence of the symbolism that the selected victim bears vicariously the sins of others, and suffers for wrongdoing in which it has had no part. There is something impressive and in- structive in the fact that the popular imagination of four centuries has fastened on the Scapegoat, and has disregarded the goat that was sacrificed. Is it fanciful to read in this discrimination the tacit belief that disgrace and exile and contemptuous oblivion are heavier evils than the sharp stroke of death? I have spoken of four centuries, for it is only since the translation of the Bible that " The Scapegoat "—caper emissarius, as the Vulgate calls him^has become familiar to English thought and speech . But the 62 SCAPEGOATS tendency, when things go wrong, to seize upon some inoffensive victim and hound him to destruction, is a good deal older than the Reformation, and will probably survive the twentieth century. " I have loved righteousness and hated iniquity ; therefore I die in exile," is a cry which, since Hildebrand uttered it, every age has re-echoed ; and the irritated populace has not always stopped short at exile and the image of the Scapegoat, but has preferred the shorter method of sword or axe or stake. Tyrannicide has had its apologists —Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Shelley, and even the young Disraeli ; but tyrannicide implies a tyrant, and a tyrant justly suffers for his misdeeds. The Scapegoat is the man who suffers, not for wrongdoing of his own, but because others have done wrong, and the public temper is inflamed. Savonarola and Molinos were scapegoats in the truest sense of the phrase, each bearing the sins of a licentious and con- science-stricken age. Louis XVI expiated in his own unoffending person the accumu- 63 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES lated crimes of a corrupt dynasty. The scapegoat of American slavery was Lincoln, who abolished it, and died a victim to the rage of the baffled slave-owners. The scape- goat of Russian autocracy was Alexander II, who liberated the serfs and was assassi- nated by the Nihilists. The scapegoat of English misrule in Ireland was Lord Frederick Cavendish, than whom Ireland never had a truer friend. I have spoken, so far, of countries more or less remote from our own ; but in the assertion of our own liberties we too have made free use of scapegoats. How far Charles I suffered for sins not his own is a question which Debating Societies will discuss to the end of time. James II, vanishing by night into exile and oblivion, and bearing with him' the iniquities of all the Stuarts, was a scapegoat with a differ- ence ; for, though he suffered vicariously, he suffered for his own sins as well. I turn from heroic and historic examples to the homely politics of the present day. Our wonderful Constitution has cleverly 64 SCAPEGOATS adapted itself to changed conditions, has made all rough dealing with crowned heads unnecessary, and has provided an official scapegoat whenever the need for such a victim arises. On this point we can have no safer guide than Gladstone, who played the part of Scapegoat more than once — " In every free State, ifor every public act, some one must be responsible ; and the question is, who shall it be ? " Gladstone answers : " The Minister, and the Minister exclusively," and it is to be observed that when he says " The Minister," he means the Prime Minister, though, when he wrote, that title had not been, as it is now, officially recognized. He thus expounds the difference between the Prime Minister and his colleagues : " The head of the British Government is not a Grand Vizier. He has no powers, properly so called, over his colleagues ; on the rare occasions when a Cabinet determines its course by the votes of its members, his vote counts only as one of theirs. But they are appointed and dismissed by the E 65 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Sovereign on his advice."' The resigna- tion of the Prime Minister has the effect of dissolving the Cabinet. The resignation of any other Minister only creates a vacancy. 'Here we see our Constitutional scapegoat. If things go wtong in this department or in that, it is idle to attack Mr. Secretary Taper, or his friend Tadpole, President of the Circumlocution Office. If Taper and Tadpole are incompetent or injudicious or disaffected, it is the duty of the Prime Minister, who recommended them for office, to recomimend their dismissal. Unless and until he does so he must bear the respon- sibility for their misconduct ; and even if he delays to act after the case is proved, his action, taken too late, will not relieve him of the responsibility. When the moment comes for the nation to act by a General Election, he will find himself driven into the dreary wilderness to keep company with the caper emlssarius.^ ' Alas ! he had not to wait for the General Election. 66 ii VIII DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY It was, I think, Robert Southey who said : " I am no more ashamed of having been a Republican than of having been young." The same boast, or confession, might have been made, thirty years after Southey's time, by men who were growing up in the 'seventies of the last century. Echoes of the older republicanism' still lingered in the political air. Algernon Sidney 'was still quoted on platforms. The French Revolution was cited as the birth of the new world. The downfall of the Monarchies in 1848 was remembered by men who were still active in politics. Edmond Beales, haranguing the Reform' League in Hyde Park, protested that he was not a " sub- ject," but a " citizen." Bradlaugh rushed about the country " impeaching the House 67 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES of Brunswick." Dilke and Auberon Herbert divided the House of Commons against the Civil List. The collapse of the Second Empire seemed to threaten older thrones. Mr. John Morley, in Compromise, protested against outward signs of reverence for royalty. Queer old democrats like Nieass of Chelsea (whom the Times, to his dis- gust, called "Niceass"), used to sit when the Queen's health was drunk, and keep their heads covered when the National Anthem was played. Ardent youths longed for the fast -approaching day when " the last king should be strangled in the bowels of the last priest " ; and even sedate pub- hcists hke R. H. Hutton, of the Spectator, gravely pronounced that Republican institu- tions were " more self-respecting " than those under which we live. But, as the 'seventies advanced towards the 'eighties, this anti -monarchical senti- ment was seen to waver, and then to dis- appear. The nearly fatal illness of the Prince of Wales at the end of 1 8 7 1 had disclosed an unsuspected depth of national 68 DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY feeling for the Crown, and the events of each succeeding year made that feeUng stronger. Queen Victoria, emerging from her ten years' seclusion, acquired a popu- larity enhanced by reverence, which deepened and increased until she became, as it were, a divinity in her lifetime ; and there were two personal forces in the political world which tended in the same direction. Dis- raeli's bizarre genius had always perceived that a sympathy between " the Monarch and the Multitude " was the strongest safe- guard of the Throne ; all his energies were employed to make that sympathy real, and he knew exactly how to play on the foibles of both the parties involved. On the other hand, Gladstone was just reach- ing the height of his power ; he had been acclaimed as leader of the demo- cratic party, so far as England knows anything of democracy ; and at the same time he was almost an idolator of the Throne. Of all our national institutions, it was the one which he was most prone to idealize. " His sense of chivalry," says 69 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Lord Morley, " his sense of an august tradition continuously symbolized by an his- toric throne, moved him as the sight of the French Queen at Versailles had moved the majestic imagination of Burke a cen- tury before. From beginning to end he stood sentry over the interests, whether profound and enduring or trivial and fleet- ing, of the ancient monarchy of this king- dom." When the two great political parties of the country are dominated by men so devoted to the monarchical principle as Gladstone and Disraeli, the murmurs of disaffection are hushed ; and when, further- more, the Crown is identified in the popular view with private virtue and public service, the anti -monarchical spirit finds little to feed on. When Queen Victoria died, it was justly enumerated among the triumphs of her reign that she had lived through, and had lived down, Republicanism'. One of the most thoughtful books on the philosophy of politics which have appeared of late years was the great Duke of Argyll's treatise on The Unseen Foun- 70 DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY dations of Society. That those foundations are hable to incalculable disturbances is a truth familiar to all whose studies carry^ them below the surface of things ; and close observers think that just now they can perceive some disquieting vibrations. " Republic," " Republican," " Republican- ism," are words which had disappeared from common parlance ; but within the last few months they have been heard again, and heard in unlikely quarters. In one respect we seem to have improved upon the manners of the last generation, for when people discuss the m'onarchy they discuss it only as an institution, and eschew the evil precedent of 1871, when Queen Victoria herself was not free from insult and reproach. It is observed that the men and women who speak rudely of King George V are not serious -minded citizens, but the raffish denizens of a certain sec- tion of so-called Society — (Mr. Richard Whiteing has described it in The Yellow Van) — who feel their own moral practice rebuked by the daily life of an immacu- 71 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES late and duty-loving Court. The serious people avoid personalities, and deal only with institutions. Rightly or wrongly, they believe that monarchy makes for war. They remember the evil deeds of Kings and Emperors ; they forget the machina- tions of political conspirators like Bismarck ; the financial pressure which forced Great Britain to occupy Egypt and desolate South Africa ; the blundering diplomacy which has repeatedly led us to, and sometimes over, the brink of avoidable war. Re- publics, they say, do not m'ake war. If Germany or Austria had been ruled by a President instead of an Emperor, Europe might still be at peace. They point to the infinite complexity of Royal relation- ships, and hint, or more than hint, that the King of the Hellenes would not have been allowed to cozen and browbeat the Allies if he had no near kinsfolk on more important thrones . Then, again, the people who use this kind of language have apparently only realized since the war began that the blood of 72 DISAFFECTION AND ITS REMEDY our reigning house is almost exclusively German — for tiny indeed, and much diluted, is the drop of Stuart blood which the framers of the Act of Settlement dis- covered in the House of Hanover. For my own part, I hold that no psychology could be more erroneous than that which assumes that because a man is one's cousin one must love him and wish him success. But the critics who just now are canvass- ing monarchical institutions appear to believe that even the faintest consanguinity is a stronger bond than patriotism and public faith . I was brought up by people who remem- bered the older generation of the Royal Family, and they always declared that Queen Victoria's uncles and aunts had lost all trace of Germanism, and alike in their appearance, their character, and their speech, were as typically English as that loved and lamented lady who was the mother of our present Queen. The Royal Marriage Act, limiting the free choice of English princes and princesses by artificial restric- 73 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES tions, was one of the most indefensible statutes which ParUament ever passed. It put difTficulties, often insuperable, in the way of such alliances as had linked the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts to the English people ; and it helped to impress a foreign stamp on two genera- tions of the House of Hanover. There is to-day a well-beloved young prince, as English in character as in face, who is serving England on the soil of France.' Let Providence grant him an English wife, and the last murmur of disaffection will be drowned in the cheerful chorus of national rejoicing. ' Written in 1917. 74 IX REP UBLICA NISM My paper on " Disaffection," when it was originally published, brought me a good deal of' correspondence. This is all to the good, for such topics are much the better for free discussion. A question which in substance has been asked by several correspondents is this : "In what section of the populace do you meet the language of Disaffection, which you de- scribe ? " I reply : In the rafffsh fringe of smart society, in the lower middle class, and among metropolitan artisans. As far as I know, the rural population has never been touched by Disaffection. Having, from my earliest childhood, been familiar with agricultural labourers, their lives, their prejudices, and their desires, I deliberately consider them' the most sensible portion of 75 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES the Body Politic. They know exactly the grievances under which they suffer, they have a shrewd notion of the possible remedies, and they do not trouble them- selves with idle speculation. A long hereditary tradition of keeping their own counsel makes them uncommunicative to strangers and busybodies ; habitual contact with the realities of nature and of life makes them wisely indifferent to bombast. Certainly it is not in the rural population that I should expect to find Disaffection, in the sense in which I used the word. To the sections which I enumerated above I ought to add— though it is only a minute sub -section— the little band of those who believe that the Legitimate Sovereign of this realm' is to be found in Bavaria, and, therefore, that the actual monarchy has no moral claim on our allegiance. But these, who used to call Queen Victoria " The Dowager Princess Albert of Saxe-Coburg," are too few to count. Dante -like, we will regard them and pass on. But one of my correspondents, though disclaiming any sym- 76 REPUBLICANISM pathy with the White Rose, yet advanced the curious theory that, if the direct hne of the Stuarts had continued to occupy the Throne — in other words, if the Revo- lution of 1688 had never occurred— the monarchy would be stronger than it is now in the affections of the people. Specu- lations on the might-have-beens of history are always interesting ; but to imagine that James Francis, or Charles Edward, or Henry Benedict, would have established an abiding hold on the affections of England, seems to me the very topsy-turVydom of conjecture. Private correspondence and public criti- cism alike have ratified my account of Republicanism' as it existed here in the later 'sixties and early 'seventies of the last century. Mr. Herbert Burrows made the interesting statement that Bradlaugh held King Edward's illness of December 1 8 7 1 to have put the clock back for fifty years. (I quote by memory.) But his victory over typhoid Was not the only service which King Edward rendered to the cause of monarchy. His unfailing tact, 77 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES his genial courtesy, his dignity of bearing on all ceremonial occasions, his love of befitting splendour, and his unaffected sym- pathy with the social ideas of the English people— all these things Were elements in his popularity, and enabled him to confirm and consolidate our national loyalty. " Vive la Republique ! " cried a not unfriendly voice as he drove through the streets of Paris. " Mais c'est pour la France," was his prompt and smiling reply. There was a world of meaning in that Mais, and both countries apprehended it. One of my cor,respondents said with perfect truth : " The sentimental value of the Crown in regard to the Dominions and Colonies is undoubted. Would it hold equally with a Republic? Take India— would the Princes there bear cheerful allegiance to a politician elected to be President? I trow not." Another force which contributed to the decay of Republicanism' was the increasing power and audacity of Capital. Observant citizens saw the far-reaching and secretive operations of Capitalism directed to the 78 REPUBLICANISM attainment of political power, and often attaining it. They realized that any foriri of Government, other than a strictly hereditary Monarchy, would give infinitely enlarged scope to the power of mere wealth, and would create a new world of log-rolling and axe -grinding, of chicanery and intrigue, with the object of putting Lord X. or Mr. Z. in the supreme place. John Bright once said, with characteristic sense : " The question between Monarchy and Republicanism' was settled by our fore- fathers a good many years ago, and I see no reason to unsettle it." But, for reasons which I indicated in a former chapter, there has of late been some return, in certain sections of the Body Politic, to the idea of Republicanism. This my correspondents admit ; and some, not content with re- gretting, suggest remedies for Disaffection. One is that the King should establish himself in the centre of his Army. Could there be a worse suggestion ? We all were gratified when the Sovereign found it possible, once and again, to visit his troops, 79 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES for we knew the happiness which his presence would bring to men who deserve all the happiness which they can get. We were thankful when he returned in safety ; and we know that the place assigned by Providence to an English Sovereign is in the centre of his people. Another suggestion, not much wiser, is that the King's personal part in the busi- ness of the State should be made more conspicuous, and his individual action dragged into the " fierce light " of pub- licity. Let the answer be given in Gladstone's words : " In the ordinary administration of the Government the Sovereign personally is, so to speak, behind the scenes ; performing, indeed, many personal acts, but, in each and all of them, covered by the advice of Ministers, who stand between the august Personage and the people. . . . Sole action for the Sovereign would mean undefended, unpro- tected action ; the armour of irresponsi- bility would not cover the whole body against sword or spear ; a head would So REPUBLICANISM project beyond the awiiing, and would invite a sunstroke." My own remedy for the disaffection, less or greater, which may have been engen- dered by recent circumstances, has already been humbly submitted. The only dissen- tients from it whom I have discovered are those curiously innocent people who write to the papers suggesting an alliance with an Italian or a French princess, for- getting the fundamental fact that for the Sovereign or the Heir Apparent to marry a Roman Catholic forfeits his right to the crown and absolves the English people from their allegiance. Let a wiser word from one of my correspondents close this chapter : — The old objection of the influence of the wife's relations on affairs of State could hardly apply nowadays. A little malice among some sections in society would be inevitable ; it would count for nothing against the feeling of the mass of the country. 8i X ROYALTY Some recent remarks of mine about Royal alliances have prompted questions. " What is Royalty?" asks a perplexed reader. " Is there a Royal caste? If so, what are its limitations ? How do people get into it ? Can they fall out of it ? And if so, how ? " To answer these questions with precision is impossible ; but to illustrate their complexity is easy. We will begin at home, and then pursue the subject to the Continent. In England the sole fountain of honour is the Sovereign. All ranks, titles, and precedencies are his creations, and all questions of Royalty are governed by re- lationship to the Crown. Thus we speak habitually of " the Royal Family," but the phrase is elastic, and is used with' vary- 82 ROYALTY ing extensions. The larger extension, according to Blackstone, includes all those, whether male or female, who could, by any possibility, inherit the Crown : — " Such before the Revolution, were all the de- scendants of William the Conqueror, who had branched into an amazing extent by inter -marriages with the ancient nobility. Such, since the Revolution and the Act of Settlement, are the Protestant issue of the Electress Sophia, no\y comparatively few in number, but which, in process of time, may possibly be as largely diffused." Thus spoke a true prevision ; for, even if we omit from the calculation the other issue of George III, the descendants, male and female, of his granddaughter Queen Victoria, would furnish the population of a village ; and each of these illustrious personages, unless he or she should become or should marry a Roman Catholic, is in the legal succession to the Throne of England. If Queen Victoria's sons had died without issue, we should now be subjects of the German Emperor. 83 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Such, then, is the wider extension of " the Royal Family " ; the more confined sense includes only those who are within a certain degree of propinquity to the reigning Sovereign, and to whom, on account of that propinquity, the law pays a peculiar regard. Kinsfolk of the Sove- reign outside that degree fall into the rank of ordinary subjects. An Act jof 'Henry VIII assigns places in Parliament and at the Privy Council to the sons, brothers, uncles, and nephews of the King ; but, beyond those degrees, the kinsfolk of the Sovereign are entitled to no place or precedence except what they may have acquired — say, by inheriting a peerage or a title. The mere fact of their descent, in a more remote degree, from the Sove- reign, gives them', in law, no precedence, though custom willingly concedes what law does not confer—" The Princes of the Blood Royal have, as to precedence, a movable and not a fixed status ; con- stantly shifting with the greater or less propinquity to the actual Sovereign " ; 84 ROYALTY and this status, being] ruled by Act of Parliainent, cannot be altered by the Royal Prerogative. What, then, is the position of a man who, being closely related to the Sovereign, is not son, brother, uncle, or nephew ? The question arose in an acute form when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert. It was proposed to settle it by Act of Parliament, giving him precedence over all the Royal Family except the future Prince of Wales ; but the difficulties in this way of adjustment were so many and so grave that the project was dropped. The Queen's prerogative could not give him precedence in Parliament or in the Privy Council, but it was sufficient to give him! precedence elsewhere, and the good sense and good taste of Society accorded due honour to the Prince who shared the life, though he could not share the Throne, of the Sovereign. Matters of mere title, however, are within the discretion of the Crown. The sons and daughters of the Sovereign, and the children of the Sovereign's sons, are 85 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES " Royal Highnesses " by birth ; but, when we get a httle farther away from the Throne, the title of Royal Highness is acquired only by favour of the Sovereign. William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, the " Silly Billy " of so many memoirs, though he was a nephew of George HI, was not a " Royal Highness " till he was made such by the King on his marriage with the King's daughter. The well -remembered and much -beloved Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck, being born a niece of William IV, was made a " Royal Highness " by her cousin Wlien a more moderate friend complained of the Pope's tendency to exalt pious opinions into Dogmas of Faith, he replied : " I should like dogmlas to be like rolls — a fresh one at breakfast every morning." If, for dogmas regulating faith, we substitute decrees regulating con- duct, we now have exactly the breakfast - table which Ward desiderated. We have a fresh decree every morning. But people who bear my name have an hereditary objection to this state of things. When a panic-stricken Government interfered with the right of public meeting, and proposed to abolish habeas corpus, Lord John Russell said to the unreformed House of Commons : " We talk much — I 93 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES think a great deal too much — of the wisdom of our ancestors. 'I wish we could imitate the courage of our ancestors. They were not ready to lay their liberties at the foot of the Crown upon every vain or imaginary alarm." A century later, another Government (alarmed, I am bound to say, with better reason) produced the Defence of the Realm Bill, and, under the pressing exigence of war. Parliament passed it into law without noticing the extraordinary latitude of a clause which placed all civil freedom under the domination of executive authority. While Lord John Russell protested against unnecessary abridgments of liberty, he pro- tested not less vigorously against the inter- vention of Militarism in political affairs : — " A Standing Army which destroyed the freedom of England . . . would appear in the shape of a Guardian of Order ; it would support the authority of the two Houses of Parliament ; it would be hostile to none but mobs and public meetings, and shed no blood except that of labourers and journeymen." From such a " Guardian of 94 DICTATORSHIP Order " all lovers of Freedom must pray to be delivered. It should be the object of all reasonable people to be governed as little as possible. The gradual evolution of representative self- government has expressed the resolve of civilized men to manage their own affairs and live their own lives, with' the least possible interference from above or from outside. To-day the chief opponent of this resolve is Bureaucracy, which had long been trying to undermine self-government, and to set up' the ideal of being governed as much as possible, in opposition to the older and better ideal o'f being governed as little as possible. The war, in addition to other and more obvious mischiefs, gave Bureaucracy an immense increase of strength. Every week sees the creation of some fresh office, and of a staff employed in executing that office's behests. There are some forms of lower life in which, if you detach a part from the whole, the part detached has the power of living and propagating itself. Even so with POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Bureaucracy. The Circumilocution Office is broken up into a dozen departments. An energetic official is placed at the head of each, and goes to work with a will, ful- filling Ward's ideal, and issuing decrees, like hot rolls, every morning. In old days, when the Cabinet system was still in force; we knew that the Government as a whole was answerable for actions done in its name ; and that a blunder or a crime committed by one department involved the 'fate of the whole Cabinet. To-day the oppressed subject knows not where to turn. If Mr. Podsnap or Mr. Perkup issues an absurd decree, or if the Minister for Turnip-tops urges a course which the President of the Board of Conscription disallows, to whom are we to appeal ? If General Sir George Tufto, being " the competent military authority," forbids Family Prayers, on the ground that they may involve seditious proceedings or hinder the work of recruiting, can we in- voke the Cabinet to defend our religious liberties ? It is a dubious outlook, for the 96 DICTATORSHIP Prime Minister is fully occupied in win- ning the war, and his Aaron and Hur have not made their fame by championing freedom. No one can admire Lord Milner's intellect more sincerely than I do ; but his intense Germanism (I do not mean pro -Germanism) has made him, where freedom is concerned, " wrong with the intense wrongness which only an honest man can achieve, who has taken a false turn of thought in the outset, and is following it, regardless of consequences." Lord Curzon has been my friend for forty years ; but to appeal to him on the ground that my civil or religious freedom was threatened by executive authority would, I fear, be about as hopeful an attempt as " to rear the jungles of Bengal on Salisbury Plain." But, though the prospect is thus dis- couraging, I must admit that it might conceivably be worse. After all, the members ot the Cabinet are civilians, and civilians, even though they have been Pro -Consuls, might yet understand, or G 97 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES remember, what Civil Liberty means. Not so a military dictator. The military mind is constitutionally incapable of conceiving of Freedom, except as a pestilent mischief to be exterminated by whatever method comes most readily to hand. There is no need to ransack ancient or modern history for illustrations of my contention. At this moment, and f6r the last three years, the British nation has been struggling with all its might against the tyranny which German militarism is striving to enforce on the world. And yet there are some who say, in words or in effect : " Let us set a thief to catch a thief — a tyrant to fight tyranny — a dictator to resist dictatorship." Sooner than lose the war (and by losing the war I mean failing to crush Germany) I would consent even to this desperate expedient ; but in doing so I should feel an absolute conviction that, when the war was over — even when Berlin was turned into a dungheap— the Dictator would still be with us. Dictators, whether military or civil, have a wonderful power of sticking to their posts. 98 DICTATORSHIP I began with a name which I at least venerate, and with the same name I end. When Louis Napoleon was President of the French Republic, he asked Lord John Russell to visit him at the Tuileries. He stuffed the honest English gentleman with all sorts of flummery about the national call which had summoned him to the Pre- sidency ; about the duty which he owed to France, and to his name ; and about the irksomeness of the burden laid upon him. " That burden," he said, " is too heavy to be borne except for a very few years ; and, when my term of office expires, you will see that I shall not offer myself for re-election." This, though true to the ear, proved false to the sense . In May 1852 he would have automatically ceased to be President. In December 185 1 he com- mitted an armed assault on the Constitution which he had sworn to uphold ; killed some of his opponents and sent the rest to Cay- enne ; and established himself in a dictator- ship which lasted, with some modifications of form, till he surrendered his sword at Sedan. 99 XII THE WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION Lord Palmerston once wrote a very im- pertinent letter to Queen Victoria. The Queen had desired his attendance at Windsor ; and he wrote from his house in Hampshire that he exceedingly regretted his failure to attend. He had got on his horse in Piccadilly, meaning to ride to Paddington Station, but by some mistake had gone to Waterloo instead, and had arrived at Broadlands instead of Windsor. There is a cheekiness about this way of excusing a breach of duty which justifies Disraeli's sneer at Palmerston's demeanour as that of *' a favourite footman on easy terms with his mistress." But a Liberal reviewer, recalling the episode, made a doubly inept criticism when he described Palmerston's letter as " the most insolent lOO WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION document ever drafted by a member of the Whig aristoci-acy." In the first place, Palmerston was not a Whig. Whether he could be rightly said to belong to an aristocracy is more disputable. I only know that the Whigs, with whom, when it suited his purpose, he allied himself, thought him very vulgar. But a Whig he was not. Gladstone, who did not much like Whig- gery, though he often used Whigs, laid it down that " to be a Whig, a man must be born a Whig." But Palmerston was born and bred a Tory, and from 1807 to 1830 held office in Tory Administrations. The remaining thirty-five years of his life he spent, for the most part, in Whig Administrations, but he was not a Whig. The one thing in the world which he loved was power, and, as long as this was secured, he did not trouble himself much about the political complexion of his associates. " Palmerston does not care how much dirt he eats, so long as it is gilded dirt," was Gladstone's verdict ; and, 101 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES if " gilded dirt " be the right description of office procured by flexible politics, Palmer- ston ate, in his long career, an extraordinary amount of it. This, then, was the reviewer's first blunder, personal and particular. His second was more general, but not less a blunder. The " Whig aristocracy " did not " draft insolent documents " for the perusal of the Sovereign. The Whigs held (as Lord John Russell told Queen Victoria) that all rulers are liable to be removed for misconduct ; and they had acted on that belief, directly in 1688, indirectly in 17 14. But, when once they had displaced an offending dynasty and installed another, they treated the occupant of the throne with all tra- ditional respect. Not even the mighty Chatham, whose hooked nose could be seen between his knees when he did obeisance to George III, could have comported him- self more reverently towards the Crown than the Greys and Spencers and Russells of the succeeding century. The very fact that they had imported the House of IQ2 WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION Hanover into this country made the Whigs doubly soHcitous that the new dynasty should lack nothing of the " divinity " that had "hedged" its predecessors. The Whigs were originally a group of great nobles, in whom the possession of rank and wealth had not extinguished the love of civil and religious freedom. They had little taste for ' revolution, but less for tyranny ; and, when the fatuous policy of James II convinced them that as long as he was on the throne there was no security for the old-established freedom of the realm, they had no scruple about inviting his daughter and son-in-law to take his place. At the same time they sedulously abstained from rash and unheeded innovation. They knew, as Machiavelli had known before them, that nothing so much tends to give stability to a change in government as scrupulous adherence to historic forms and venerable institutions. So, instead of indulg- ing in raw abstractions and philosophies of statecraft, they contented themselves with confirming, by solemn statute, the ancient 103 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES liberties of England, and [protesting against the particular violations of those liberties which James II had committed. They proclaimed to the world that James, having broken the understood contract between King and people, having violated the fundamental laws of the realm, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the throne ; and they invited William and Mary to fill it. The fundamental principle of Whiggery was resistance to arbitrary power. The very phrase has now an archaic sound ; but, when it was originally coined, it expressed a very real and threatening danger ; and though, from the accession of the House of Hanover onwards, that danger was sensibly dimin- ished, yet the Whigs never lost sight of the fact that circumstances might arise which would again make resistance a duty. Their favourite toast was : " The King, and may he never forget those principles which placed his family on the throne." They con- sistently held and taught the doctrine that there must be, in every free State, an 1 04 WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION extreme remedy against the abuses of authority. When Edmund Burke, originally a Whig, had been thrown off his mental balance by his horror of regicide, he made this particular dogma of Whiggery the subject of one of liis most vigor- ous protests : — " I confess I never liked this continual talk of resistance and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme medicine of the Constitution its daily bread. It is like taking periodical doses of mercury sublimate. It renders the habit of society dangerously valetu- dinary." Burke made his great appeal " from the new Whigs to the old." A Whig who was born in 1792 he would have considered a very new Whig indeed. Lord John Russell, who was born in that year, has never been reckoned among revo- lutionary politicians ; but he laid down in 1826, and reaffirmed forty years later, the doctrine of an " extreme medicine " for a possible disorder :— " If the King abuses a just, or attempts to exercise an oppres- sive, power, the representatives of the 105 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES people have the right to refuse the money required to carry on the government." After enlarging on this theme, he continues :— This power, it is quite clear, would enable the House of Commons, if so disposed, to declare themselves the sovereigns, and to take away every efficient prerogative from the Crown ; but such is the moderation of the English people that they have never desired so for- midable an increase of their own power or that of their representatives. At the Revolution, when the whole question was open, they did not take away a single grain of the powers necessary to maintain the monarchy. So, at the present day, the true reason why the Crown maintains its prerogative unimpaired lies in the temper of the nation. The country has a deep-rooted affection for kingly government, and would highly resent any attempt to change or destroy this keystone of the Constitution. There spoke the authentic voice of Whiggery, and I believe that it was also the voice of truth. In spite of what I wrote on page 71, there is no general desire in England for an alteration in the form of government ; but, when we look through forms into realities, there seems to be a good deal of ignorance about the actual working of the Constitution. To 106 WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION put it plainly, a great many people do not know how they are governed. They seem to believe that the Sovereign is a mere figure-head ; and are half -amazed, half- indignant, when they are assured that he or she — for I am not thinking of any particular Sovereign — exercises any influence on the affairs of the State. It is difficult to understand how this strange miscon- ception of the functions and uses of the Crown have survived the publication of all the volumes of Royal and Ministerial correspondence which have appeared within the last fifty years. But so it is, and the explanation must be that we are neither a reading people nor an imaginative people. If we were imaginative, we should be better able to realize that some of the most important transactions in life go on out of sight ; and, if we read, we should know that Queen Victoria — to say nothing of her successors — exercised for sixty years a vigilant, direct, and powerful influence on domestic and foreign policy. In the transaction of public affairs, the Sovereign 107 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES has, as Gladstone pointed out, more than one advantage over his Ministers. He is permanent, while they are fugitive ; he speaks from a vantage-ground unapproach- ably higher ; he tan take a calm and leisurely survey, while they are worried with the preparatory stages and the pres- sure of countless details. He must therefore be a weighty factor in all deliberations of State. Every discovery of a blot, which his studies in the domain of business enable him to make, strengthens his hands and enhances his authority. Now all this is obviously true, as far as it goes ; but, to make it a full presentment of the truth, we must recur to that prime creation of the Whigs — the doctrine of Ministerial re- sponsibility. " There can," said Gladstone, " be in England no disloyalty more gross, as to its effects, than the superstition which affects to assign to the Sovereign a separate, and, as far as separate, transcendental, sphere of political action. ... In the face of the country, the Sovereign and' the Ministers are an absolute unity." And io8 WHIGS AND THE CONSTITUTION this unity can only be dissolved by one of two occurrences. It may be dissolved by the decision of thq Sovereign to change his Ministers; or it taay be dissolved by the refusal of Ministers to bear re- sponsibility for acts of which they dis- approve. In either of these contingencies — dismissal or resignation — the responsibility for a great and critical act falls, for the moment, on the Sovereign ; but only for the moment. The incoming Minister takes over, by his acceptance of office, the respon- sibility which the Sovereign has incurred. When in 1834 William IV dismissed the Government of Lord Melbourne, he acted within his constitutional right, and his immu- nity was secured by the action of Sir Robert Peel in accepting the vacant post. When, in 1839, Melbourne resigned, and Queen Victoria sent for Peel, she refused to take a step — ^the dismissal of the Whig ladies of her Court — which Peel considered essential to the formation of a stable Govern- ment. But the Whig Ministers, though they had resigned, were waiting in the 109 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES background, and, by resuming office, they again secured the immunity of the Sovereign. I have, of set purpose, chosen two inci- dents removed by a long distance of time from modern controversies. I might illustrate the doctrine of Ministerial responsibility by abundant citations from the literature of Whiggery ; and I confirm it by yet another quotation from one who was not a Whig : — The Crown has large prerogatives, endless functions essential to the daily action, and even to the life, of the State. . . . They are entrusted to men who must be prepared to answer for the use they make of them. The ring of responsible Ministerial agency forms a fence round the person of the Sovereign, which has thus far proved impregnable to all assaults.' W. E. Gladstone, '' Gleanings," vol. i. IIO XIII FRANCE IN ENGLAND England and France are fighting side by side against a common foe ; and the Republican Band of France has been re- ceived with public honours by the Lord Mayor of London. > There is nothing very sensational in this plain statement of the fact ; but its historical implications should not be overlooked. In October 1 8 1 6 the French Revolution, which in its successive phases held Europe in awe for a quarter of a century, had been laid to rest. Five years before, the progress of Bonaparte had seemed to Englishmen " as swift and as terrible as the lightnings of God." But now " the gloom of his glory " no longer " o'er- shadowed the earth " ; he was a beaten ^ Written in October 1916. Ill POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES man, caged at St. Helena. The Bourbons had returned, as it seemed permanently, to the throne of France. By common consent people agreed to regard the Revo- lution as merely a past event ; and, freed at length from the terror which had so long obsessed them, they sate down to reason quietly about its causes. Some of the conclusions at which they arrived were quaint enough. Perhaps, after the lapse of a century, we are in a better position to trace the sequence of events which connects the downfall of the French Monarchy with the develop- ment of constitutional government at home. The celebrated saying of Napoleon that, if Rousseau had never lived, there would have been no Revolution, contained, in spite of its exaggerated form, an unquestionable truth. What distinguishes the French \ upheaval from other political movements is that it was directed by men who, having adopted a speculative conception of political right, propagated it with all the 112 FRANCE IN ENGLAND fanatical enthusiasm and proselytizing fervour which one comlmonly associates with a religious belief. The sacred oracle of these revolutionists w'as the Contrat Social of Rousseau, with its fundamental distinction between Sovereignty and Govern- ment. Sovereignty, according to Rousseau, resides inalienably in the whole mass of the population, and no Government is legiti- mate which does not rest upon the election of the whole people. So far, Rousseau's teaching accorded with that of English Whiggery, but he went a good way farther. He taught that no act of even a properly constituted Government is valid unless the people have directly sanctioned it. Repre- sentatives are mere delegates, with no right to act or vote except as they are in- structed. The utmost that can be said of any authority is that it is a provisional form of administration, existing until the people shall otherwise determine. When- ever the people are lawfully assembled in a public body, they resume the functions of sovereignty ; the jurisdiction of govern - H 113 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES ment ceases, and all executive power becomes null and void. These theories entered into the heart's blood of French thought and feeling. Rousseau's disciples learned that no authority could be legitimate which did |j not harmonize with their own transient desires ; that political power is not a trust, but a right ; that absolute equality is the first condition of good government ; and that Constitutions can safely be re- arranged on grounds of abstract theory, without reference to histoiy, tradition, racial characteristics, or differentiating circum- stances. The full significance of these theories was scarcely perceived until a group of men, more desperate than their teacher, translated them' into practice. Wlien that was done the effect was start- ling, was universal, and — what is more- was permanent. In 1816 Louis XVIII seemed to have restored his dynasty. In 1887 tne Due d'Aumale said to the present writer : " No member of my family will ever again sit on the throne of France. A 114 FRANCE IN ENGLAND capable Bonaparte might have a chance ; but what I expect is a succession of RepubHcs." The intellectual unsettlement which heralded the French Revolution was promoted by the study of those systems of politics and philosophy which Voltaire had learned in England, and which, on his return to France, he naturalized among his countrymen. The impulse started from England, and to England it returned. The forces which revolutionized France re- acted on the internal system' of the country from which they had been derived. The Revolution influenced English history, in the latter years of the eighteenth century, more powerfully than any other event ; it gave a completely new direction to the policy of Pitt ; it shattered and rendered ineffectual for a whole generation one of the two great parties in the State ; and it determined, for a like period, the char- acter and complexion of our foreign policy. The capture of the Bastille was an act so startling and so dramatic that it in- "5 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES stantly arrested public attention, and the events which immediately followed in rapid and striking succession intensified and sus- tained the excitement and the interest. All over the country those events produced their immediate and natural effect. Enemies of religious establishments took courage from the downfall of established religion in France. Enemies of monarchy rejoiced in the formal and public degradation of a King and Queen, Those who had long been labouring in the cause of Parlia- mentary reform saw, with glee, their prin- ciples carried to their utmost limits, and expressed in the most uncompromising terms, in the French Declaration of Rights, and practically applied in the constitution of the Sovereign Body in France. Serious advocates of Repubhcan institu- tions, mere lovers of change and excitement, secret sympathizers with lawlessness and violence, sedentary theorists, reckless adven- turers, and local busybodies, associated them- selves in the endeavour to popularize the French Revolution in England and to ii6 FRANCE IN ENGLAND imbue the English mind with congenial sentiments. The flame of freedom spread far and wide, through high and low. The Dukes of Norfolk, Richmond, and Bedford, Lord Lansdowne and Lord Stanhope, held language about the Sovereignty of the People, such as filled the reverent and orderly mind of Burke with astonishment and misgiving. The Revolution Society, founded to commemorate the great doings of 1688, corresponded with the lovers of freedom in France, and proffered its alliance in a revolutionary compact which was to embrace all Europe . Amidst all this hurly-burly, Pitt, who, whatever else may be said of him, was a very great ruler, maintained a steady and cautious reserve. Probably he foresaw his opportunity in the hopeless disruption of his opponents. That disruption was not long delayed, and when it came it rent in twain the party of Progress, and retarded the development of English liberty by at least twenty years. But the spirit which makes Revolutions is indestructible, though 117 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES it waxes and wanes, embodies itself in various forms, and works by manifold methods. To-day Republican France is the sworn ally and the honoured guest of a land which has learnt to regard the Crown as the consecrated symbol of its political freedom. u8 II IDEALS AND WAR CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY Conscience is, or should be, one of the commonplaces of existence. Yet whenever it makes a public appearance in the affairs of practical life, it is regarded as some- thing new and strange— even offensive. Clumsy satirists make gibes about " the Nonconformist Conscience " or " the Con- scientious Objector," and write of con- science as if it were necessarily a fraud, or at best a fad. To remfedy this dis- ordered thinking or feeling is the office of Casuistry. The word has an evil sound in the ears of the average Englishman, and that this is so is a matter for regret ; for the thing which, for want of a better name, we call Casuistry, is an absolutely necessary part of the equipment of every one who " makes his moral being his prime care." 121 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES My Roman Catholic friends must not be angry if I quote the opinion that " great discredit has been brought upon Casuistry by the overminuteness with which it has been pursued in the Works of the Jesuits," and which has created in the popular mind the impression that Casuistry is merely a sophistication of the plain laws of right and wtong. That Casuistry may be thus perverted I do not deny ; but, in itself, it is simply the Science of Duty. Jeremy Bentham, who hated priestcraft and loved alarming words, called it Deontology ; but he meant the same thing. The word is derived from the Latin Casus, and epitomizes what is conveyed by Casus Conscientlcs—Cases of Conscience. The Casuist is the person who studies, and attempts to decide, such cases. Every one who acts conscientiously must be a Casuist on his oWn account, and the degree in which he is so will depend partly on the circumstances of his life, partly on the keenness or dullness of his conscience, partly on his intellectual 122 CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY capacity to see things as they are and not as they seem' to be. The laws of reason, the laws of society, the laws of revealed religion are the chief authorities, external to the intuition of Conscience, by which the course of duty in difficult cases must be settled. For although, in a simple life, duties are correspondingly simple, and the intuition of Conscience needs little help ; yet there are few lives so free from' com- plexity that puzzling questions of duty do not occasionally arise ; and the more complex the life the more numerous must be its problems. Where duty is not self-evident, it can only be ascertained by a careful process of weighing one consideration against another. Take the most familiar of all illustrations : Is it a duty under all circumstances to speak the truth ? Yes. But suppose a friend is sitting in your garden, and a lunatic armed with a carving-knife comes into the room and says : " I am sent by God to kill So-and-so- do you know where he is?" (and this is not an imaginary illustration). Is it a 123 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES duty to reply : " Yes', I know he is in the garden"? Most people would say No; but whether they said No or Yes they would be practising Casuistry. The principle which underlies the enquiry stretches far and wide. George Herbert says :— Every one hath not digested, when it is a sin to take something for monc}' lent, and when not ; when it is a fault to disclose another's faults, and when not ; when the affections of the soul in desiring or procuring increase of means or honour be a sin of covetousness or ambition, and when not ; when the appetites of the body in eating, drinking, sleeping, and the like be sins of gluttony, drunkenness, sloth, and when not ; and so in many circumstances of actions. The science of duty, or Casuistry, is simply the application of general laws to particular cases ; and it is a science which every one, who is not content to live his moral life at haphazard, is bound prac- tically, though perhaps informally, to study. It is perilous, as Bishop Westcott said, to " trust to an uncultivated notion of duty for an improvised solution of unforeseen difficulties." The words, indeed, are modem, 124 CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY but the samie thought has always been present to grave minds, and has made a deep mark on EngUsh Hterature. Among our Enghsh writers on Casuistry were William Perkins— a name now wholly forgotten— and Joseph Hall, not widely remembered. To them succeeded John Donne and Robert Sanderson and George Herbert and Richard Hooker. Jeremy Taylor, gathering all that Was best from his predecessors of every age and tongue, and adding to it the treasures of his own experience and imagination, enriched our literature with his Ductor Dubltantium, or The Rule of Conscience in all her General Measures. Two centuries later Frederick Denison Maurice became Professor of " Casuistry, Moral Theology, and Moral Philosophy " at Cambridge, and did all that genius and devotion could do to rescue the Science of Duty from the discredit into which it had sunk iu. an age of moral indifference. Probably those people who read treatises, whether ancient or ntodem, on Casuistry,, 125 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES are extremely few ; but no one who knows anything about the inner Hves and hidden difficulties of his fellow-men can doubt that the application of the general laws of moral duty to particular cases is the cause of perplexities, and to sensitive natures of agonies, all the more torment- ing because generally unacknowledged. We need not go to books for illustrations of my meaning, A politician finds himself opposed to his party on a particular issue — War, or Home Rule, or Disestablish- ment, or whatever else it may be. Is it his duty to suppress his convictions on the particular point, and support the party with which on the whole he agrees ? Or ought he to ally himself with the party which he believes to be, on the whole, wrong, for the sake of one point on which it is right ? A young journalist, with his daily bread to make, finds that the paper for which he works has changed its atti- tude on some vital question. Should he stifle his conscience and go on support- ing what in his heart he believes to be the 126 CONSCIENCE AND CASUISTRY wrong cause ? A man who had once borne the King's Commission was forced to take a humble job in a stockbroker's office. The office was in a block of flats ; a rival stockbroker had the flat below. The new clerk found that he was expected to pause on his frequent goings up and down, and to hnger about the rival's door on the off-chance of catching a casual word from within which might be useful to his em- ployer by disclosing the rival's operations. To resign meant ruin for mother, brothers, and sisters . What was the course of duty ? Alas ! I am no Duct or Dubitantium, and I can only reply, in the rriost general term's, that the hard way is generally the right way. It was by gallantly breasting the Hill of Difficulty that Christian reached the chamber called Peace, whose window opened towards the Sunrising : — This Hill, though high, I covet to ascend ; The difliculty will not me offend ; For I perceive the way to life lies here ; Come, pluck up, Heart ; let's neither faint nor fear : Better, tho' difticult, th' right way to go, Than wrong, though easie, where the end is wo. 127 II CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE For a paper which will be read in Holy Week there can be no more appropriate subject than Conscience.' The highest exemplification of conscience which the world has ever seen was made at this season, and it sheds dignity on : the humblest and even the most erroneous attempts to do what seems right without regard to consequences. The Christian Church is founded on the action of conscience. To burn a pinch of incense in honour of the Olympian deities must have seemed a very small thing to the ordinary pagan, but conscience for- bade the Roman Christians to do it ; and so the blood of the martyrs became seed. Where the Christian populations writhe under the domination of Mohammedanism, ' Written in March 19 17. 128 CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE " many a tender maid, at the threshold of her young life, has gladly tnet her doom, when the words which accepted Islam' would have made her in a moment a free and honoured member of a dominant commu- nity." She followed conscience, and paid the forfeit. Nearer home, men and women and boys and girls liave died by fire sooner than accept a spiritual domination against which their conscience rebelled ; and, in times more recent and rather more humane, people whose reading of the New Testament was different from mine have faced imprisonment and the " spoiling of their goods " sooner than contribute to the support of a Church which in their judgment taught error. It would require, not an article but a veryj large book, to narrate the history of con- science and the courage which it inspires, and, if that book were faithfully written, there could be no nobler reading. But every one must have observed that the mere mention of the word " conscience " — still more, the resolve to act on it when I 129 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES it runs counter to popular prejudice — always excites an insolent^ fury in those whose sole guide is convention. .When the Non- conformists declined to follow the leader- ship of a politician who had conspicuously offended against the moral law^ men of the world, as they are called, poured angry scorn on " the Nonconformist Con- science." W'hen Dr. Clifford and his followers announced themselves as " Passive Resisters " to the Education Act, the scruple of conscience which dictated their resistance was made the subject of imbecile jesting. And now, when a man declares that he is a " Conscientious Objector " to military service, the epithet, though it may be abso- lutely just, is invariably treated as' a synonym for hypocrisy and humbug. Eor my own part, I have always held (and said as long ago as 1883) that "there are some causes, such as life and home and freedom, for which the gentlest and most humane of men must be prepared to draw the sword ",; and to this belief I hold unfalteringly. But I know by 130 CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE experience that men fully as well entitled to credence as myself affirm that their conscience teaches thetn otherwise ; and to coerce them into doing what their con- science forbids, or to punish them for not doing it, seems to be an act which befits a Ccesar or a Sultan rather than a Christian Government. I must confess that, though I think the " Conscientious Objector " entirely wrong, I have nothing but respect for the courage with which he submits to the physical and moral conse- quences of his action. However grav^e may be his error, such a man has conspicuously vindicated himself against the charge of cowardice . But that numerous crowd whose one notion of government is bullying are apt to reply : " How are we to know that the man is really obeying conscience ? Per- haps all the time he is only trying to save his skin." Certainly it would need omniscience to be absolutely certain in this, as in any other case. But, when Parliament was stripping us of our liber- 131 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES ties, I thought that it promised an elaborate system of judicial enquiries, by which the honest scruples of conscience were to be distinguished from cowardly evasions of public duty. I confess that if I knew a man who had, in old time, held such hideous language as — " What we want is a jolly good war," and if I now saw him sueing for exemption on the ground that he objected to killing his fellow -men, I should without hesitation overrule his plea of conscience. But, where; a man can show me that, before 1 9 1 4, he had held that all war is unlawful, I should say : "You have proved your case. It is not for us who think otherwise to coerce you. Go in peace." To illustrate my meaning, let me turn from the grave concerns of adult citizen- ship to a wise word of counsel which was urged long ago on boys. " As to fighting," said Tom Hughes, " keep out of it if you can, by all means. When the time comes, if it ever should, that you have to say ' Yes ' or ' No ' to a challenge to fight, say 132 CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE ' No ' if you can — only take care you make it clear why you say ''No.' It's a proof of the highest courage if done from' true Christian motives. It's quite right and justifiable if done from a simiple aversion to physical pain and danger. But don't say ' No ' because you fear a licking, and say or think it's because you fear God, for that's neither Christian nor honest." Which things are an allegory ; and it carries a clear lesson for those who feel disposed to decline their share in that burden of military service which the country has laid upon them. Cardinal Newman once magnificently said that Conscience is a King in its imperious - ness, a Prophet in its predictions, a Priest in its benedictions and anathemas. If we are wise, we shall submit to that imperious - ness, gi\'e heed to those predictions, desire those benedictions, and dread those ana- themas. But while we thus profess to be disciples of conscience, we must be careful to remember that the discipleship of others may be foully as genuine as our own, I v^ POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES though" it wear a different garb and speak with an unfamiliar accent. Our duty is to act, according to the best light we can get ; but we must remember that even the lights to us which seem clearest, are only " broken lights," and that the glib condemnation of others who see differently is as unwise as it is unjust. " Never," said Gladstone, " never let it be forgotten that there is scarcely a single moral action of a single man,, of which' other men can have such" a knowledge, in its ulti- mate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the real determining causes of its merits, as to warrant their pronouncing a con- clusive judgment on it." Those are weighty words, appropriate to all times when passion is aroused, and to this time in particular. Just after I had written the foregoing paragraph, I found (in Lady Newton's delightful book. The House of Lyme) these admirable words of John Bradshawe, the Regicide : — As for the Quakers ... I have but one rule for them, and f^r all that come before mee as Judge. 134 CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE And that is the equall iust and impartiall Law of the Land, which directs and commands hke Justice in Hke cases to all sortes of persons, And therein Quakers have their share as well as others. 135 Ill THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY^ My text is taken from the writings of a political genius, whose opinions I did not share, but whose gifts I profoundly admire. Lord Beaconsfield says, in his fascinating tale of Sybil : — We live in an afje when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions, and the Youth of a Nation are the Trustees of Posterity. If these words were true in 1845, t^^y are doubly and trebly true to-day. " The Trustees of Posterity " — ^mark the phrase. I propose to enquire what characteristics should distinguish the young citizen who takes his citizenship and its possibilities ' A Presidential Address to the " Young Britons " Society. 136 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY seriously, and aims at becoming, as Lord Beaconsfield said, a Trustee of Posterity. For my own part, I have not the slightest doubt about the characteristic which I should place in the forefront. The young citizen must be, first and foremost, a lover of Freedom — Heaven's best gift to the individual and to society. The liberty, which Milton loved, " to know, to utter, and to argue freely"— the liberty to act in things secular and sacred, in public and in private, according to one's own conviction of what is right — is the one incomparable good of life, the one priceless possession for which no earthly equivalent can be found, no conceivable boon be taken in exchange. And of this liberty the young citizen must accept only one limitation, and that is that the exercise of his own freedom shall not infringe the freedom of another. In that single, simple condition he recognizes the law which regulates, while it sanctions, the awful though glorious prerogative of Free Will. That one restriction the young citizen must admit as belonging to the very nature 137 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES of liberty and to the elementary necessities of human society. He admits this one, but he will admit no more. Loving liberty himself, he desires to see it " in widest commonalty spread " among all his fellow-men, irrespective of race, colour, or creed. Second only to Love of Freedom, we place in this ideal portraiture Faith in Progress. To believe that the world is going from bad to worse ; that each age and each year loses some old good and brings some fresh evil ; that every change in life, in thought, in society, is a deterioration ; that novelty is synonymous with' mischief ; and that all apparent progress is essential retro- gression — this may be a suitable creed for the aged and the timid, for jaundiced visions, and faded hopes, and failing health, and waning intellect ; but Surely it is no gospel for young and vigorous and aspiring minds, for resolute wills and hopeful hearts, and natures which believe in and long to prove their own high capacities. To believe that " the great mundane move- 138 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY merit, " as Matthew Arnold called it, is on the whole towards good ; that Christianity is not a colossal failure ; that civilization is not a heartless sham ; that, under the influence of both, the world is gradually but surely passing on towards a better age, and that we, in our several degrees and stations, can do something to accelerate its progress — this is a sentiment which en- nobles human existence. This answers the question: "Is life worth living?" This, more than any other principle, except, per- haps, the kindred passion for freedom, has characterized in every age the gallant and generous souls who have led the great onward march of redeemed humanity. We have spoken of Freedom and' of Progress. There is something which is indispensable to both. A Trustee of Pos- terity must be a disciple of Order. He knows that, without order, the liberty of the stronger will inevitably and fatally over- ride the liberty of the weaker, and thereby set at naught his primary canon — that one man's freedom must not infringe the freedom 139 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES of his brother-man. He knows that, without order, the progress in which he longs to assist will be, not a rhythmical m'arch, but a riotous hustle, in which the weakest must go to the wall. Order is a con- dition precedent both to liberty and to progress . Closely allied to the Love of Order is the Spirit of Reverence. To a generous nature, reverence is as natural as the passion for freedom or the impulse of progress. Our young citizen must be always on his guard against that miserable vanity which attempts to magnify itself by depreciating all that has hitherto claimed the homage and the admiration of mankind. He knows that there is much, even for the youngest and cleverest of us, to learn from what " larger minds have thought out in calmer ages "—from " the long result of time " — from the general tendency and drift of human thought and experience. He reveres all human excellence. He recognizes the sign -manual of Heaven in human intel- lect. He sees the lineaments of a diviner 140 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY nature than his own in human goodness. Industry, and energy, and courage, and patience, independence of character, free- dom of judgment, gentleness, self-control, self-sacrifice— the dogged labour which gives a lifetime to an obscure but beneficent work ; the flash of genius which, in a sudden moment, lights the path to fame — these are the qualities, these the attributes, which attract the homage of the young citizen. But, with his whole heart, he spurns and scorns the false gods of this world which cry aloud for his worship. He has no homage for wealth, except as a proof of industry ; nor for rank, except as the guinea-stamp of superior merit. He has no reverence for man-made dogmas, foisted by pious fraud on ignorance and credulity. He has no respect for pretentious self- assertion. He will not bow the knee to any reputation, however high its pedestal in the world's temple, unless he is per- suaded that it has a moral title to stand where it is. He claims the right to judge, by his own conscience and reason, every 141 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES demand which is made upon his reverence. But, when once that judgment is satisfied, he has reverence in abundant store for the object which is found worthy to receive it. He knows that hero-worship is the most graceful privilege of youth", and he enjoys it unsparingly. He " lives by admiration," as well as " by hope and love." Love of freedom, contempt for false pre- tensions, worship of intellect — these combine to produce belief in Equality. The human soul, made in the image of God, is the one real object of reasonable reverence. This reverence the young citizen pays. He hates all artificial barriers between class and class, the spirit of caste, the deifi- cation of selfishness. He loves his brothers and sisters in the human family. He aims at Social Service. And the ideal of social service is, first, to lighten the load of existence for those thronging millions whose one experience of life is a protracted suffering ; and then, as Wordsworth says, " to add sunshine to daylight by making 142 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY the happy happier." However humble his station, however circumscribed his oppor- tunities, the young citizen can always find some sort of social service ready to his hand. The poor, the weak, the hungry, the untaught, the overworked — all these send up their bitter cry, "How long?" and, in ministering to them, the young citizen knows that he is making his definite, though perhaps unnoticed, contribution to the social redemption of humanity. Truly said George Eliot—" The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts ; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faith- fully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." And here let me remark in passing that there is one clear, easy, and obvious depart- ment of social service. Sanitary reform is the first step towards securing happiness and health and length of days for those who, by their daily labour of hand or head, principally maintain the pre-eminence 143 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES of the race. The young citizen — the Trustee of Posterity — is impatient of a state of society in which heakhy dwelHngs, and unadulterated food, and pure water, and fresh air, are the monopolies of the rich ; and he can never rest till he sees, in the neglected village or the squalid back- settlements of the town in which he lives, his own efforts contributing, however feebly, to this form of special service. He must do his part towards abolishing filth and eradi- cating disease, and giving free scope to those beneficent laws of Nature, which, " though they were not revealed amid the thunders of Sinai, are not less the commandmenits of God." This conviction of the sacredness of human life — this belief that to maintain his own life and the lives of others in health and vigour is a paramount duty — naturally leads our young citizen to a very definite conclusion on the great subject of Peace and War. He knows that we do not necessarily sin against the sacredness of human life when we strike down a foe in 144 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY battle, any rrijore than when we consign a criminal to execution. He knows that there are causes, such as life, and home, and freedom, for which' the gentlest and the most humane of men must be prepared to draw the sword,' But he is scrupu- lously anxious that the sword should never be lightly drawn. He will question with himself, once and again, whether any war which he is asked to sanction or support is really a just and necessary undertaking. He believes that the ruler of' mfen, be he sovereign or statesman, who kindles war for selfish or dynastic ends, or for any miserable enterprise of annexation or self-aggrandizement, incurs an amount of guilt too terrible to contemplate. Not for an instant is he dazzled by the glitter of arms, or seduced from his calmer judg- ment by " the pomp and circumstance of glorious war." He remembers the words of the great American General to the ^ This Address was delivered long before the present war began, and I reprint it for that reason. — G. W. E. R. K 145 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES military students : " Boys, you think war is all glory ; I tell you it is all hell . He knows that it is a hell which brave and good men must sometimes be prepared to face ; but it must be faced earnestly, resolutely, reverently, as men face death and eternity. What he feels for himself he feels for his country. He' has no ambition that England should figure as the Swashbuckler of Europe. Rather it is his glory to see her lead the way in the enterprises of peace, in the sciences which prolong life and the arts which beautify it, and in the educative work of rational self-government . I have spoken so far of the young citi- zen's duty to others. But he has a duty to himself, and this naturally falls into three divisions, corresponding to the tri- partite constitution of human nature — ^body, mind, and soul. I . The young citizen recognizes his duty to his body. He will strive to keep it, as nearly as may be, in a state of physi- cal perfection. To this the reasonable use 146 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY of athletics will greatly contribute ; and remember that athletic training means also moral discipline. On this point listen to a word of guidance from St. Paul, who, like all effective teachers, illustrated his lessons by reference to the lives and habits of his hearers. Writing to his friends at Corinth, where the athletic games of the ancient world were brought to their highest perfection, he thus urges temperance and self-control (I quote from the Revised Version ):—" Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? Even so run that ye may attain. And every one that striveth in the games is temperate in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown ; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, as not uncertainly : so fight I, as not beating the air ; but I buffet my body, and bring it into bondage, lest by any means, after I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected." Fashioning himself on this precept of a man who, whatever else he was or did, 147 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES has made a permanent mark on the higher life of the world, the young citizen will do his best, by vigorous self-discipline, to make his body not a master, but a servant — the pliant instrument of a high purpose, a fit habitation for the moral and intellectual being that dwells within. 2. The young citizen has a duty to his mind. He reveres his intellect as a sacred trust. He nourishes it with the best that has been said and written. He corrects its imperfections. He strengthens its weak points. He seeks to fire and animate it by contact with minds greater than itself. He recognizes the fact that education is no mere matter of schooling or book- work ; but a process which begins with the dawn of understanding and is never complete on this side of the grave, inas- much as human life is inexplicable unless it is itself one long education for a better and fuller being. Wdth an intellect thus sedulously tended and disciplined, with' a range of knowledge thus constantly widen- ing, with powers thus daily expanding to 148 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY a richer and larger life, the young citizen goes boldly forward amid shoals and rocks and contrary winds, knowing that, in intellect and conscience, he holds the golden charts which never yet failed the diligent and courageous mariner. 3. And the young citizen has a duty to his soul. This discourse would be glaringly in- complete if I omitted to S0,y a word about Citizenship and Religion. Whatever be the form of religious pro- fession to which the young citizen — ^the Trustee of Posterity — ^attaches himself ; how- ever keenly he may feel the " blank mis- givings of a creature, moving about in worlds not reahzed " ; this, at any rate, he will never do— ^he will never scoff at the idea of Religion. He will not ignorantly contemn that which has been, in every age, the guide in life and the strength in death of thousands of the world's best heroes. He will never dogmatize where Revelation is silent and Reason can only walk by tentative guesswork ; nor strive 149 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES to enforce on others the creed which he has himself accepted. He will ponder deeply the significance of those two splendid texts :— " Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free " : " Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." He will seek, with all diligence, a light for his own path, and conviction for his own intellect ; but he will gladly concede to his fellow -m'cn the same unrestricted right of reasonable self -guidance which he claim's for himself, and will walk, not only in humility and purity, but in charity with all the world. And if, as he recalls the great triumphs for mercy and civilization which Christianity in its heroic days has won, he sometimes feels a not unreasonable impatience at the present spectacle of Churches untrue to their faith, and lives which have fallen so far below their type, and feeble efforts for human good and indifference to human wretchedness ; then he will bethink him that, after all, the fault may be in the generation and the men rather than in the faith and the 150 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY system ; and he will cry with Charles Kingsley — a man whose whole nature was stirred by the social and religions ques- tionings of his own time : — Wake again, Teutonic father-ages, Speak again, beloved primaeval creeds ; Flash ancestral spirit from your pages. Wake the drowsy age to worthy deeds. Tell us how of old our saintly mothers Schooled themselves by vigil, fast, and prayer ; Learned to love, as Jesus loved l:)efore them, While they bore the cross which poor men bear. Tell us how our stout crusading fathers Fought and died for God and not for gold ; Let their love, their faith, their boyish daring, Distance-mellowed, gild the days of old. The subject expands before us, and we must hasten to a close. It will not be supposed that I intend the sketch which I have placed before you for a finished portrait. I offer it rather as a rough, though I hope not inaccurate outline, which you must fill in and colour for your- selves. 151 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES And now you will ask, To what does all this tend? The character has been sufficiently indicated — in what is it to issue? Our young citizen has good gifts and great opportunities ; what is he to do with them ? Let me answer, in the first place, by negatives. There are some things which he most certainly will not do. He will not sacrifice his life and powers and aspira- tions to the Moloch of money -making. He will never regard poverty as a disgrace, or riches as a distinction. He will em- bark on no enterprise— political, commer- cial, professional — which" he cannot reconcile with his notions of duty and honour. He will consider no occupation common or unclean or beneath his dignity, unless it implies dishonourable or immoral conditions. He will never content himself with a career of aimless idleness, " sitting down at life's banquet, and getting up without paying the reckoning." If circumstances give him immunity from daily toil, he will recognize in that immunity a special call to some voluntary work for his fellow -men, and 152 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY will sacrifice leisure and means to its fulfil- ment. If, on the other hand, circum- stances bind him to active pursuits, he will carefully choose the work for which his peculiar powers seem best to fit him, and in which his moral nature will have fairest play. The work once chosen will be steadily pursued and honestly wrought with all his energies, but will never be permitted to engross his heart, or deaden his sympathies, or degenerate into an organized selfishness. ^Whatever be his handicraft, or trade, or profession, the young citizen will remember that he is something else, and something more im- portant than craftsman, or tradesman, or professional man. He will recollect that he is a member of the human family, and that every child of Adam's kin has a claim on his sympathy and goodwill. But a vague cosmopolitanism will not satisfy him. He will bear in mind, every hour of his life, at play as well as at work, in society as well as in church, that he is a citizen of a great nation, and that 153 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES the enduring greatness of that nation must be built, not on the abundance of its material resources, but on the honour and purity and courage of its sons. His is that truest and holiest patriotism which strives to express the love of country, not by bluster or swagger or military vain- glory, but by the sedulous cultivation in ourselves and in others of the " righteous- ness " which " exalteth a nation." " Here and here did England help me ; how can I help England ? " — Say, Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God. to praise and pray. The question was asked by a poet who is one of our national glories, and a not less glorious genius gave the answer in prose. Said John Ruskin to the Under- graduates of Oxford : — There is a destiny now possible to ns, the highest ever set before a nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undcgcnerate in race — a race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in temper, l^ut still have the hrmness to govern and the grace to obey. We have been taught a religion 154 THE TRUSTEES OF POSTERITY of pure mercy, which we must either now tinally betray or learn to defend by fuliilHng. And we are rich in an inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase witli splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour, should be the most offending souls alive. ... It is for you, youths of England, to make yoiu' country for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace ; mistress of learning and of the arts ; faithful guardian of great memories in the midst of irreverent and ephemeral visions ; faithful servant of time-tried principles, under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires ; and, amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, wor- shipped in her strange valour of Goodwill towards Men. And now you will understand why I have called my discourse " The Trustees of Posterity " ; for, if I have not utterly failed in the task which I proposed to myself, I have shown that you, young citizens of the ' present hour, are, in a very real sense. Trustees for the greatness and happiness and Christian honour of England in the years that are to come — And meanwhile, if these hours are dark, as indeed in many ways they are, at least do not let us sit 155 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES deedless, like fools, and line gentlemen, thinking the common toil not good enough for us, and beaten by the muddle ; but rather let us work like good fellows, trying by some dim candlelight to set our workshop ready against to-morrow's daylight.^ ' William Morris. 156 IV THRIFT Thrift is a text which' has a mysterious fascination for preachers. When I speak of preachers I by no means confine myself to men in Holy Orders, but include in my purview all those ^ who feel it their duty to admonish their fellow-men, and especially to exhort the poor. It is worthy of note that in each succeeding age the most strenuous preachers of thrift are those whom Providence has placed beyond the reach of poverty. When the Irish famine broke out, the head of the English peerage recommended the poor to rely on curry- powder as a nutritious and satisfying food ; while the Council of the Royal Agricultural Society, numbering some of the largest land- owners of England, lectured the labourers on the sustaining properties of thrice -boiled POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES bones. Archbishops and Bishops always try, like " Bishop " in Little Dorrit, to look as if they were rather poor than otherwise, and, when reformers like the Rev. Hubert Handley refer to the statistics in Whitaker, assure us that they have much ado to live in decency, and so can preach Thrift with a good conscience. Judges, too, strong in the secure enjoyment of oG 5,000 a year, are heavily down on extravagance ; and Ministers of State, while they exclaim with patriotic fortitude, " I draw my salary," tell us less fortunate citizens to save our half -sheets of paper and to discard batter in favour of margarine. It must be ad- mitted that these consentient voices form a solemn harmony. " Be thrifty " ; " Eco- nomize " ; " Abandon your luxuries " ; " Live on half your income " — who can fail to be impressed by such commands as these, proceeding from monitors who pay super- tax? It behoves each one of us to look into his own expenditure, and see how far he can comply with these insistent hortations . 158 THRIFT Swift is certainly not a writer to whom one would normally go for lessons of right living ; but now and then he dropped a maxim which was worth remembering — " The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet, when wc want shoes." Indeed, the case might be put more strongly. One could, on an emergency, cut off one's feet, but no one can " lop off desires." We can, indeed, restrain desires, and refuse to gratify them. Every one who is not a criminal lunatic does so habitually. But desires can only be " lopped off " by some power which we do not control — a change in ourselves or in outward circumstances. The most that the strongest man can say about a conscious desire is : " It shall not master me." So, when the preachers of thrift declaim, they must not imagine that a hunting man can " lop off " his desire for a string of horses, or a working-man for a glass of beer, or a rich woman for a diamond necklace, or a shop-girl for a new hat. All that he or she can manage 159 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES is : "I should like it, but I will go without it." When once, from whatever motive, we face the salutary self -discipline of " going without it," the difficulty always is to know where one should begin. When the Tories cut down the £50,000 a year which the Whigs had proposed for Prince Albert, and fobbed him off with a beggarly £30,000, the Prince's comforters said that he must reduce his subscriptions. But this admirable method of making two ends meet cannot be universally followed, for it is not every one that has any subscriptions to reduce. Mr. John Dash wood, as we all know, had fully meant to give each of his three orphan sisters a thousand pounds ; but, after a careful survey of his financial position and a protracted consultation with his wife, he came to the conclusion that some help in moving their furniture, and a present of game at Christmas, would amply fulfil the requirements of the situation. When the bankrupt Duke of Buckingham was told that his means no longer permitted 160 THRIFT him to keep an Italian confectioner, as well as a French Chef and an English roasting-cook, he exclaimed, in natural horror : " Good Gad ! Mayn't a man have a biscuit with his glass of sherry ? " It is really very difficult to draw the line between necessaries and luxuries. Even Professor and Mrs. Eawcett, under whom I sate in my youth, failed to draw it very clearly ; nor did we gain much assistance from the case (cited by them as a triumph of Political Economy) of the French work- man, who " had at the same time the enjoyment of a pair of shoes and of a window." For those whose notions of decent living extend any further than this curious combination of comforts, the present moment is full of perplexity. We know^ that, as a nation, we are spending money at a rate which baffles comprehension ; and we also know that we shall inevitably have to pay our share of it. The only questions are : How ? and How much ? Auberon Herbert, who was the most quixotic of politicians, was enthusiastically L i6i POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES in favour of voluntary taxation. He was persuaded that, if only the Chancellor of the Exchequer would plainly state the national needs, every one would' rush to supply the money. The Chancellor would get more — and much more — by free gifts than by compulsion. Myself a worshipper of Freedom, I feel that in the case sup- posed we might be trying the principle a little too high. Not that I doubt my fellow-citizens' patriotism ; nor my own ; but my mind misgives me that one would say, when Christmas came round : " Things are rather tight with me this year, I think we will let this demand stand over for twelve months, and see what I can do then." Robert Lowe took a sounder view of the position. " It is," he said, " the business of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to distribute a certain amount of human misery ; and the man who dis- tributes it most equally is the best Chan- cellor." Mr. Bonar Law is, I believe, very much of the same opinion as his less popular predecessor, and he is certainly 162 THRIFT distributing the misery with lavish hand. Whether he has yet succeeded in attain- ing equality I am not quite sure. In spite of the super -tax, the man with £50,000 a year still seems appreciably more com- fortable than the man with £500 a year. To the last-named sufferer it is quite needless for Cabinet Ministers and Bishops and Judges to preach thrift. It is preached by the still more persuasive voices of the Tax-gatherer and the Rate-collector. He reduces his expenditure because he has less to spend. " Haven't you got any old clothes ? " exclaims the energetic lady who runs the Red Cross Hospital. " Have I any others?" he replies. "If you take my old clothes, I must lie in bed till the war is over." In the wide intervening region between £500 a year and £50,000, thrift is poractised on voluntary principles ; and the greater the house the more conspicuous the change produced by War-Economy. The chef is fighting for France ; the footmen are fighting for England. The butler is 16.^ POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES obviously beyond military age ; and his grandson^ who officiates as valet and groom-of -the -chambers, has apparently just escaped from the Elementary School. 164 V CHIVALRY The word which heads this chapter stands for an Ideal. Certainly that ideal has been from' time to time encrusted by- accretions which obscured its true char- acter. It has been associated with a vainglorious militarism, with the servile subordination of class to class, with the darkness and violence of mediceval Europe. Even Burke, its most impassioned cham- pion, mixed' the good and the evil which the word suggests, in undiscriminating eulogy :— Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom ! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone ! It is gone \65 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness ! That last clause is ethically unsound, and in the preceding exclamations the good and the evil of chivalry are strangely con- fused ; but these are the faults of exuberance, and Burke touched the heart of the matter when he said that, if chivalry is renounced, " a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order. All homage paid to the sex in general as such, and without distinct views, is to be regarded as romance and folly." The true ideal — the inner spirit — of chivalry was the championship of the weak by the strong. In a special, though not an exclusive, sense chivalry meant the protection of womankind from injury and insult. To the chivalrous heart, and, if need were, to the chivalrous sword, no woman could appeal in vain. 1 66 CHIVALRY As we look back to the Middle Age, we seem' to see nothing but a welter of bloodshed and devastation :— The heavens all gloom, the wearied earth all crime. But from! the dead-level of violent wrong which fills the centuries there emerge, at intervals, higher points of horror, and one of these is, and always has been, the murder of the Maid of Orleans. "A national instead of a party cry, strict morality enforced by a Heaven-sent virgin, and the enthusiasm' of religion," were the aids which she brought to the service of her country ; and her reward was death by fire. All that was chivalrous in human nature revolted from the deed and enrolled Joan of Arc, by a kind of informal canonization, in the Kalendar of Saints. We leave the Middle Age behind and embark on the new world. Chivalry is not dead, though, as before and since, it is overcome by brutal and calculated violence. Mary Queen of Scots is justly chargeable with real and grievous crimes. 167 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES If she had died a natural death, even though it were at Loch Leven or at Fotheringay, the world in general would have been as hard on her memory as Froude himself. But the very fact that a defeated and friendless woman perished by the execu- tioner's axe rallied affection and forgiveness to her side. " Judge Jeffreys " is a name which, for two centuries, has borne much the same significance in English jurisprudence as Pontius Pilate in the Creed. It has stood for judicial murder inflicted in the name of law, and for the effusion of innocent blood. Yet even in that hideous record there stands one act which English chivalry has always remembered with peculiar loath- ing. At Jeffreys' bidding a woman was beheaded because she had given " a morsel of bread and a cup of water to a hunted rebel " ; and as long as men remember Jeffreys they will remember Alice Lisle. The French Revolution was, in its origin, an expiation of intolerable wrongs ; and England might well have stood on one i68 CHIVALRY side while a sister -country was readjusting her social order, even though by rough methods. But, when Marie Antoinette died by the guillotine, it did not need Burke's eloquence to rouse the chivalry, of England. We w*ent into the French war as into a crusade, and forgot all the icrimes of the Kings of France in compassion for a butchered Queen, and for the long train of brave and innocent women who followed her to the scaffold. When England learned that Nana Sahib had hacked to death the English ladies whom he had imprisoned, then — and not till then — Englishmen were stirred to deeds of just though frightful retribution. Macaulay wrote : "I who cannot bear to see a beast or bird in pain, could look on without winking while Nana Sahib underwent all the tormients of Ravaillac." Oliver Wendell Holmes, surveying from neutral ground the crime and the punish- ment, said : " England takes down the Map of the World, which she has girdled with empire, and makes a correction thus : 169 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES DELHI, Dele. The civilized world says, ' Amen ! '" We look back ; we look round us ; we look forward. The aspect of Europe in the Middle Age was scarcely more horrible or more threatening than its aspect in the Twentieth Century. Rapine and blood- shed are only more scientific now than then, and human savagery, bursting through the thin veneer of civilization, shows no trace of diminution. Yet, even over the horrors which have surrounded us for the last three years, certain incidents tower in a hateful eminence ; and of those incidents the most loathsome is, again, the murder of a woman. The age of chivalry, said Burke, is gone; but he despaired too soon. Its outward forms and trappings, its speech and its methods, have changed with the changing world ; but its inner spirit lives, and will live as long as any spark of the Divine nature dwells in the hearts of men. Chivalry is the defence of the weak by the strong. Chivalry is the service 170 CHIVALRY which every man owes to every woman. Death is not the deepest injury which womankind can suffer, nor the only enemy against which man is bound to protect her. Let every Enghshman whose blood boils with impotent rage when he thinks of Edith Cavell's execution bind himself by a Crusader's vow that, though he could not save her life, he will do what in him lies to save the honour of her sisters in the human family. Then, as Lincoln resolved that, from the cemetery of Gettys- burg, America should have " a new birth of freedom," so, from the grave where Edith Cavell lies, England shall have a new birth of that manly virtue which is the very soul of Chivalry. 171 VI THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE My title sounds like a parody. The gifted Mrs. Crowe thrilled the young people of her time with The Night Side of Nature, and perhaps some echo of those mysterious words flitted across my mind when I read Professor Osier's remiarkable lecture on the horrors which Science has added to war : — It has made slaughter possible on a scale never dreamt of before, and it has enormously increased man's capacity to maim and to disable his fellow-men. When I was a boy, " Science " was entering on a triumiphant period of its career, and the word had lately come to bear a new and an exclusive sense. " Science " at Oxford had always meant moral and mental science — ethic, logic, and, within bounds, metaphysic. " We elected 172 THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE him for his science," said the Principal of Brasenose about Walter Pater, who had just got his Fellowship, and certainly knew no miore of electricity or physiology than I know of space. Elsewhere the word " Science " was commonly used with a descriptive epithet, and m'en spoke of moral science or mental science or physical science, thereby relating the word to one or other of the three parts which were then held to constitute the man. But about i860 a curious change came over common speech, and men who talked of Science were found to mean, exclusively, physical or natural science — the science which deals with material phenomena. There were reasons for the change. Moral science had sunk into disfavour, and was branded as an anachronism or a superstition by those who held that man has no means of establishing a relation with God, and that there is, therefore, no absolute standard of right and wrong. Mental science had been discredited by the dogmatism of .'173 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES those who most strenuously upheld it, and most scornfully rejected moral science. Mr. Balfour has admirably shown, in an autobiographical passage of his " Lectures on Theism and Humanism," that such teachers as Mill and Leslie Stephen drove some enquiring minds in the exactly op- posite direction to that which they in- tended. Moral and mental science having both receded, natural or physical science acquired the exclusive right to the title of " Science." The physicists took the concrete world as they found it, they investigated it, and they utilized it. They cared not a jot for the Platonists who said that stones and plants and animals were not realities, but only ideas. They would have sympathized with Sydney Smith, who, sending a brace of grouse to a metaphysical friend, said : "In other and better language, they are mere ideas, shot by other ideas, out of a purely intellectual notion called a gun." They thought, and they made others think, that in confining their sattention to the natural world they 174 THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE had got down to reality. Theologians might harangue about right and wrong, and philosophers might argue intermin- ably about the nature of knowledge ; but a man who worked at chemistry or botany or anatomy iiad got hold of something definite, and showed results from' his labours which none could gainsay. And Science, in this restricted sense, had a great deal to say for itself. Not every one thinks, but every one feels ; and each person who sent a telegram, or travelled on a railw'ay, or took an anassthetic, felt that life had been miade perceptibly more comfortable by Science. So Science had its heyday. Every school- boy must be taught it. Every one who pretended to culture must be able to chatter about it. Plausible M.P.'s must lecture on it to their constituents. Popular clergymen must preach about it— either against it, as an invention of the Evil One, or for it, as a revelation of the Divine. The heyday of Science was also the heyday of materialism. The facts of i7S POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES spiritual experience were ignored or denied, and the disputations of the philosophers interested no one outside the Universities. Material prosperity was abundant. Wealth was increasing rapidly. The comforts and conveniences and luxuries of life were multi- plied beyond all precedent ; and every one said that these were the blessed results of Science. Every fresh discovery of the forces latent in nature was hailed as in itself a good. But just in the middle of this triumphant period, which I date from i860 to 1880, a Warning voice \vas heard. In 1870 Ruskin delivered his inaugural lecture as Slade Professor at Oxford, and thus addressed his under- graduate hearers : — , Within the last few years we have had the laws of natural' science opened to us with a rapidity w^hich has been blinding by its brightness ; and means of transit and communication given to us, which have made but one kingdom of the habitable globe. One kingdom ; — but who is to be its king ? Is there to be no king in it, think you, and every man to do that which is right in his own eyes? Or only kings of terror, and the obscene empires of Mammon and Behal ? 176 THE DARK SIDE OF SCIENCE The words were prophetic. Within six months the Franco -Prussian War had broken out, and " Science " had shown the world what it could do in the artistic destruction of human life on a scale then unprecedented. But England did not pause to ponder the lesson, and for another ten years Science pursued its triumphant way, acclaimed on all hands as the one subject worthy of human study. From a point which we may roughly date about 1880, finer voices began to make themselves heard. Men appeared, quite outside the ranks of pro- fessional theologians, who taught that the things of the spirit are, after all, the things that really matter ; that the moral life is quite as interesting as the bodily life, and more important, as it lasts con- siderably longer. In brief, the spiritual idea of the world arrayed itself once more against the material idea, and the ups and downs of that struggle forni the philosophical history of 1880-19 14. Then, swift and terrible as the lightning of God, came the vindication of the spiritual con- M 177 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES tent ion. All at once the world saw, and has from that time continued to see, what Science can effect for human misery — ■ In the making of r5-inch guns, that will throw with accuracy a ton of metal a dozen or more miles, is found such a combination of brains and machinery as does not exist in any other human product. To guns, add submarines and Zeppelins and poisonous gases, and yet you have not half exhausted the devilries of which Science is capable. It is true that Professor Osier goes on to show the alleviating effects of Science in medicine and surgery, and these no moralist would deny or belittle. But the conclusion of the whole matter is that Science is not, as its devotees fifty years ago believed, a good in itself. It is merely power ; and whether it is a blessing or a curse to the world depends entirely on the spirit in which, and the objects for which, it is employed. Even Science is a smaller thing than the human will. 178 VII WATERLOO If the Centenary of Waterloo had fallen in a norm'al year it might, I fear, have been celebrated by an outbreak of offen- sive Jingoism. Our fire-eaters of Press and platform would scarcely have been content to glorify that supreme perform- ance of British arms without some dis- paragement of the nation which we then defeated. The opponents of free institutions would probably have used the occasion for an attack, more or less decently veiled, oil French Republicanism, and would have urged the duty of closer relations with that military despotism which inherits the traditions of Bliicher. A centenary of Waterloo, dominated by such influences as these, would have been a triumph of bad taste and bad feeling. But now all is 179 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES changed. We have seen in practice what we have long beUeved in theory about the character and fruits of militarism. We have found in Republican and industrial France our gallant and cordial ally ; and, if we refer to the great event of a hundred years ago, we speak in no spirit of vulgar boastfulness. We are thankful for deliver- ance from a danger even more formidable than that which threatens us to-day, but we recognize as amply as the French them- selves the genius which then so nearly subjugated us. We rejoice that the descendants of the men who fought against us in 1 8 1 5 are in 1 9 1 5 fighting with us for freedom and civilization. The accidents of life linked me, in early youth, with survivors of the Napoleonic period, and another such link recurs to my, mind to-day. I do not propose to re- open the much -controverted question of the particular spot in " Belgium's capital " on which the Duchess of Richmond gave her ball and awoke the " sound of revelry by night " ; but it interests me to remem- 180 WATERLOO ber that two of her daughters, with" whom, as the Scotch say, I " called cousins," survived into the present century, and that the one whom I knew best was brought down from her nursery -bed to buckle the Duke of Wellington's sword as he set out from the ball-room on his way to Quatre Bras. In The Spirit of England I described the doings of " The Hundred Days," when Englishmen, who had fondly believed that Napoleon would remain quietly at Elba for the remainder of his natural hfe, dis- covered, to their great astonishment, that he had escaped from that enforced seclu- sion, and was marching triumphantly to- wards Paris. The newly -restored King fled at his approach. Evidently a con- clusive struggle was now at hand, and the Allied Powers of Europe agreed that Wellington was the one man in whom Napoleon might find his match. But Wellington, whose caution was a form of genius, and who, in his own phrase, had " spent his life in guessing what was on i8i POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES the other side of the hill," w'as in no hurry to begin. He knew that England was not prepared for the fight, and he resolved to postpone the opening of the cam- paign till June or July. On the loth of May, 1815, Wilham Wilberforce wrote in his diary : " If Bonaparte could be unhorsed it would, humanly speaking, be a bless- ing to the European world, indeed to all nations, and Government ought to know both his force and their own. Yet I greatly dread their being deceived, remem- bering how Pitt was," On the 15th: " All this time, a fearful interval, expect- ing the bursting out of the war. It is amazing how little people seem moved." The 1 8th of June was a Sunday — " that loud Sabbath " which Tennyson extolled in later years. Wilberforce spent it quietly at Taplow Vicarage. " Perhaps," he said to his children on the way to church—" perhaps at this very moment, when we are walking thus in peace together to the house of God, our brave fellows may be fighting hard in Belgium." 182 WATERLOO On the 22nd he knew^ that he had divined aright, " A dreadful battle," he writes. " British victorious, but great loss. We are said to have lost twenty - five thousand men, the French fifty thou- sand. Oh ! my heart sickens at the scene ! Yet, praise God for this wbnderful vic- tory." It all reads like a narrative of the present day, reduced in scale, but animated by exactly the same spirit ; and the similarity is completed by these last entries : — " Took the chair at a meeting of neighbours for a fund for the widows and children of the killed and wounded belonging to the ist Life Guards, always quartered at Knightsbridge." " I never see a soldier or a sailor without a mingled feeling of gratitude and com^Dassion." The first person in England to receive the news of Waterloo was Nathan Meyer Rothschild, who had recently settled in London, and laid the foundations of the great business which still bears his name. A messenger, some say a member, of the firm had crossed the Channel in 183 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES an open boat, and brought sonle infor- mation which suggested a large and profitable investment in Consols. That stroke of business accomplished, the emissary was sent to the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, and had considerable difficulty in persuading him that the good news was true. So, not for the last tim'e, Finance outran Statesmanship in the attain- ment of knowledge which changed the face of Europe. How had the victory been won ? By good luck or good guidance? By fortune or genius ? Military historians of all countries have contested every inch of this ground, with very different results. An audacious attempt by Mrs. Arbuthnot, wife of the Duke's Private Secretary, to elicit the Duke's own opinion on the question, fared as it deserved : — " You won't mind telling me, Duke, for we are such old friends— is it true that you were surprised at Waterloo?" "By G , mum, not half as much surprised as I am now ! " The great majority of Englishmen have 184 WATERLOO accepted the Duke's own declaration that throughout that long day of struggle he never was alarmed about the result ; and have agreed to believe, with his arch- toady, Wilson Croker, in " the clear lucidity of a mind that rose high above the clouds of battle accumulated below." So perhaps it was. I do not pretend to an opinion, for the civilian critic of military operations courts discomfiture. He fails, not because he lacks the necessary information— for that can be acquired— but because, where the instinct of war is lacking, the greater the information, the greater the confusion. The final word on Waterloo was uttered by the Duke in private conversation nineteen years after the event — " Waterloo did more than any other battle I know of towards the true object of all battles — the peace of the world." The words deserve all the emphasis which We can give. The " Hero of a Hundred Fights " tells us that the true object of all battles is the peace of the world. 185 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Here is the warrant for the work in which England and France are now engaged ; and here is the issue for which we strive and pray. 1 86 VIII GREECE It requires som'e courage in these troublous times to declare oneself an impenitent Phil- Hellene. Yet that is my confession, and I will try to justify it. I hold that one's debt to a country or a race which has rendered conspicuous service to the world is inextinguishable, and from that point of view the Greeks are " of earth's first blood, have titles manifold." Greece gave the modern world its intellect ; and it was truly said by Gladstone that " the place of Aristotle and Plato in Christian education is not arbitrary, nor in principle mutable." Our modern psychology dates itself back to its origin in Aristotelian classification. The Platonic way of elicit- ing truth, by questioning and doubt and irony, has been the age-long foe of rash dogmatism ; and to the author of the 187 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Phcedo, more conspicuously than to any other thinker of the ancient world, it was given to anticipate the revelation of a personal immortality. The life of the Greek Republics brought out into vivid consciousness the idea of free and honour- able citizenship. Greek art fixed the forms of beauty for all time. Deep, then, is our debt to Greece on the intellectual side ; and on the religious side it is deeper still. From the day when the black hoof of the Turkish in- vader first ravaged the fairest provinces of Christendom, to a date within the recollection of people still alive, the Greeks were martyrs and confessors for the cause of Christ ; and, through cen- turies of bodily and moral torture, they bore their irrefragable testimony to the Religion of the Cross. For that testi- mony, if for nothing else, our nominally Christian Europe owes Greece an imperish- able debt. In all ages and all countries the twin- spirits of Liberty and Patriotism have 1 88 GREECE found their natural vent in lyrical poetry ; and Greece, rich in lyrics of her own, has had a singular power of eliciting the " lyrical cry " from others. If England is glorious by anything, she is glorious by her poetry, and among her poets Byron stands eminent. In his character there is much to distress, and even to disgust ; but the inspiration of Greece raised his genius to its highest flights, and awoke whatever was chivalrous and heroic in his strangely mingled nature. Byron died for Greece, and by so dying he bound the two countries together with a bond which may be strained, but never can be broken. But then, as now, Phil-Hellenism' was an unpopular creed. The claims of the in- tellect and the spirit appealed in vain to the type of mind which admires nothing but size and force and material prosperity. Sir James Mackintosh had critics of this type in view when, in 1823, he delivered his famous oration : — It we rest the claims of the Greeks on the interests of Liberty, they call it revolutionary rant. If we 189 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES speak of the interests of Religion, they call it the cant of fanaticism. If we give utterance to the sentiments which we are bound to cherish for the great teachers, instructors and ornaments of mankind, they deride us for using the commonplaces of schoolboys. At the moment Mackintosh seemed to speak in vain, but four years later England, Russia, and France shared the glory of Navarino ; and it was the English admiral who struck the decisive blow. All these heroic memories, stretching back to the fourth century before the Christian era, and ranging from Marathon to Misso- longhi, were revived for Englishmen by the Grasco -Turkish war of 1897. That war, and the Armenian atrocities out of which it sprang, stirred the chivalry of young England as it had not been stirred since the days of Garibaldi and the Thousand. A Phil-Hellenic Legion, defy- ing or evading all the restrictions imposed by international law, formed itself in London, and went off to the campaign in Greece in the same spirit as animated our crusading forefathers. One of the 19c GREECE noblest lives that England gave to Greece was that of Clement Harris, who counted ease and wealth, and even the art which he so dearly loved, as naught when faith' and freedom demanded sacrifice. On the 5th of April, 1897, he made this entry in his diary : — I am off this afternoon to Arta to enlist in the Greek Army. ... I have not time to write much this morning, but I only wish it to be clearly understood that no one is responsible in the least degree for the step which I have taken, and which to many may appear as an act of madness, but to myself (who have given the matter the fullest consideration) the least a man of honour can perform towards a country which crying for liberty in the name of the Cross, has been insulted and threatened by each so-called civilized Power successively. Unfortunately, I have not time to explain myself more clearly — but lovers of freedom will recognize a deeper motive for my thus offering myself to the service of a distressed and misunderstood country. Three weeks later he fell at the battle of Pentepigadia, and no one knows the place of his sepulchre unto this day. In that stirring and chivalrous time I was closely associated with many who risked their lives for Greece, and none of 191 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES them, as far as I know, have ever repented of the venture. But from' their concurrent testimony I derived a very- strong impression that, as an ancient poet of Greece once said, " There are many who bear the reed, but few true bacchanals." There were professed and ostensible Greeks, sometimes in important stations, who had neither Hellenic blood in their veins nor Hellenic sympathies in their hearts. This fact co-operated with the poltroonery which at that time governed English politics, and with that " mutual distrust and hatred of the European Powers " which was Gladstone's synonym for the Concert of Europe. The most beautiful woman I ever saw was a Greek, and when I was introduced to her she asked if I had ever seen a Greek before. I replied that I was acquainted with this or that Greek family, but she replied, Kvith a disdainful smile : " Greeks ! Do theyj look like it? They are Levantines. My blood is unmixed." And certainly she looked as if Pheidias would have loved 192 GREECE to immortalize her in marble or Apelles on canvas. She was Greek to the core, and she came from the mountains, where Freedom has ever loved to dwell. Let us bear in mind that Athens is not Greece. Another report in which rriy friends re- turning frorrl the campaign were unanimous was that Greece was tired of an alien monarchy, and was ripe for a republic. I know that circumstances have changed, and that a king born and bred in Greece may have a stronger hold on his people than any of his imported predecessors. But the Poets are the Prophets, and Byron's prophecy may yet be verified in the land for which he died : " The King -times," he said, " are fast finishing ; there will be blood shed like w*ater and tears like mist, but the peoples w'ill conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it ; but I foresee it." N 193 Ill PERSONALITIES ANCIENT AND MODERN A QUEEN READY-MADE Lord Esher'S narrte is a synonym for discretion.! When, therefore, this adfoit and trusty courtier tells us that Princess Vic- toria was not warmly attached to her mother, and detested her mother's sur- roundings ; that she was not highly educated ; that she Was by nature " auto- cratic " and " not very tender " ; and that she " avoided intimacies with members of her household " ; and when, quite inci- dentally, he informs us that the King's " dream " is to pull down Buckingham Palace and transfer the Court to Ken- sington, we may be sure that he is speak- ' The Girlhood oj Queen Vicloria : a Selection from Her Majesty's Diaries heiiveoi the years 1832 and 1840. Edited by Viscount Esher. 197 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES ing with the full concurrence of the Illustrious Personages who have supervised his labours. Lord Esher does not write at random. That curious remark about Buckingharrt Palace may be thrown out for the guidance of some future Commis- sioner of Works ; and the care with which he notes Queen Victoria's limitations may be designed to show that, though a courtier, he retains the right of private judgment. The Queen began to keep a journal when she was thirteen, and before she died it filled over a hundred volum'es. The first entry is dated Wednesday, August I, 1832; and Lord Esher reminds us that the journal was not a sealed book : — "It was not privately put away under lock ,and key, and reserved only for the eye pf the writer. The young Princess's journal was com'menced in a volume given to her by her m'other, for the express purpose that she should record the facts of her daily life, and that this record of facts and impressions should be open 198 A QUEEN READY-MADE to the inspection of the child's governess as Well as of her mbther." A record exposed to this twofold censorship would naturally be discreet, and anything which it may have lacked in that direction is supplied by the scrupulous care of Lord Esher. Asterisks, though virtuous, are always tantalizing. It appears that in the domestic circle Princess Victoria habitually spoke German, with interludes of French ; and the fact that English was not her earliest language manifests itself in various breaches of the English idiom. " Who " appears where "whom" ,should be. "Led Mamma and I " is not good. " I had not seen him since four years," and " The news of the King are worse," betray a foreign in- fluence. The ordinary Briton finds it difficult to write a long letter in the third person, so We need not be too critical of this reference to Sir Robert Peel : " The Queen don't like his manner. . . . The Duke I like far better than Peel. The Queen trusts that Lord Melbourne will ex- 199 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES cuse this long letter." It used' to be a tradition of good English that one never " took " anything except exercise and physic ; but Princess Victoria " took " breakfast, dinner, coffee, and tea. It is surprising to find that she used the hideous but convenient modernism, "We lunched"; though happily she avoided the truncated substantive from which that base verb is derived. On the other hand, she retained some forms of speech which were already obsolescent. Sir George Trevelyan has told us that Macaulay never would allow his nieces to say : " The tea is being made," but insisted on " The tea is making." Lord Russell once convened a meeting of his party in Chesham Place, because " Glad- stone's house was painting " ; and Princess Victoria, agreeably to this antique usage, " read The Conquest of Granada while my hair ^as doing," and " read in Shake- speare w'hile ray hair was undoing." There is a pleasant sound of old times in " well beat," and " ill-written," and " sung " as the perfect of sing, and " play-house " for 200 A QUEEN READY-MADE theatre ; but a room " giving on the park " sounds rather American than EngUsh. Yet although there were these traces of foreign influence in the young Princess's style, there were none in her character or conduct. It would be difficult to depict a nature more entirely English in its likes and dislikes, its prejudices and predilec- tions. She had flawless health and inex- haustible energy ; she loved concerts and theatres, dancing and riding, regattas and races and reviews ; delighted in her pet dogs, and birds, and horses, and enu- merated even her smallest presents on Christm'as Days and birthdays, with all the zest of youthful ownership. Princess Victoria had now struck sixteen, and she knew that, if she lived, in two years' time she would be old enough to reign. She wrote in her journal for the 24th of May, 1835 • — " I fs^l t^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ years to come, till I attain my eighteenth birthday, are the most important of almost any." A year later she wrote about the death of her old nurse : — " My chief regret is 201 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES that she did not live till I was my own mistress, and could make her quite com'- fortable " ; and, having made great friends with a family of gipsies encamped near Clarem'ont— " such a nice set of gipsies, so quiet, so affectionate to one another, so discreet " — she recorded a generous aspira- tion : — " I trust in Heaven that the day may come when I may do something for these poor people, and for this particular family. . . . Whenever any poor gipsies are encamped anywhere, and crimes and robberies should occur, it is invariably laid to their account, which is shocking ; and, if they are always looked upon as vagabonds, how can they become good people ? . . . The gipsy family, Cooper, will never be obliterated from my memory ! " And now' the eventful day drew on, which would bring the Heiress Presump- tive to her legal majority. Here I pause to justify my title. Such are the tricks of language that, if I had written " A Ready-made Queen," the phrase would have had a derogatory and cheapening sound ; 202 A QUEEN READY-MADE but the transposition pf the substantive and the epithet exactly conveys my meaning. WilHam IV was nearing his end, and his successor was " ready-made " — prepai'ed in advance for the fulfilment of her unique and astonishing destiny. Her uncle, King Leopold (of whom Lprd Esher says that he thought he had reduced the rules of sovereignty to a scjc'i^ce), was // ntio secondo padre, or rather solo padre ; and he employed the mysterious Stockmar, a physician turned diplomatist, to inculcate what he esteemed wholesome lessons. The Princess had met the principal statesmen of the day at her mother's dinner-table, but " there is nothing in the journals or elsewhere to show that before she was eighteen she had ever talked seriously or at any length to any man or woman of exceptional gifts . ' ' Early in May 1837 it became known that the King was dangerously ill. The flutter of excitement, the hum of rumours, contradictions, and explanations, to which the news gave rise, are described by a 203 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES master-hand in the sixth chapter of Sybil. On the 13th of June Lord Melbourne instructed Greville, as Clerk of the Council, to " get everything ready quietly " for the Council which must be held on the accession. On the 1 5th the Princess wrote in her journal : " I just hear that the doctors think my poor uncle the King cannot last more than forty -eight hours ! Poor man ! He was always kind to me,, and he meant it AVell, I know ; I am grateful for it, and shall ever remember his kindness with gratitude. He was odd, very odd and singular, but his intentions wfere often ill- interpreted." In the early dawn pf June 20, Arch- bishop Howley and the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Conygham, galloped up from Windsor as fast as four horses could bring them, and made their Way, after considerable difficulties with sentries and porters, into the Palace. Here the journal m'ust be resumed : — " I was woke at six o'clock by Mamma, who told mc that the Arch- bishop of Canterbury and Lord Conygham 204 A QUEEN READY-MADE were here, and wished to see me. I got out of bed and Went into niy sitting- room (only in my dressing-gown), and alone, and saw them. Lord Conygham (the Lord Chamberlain) then acquainted me that my poor uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at twelve minutes p. two this morning, and consequently that I am Queen. Lord Conygham knelt down and kissed my hand, at the same time delivering to m'e the official announcement of the poor King's demise. . . . Lord Conygham, whom I charged to express my feelings of condolence and sorrow to the poor Queen, returned directly to Windsor. I then went to my room and dressed. " Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country. I am very young, and perhaps in many, though not in all, things inexperienced ; but I am sure that very few have more real goodwill and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have." It is impossible to transcribe these words .205 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES without astonishment at the fortitude of a girl, barely out of the schoolroom, who mounts a throne— and such a throne !— with this absolute composure. The journal pro- ceeds :— Breakfasted. ... At nine came Lord Melbourne whom I saw in my room, and, of course, quite alone, as I shall always do all my Ministers. He kissed my hand and I then acquainted him that it had long been my intention to retain him and the rest of the present Ministry at the head of affairs, and that it could not be in better hands than his. " Long "—and the young lady had not been for quite two months of an age to exercise her sovereignty ! At noon she was presiding at her first Council, and' the Duke of Welling- ton affirmed that " if she had been his own daughter, he could not have desired to see her perform her part better." Next day she was proclaimed, and held a second Council, " at which she presided with as much ease as if she had been doing nothing else all her life." And so began an exercise of queenship 206 A QUEEN READY-MADE which endured with ever-increasing influence over public affairs till the autumn of 1900. These journals are delightfully human in their pictures of life and its enjoy- ments ; and they convey a very strong sense of that absolute straightforwardness with which their writer was always credited by those who knew her best. " Lehzen," she said, referring to her old governess, " Lehzen often said that she had never seen such a passionate and naughty child as I was ; but I had never told a false- hood, though I knew I should be punished." The days of punishment were now over, and the emancipated Princess enjoyed herself to the top of her bent. It is the tritest commonplace to say that Queen Victoria owed much to Lord Melbourne ; but these journals show that she owed him even more than we knew, and perhaps in rather unexpected ways. That he was her sedulous and sagacious counsellor in her principles and working of the Constitution we all knew ; and it is interesting to note that his counsels 207 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES became more and more authoritative as months went by. But, apart from these poUtical lessons, the Queen soon fell into the habit of jotting down fragments from Melbourne's table-talk ; and these frag- ments convey some sense of the bracing and widening effect of his mind on hers. His view of life generally was informal, individual, unconventional ; and his con- versation was enlivened by those touches of paradox which are useful in making- young people think. For a girl reared in the cloister-like seclusion of Kensing- ton Palace, taught by a Dean, a Duchess, and an Old Maid, and never allowed to read a novel, it must have been an in- structive experience to hear Melbourne discoursing on horses and dogs and Women's beauty, on the gossip of the eighteenth century, on the excellence of pensions, on the crimes of navvies, on the tiresomeness of education, on the virtues of Euthanasia, on the foolishness of the Irbys, on the merits and defects of Eton, on Shakespeare and Scott, and English 208 A QUEEN READY-MADE pronunciation and French cooking, and snoring in church, and conjugal relation- ships ; " was separated from her hus- band, and excited pity, as he was known or supposed to have beat her. Upon this Lord Melbourne said : ' Why, it is almost worth while for a woman to be beat, considering the exceeding pity she excites,' which made us laugh." The Queen had come to the throne, " ready-m'ade " as far as knowledge of the rights and duties of the Crown was con- cerned, and not without preferences as between political parties. Two years after her accession she wrote : "I had been always brought up in very strong feelings on the Whig side " ; and Melbourne's in- fluence naturally confirmed those feeliijgs. Very soon the Queen identified herself with her Ministers in a degree which certainly was not repeated until Lord Beaconsfield's second Administration. She watched the Elections with anxious interest ; was de- lighted when Whigs were returned, and thankful when Tories or Radicals were o 209 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES defeated. A bad division in the House of Commons affected her like a personal calamity : — May 7th, 1839. — I awoke at | p. 8 and heard from Lord Surrey that we had only had a majority of five ! This struck to my heart, and I felt dreadfully anxious. ... I received a letter from Lord Melbourne, in which he stated what had taken place, that he had not yet heard from Lord John, but that he feared they had no other alternative — can I write it ? — but to resign. This extract refers to a crisis which", though in some of its bearings serious enough, yet in others wore the semblance of a Comedy of Errors. For an account of it I turn from Lord Esher to Lord Beaconsfield : — " One morning there was an odd whisper in the circle of first initia- tion. The clubs were crowded, even at noon. Everywhere a mysterious bustle and an awful stir. What could be the matter? •What had happened? The world was employed the whole of the mbrning in asking and answering this important ques- tion, 'Is it true ? ' Towards dinner -timfe it Was settled universally in the affirma- 210 A QUEEN READY-MADE live ; and then the wbrld went out to dine and to ascertain why it was true and how it was true. "And now, what had really happened? What had happened was what is comnionly called a 'hitch.' The Whig Ministers, it seemed, had resigned ; but somehow or other had not entirely and completely gone out. What a constitutional dilemma ! But then the oddest rumour in the world got about. ... It seemed, though, of course, no one could for a moment credit it, that these rebellious, wrong-headed Ministers, who would not go out, wore petticoats ! " In plainer phrase. Lord Melbourne and his colleagues had obtained a majority of only five on a Bill to suspend the Con- stitution of Jam'aica, " a measure requiring more than ordinary support and confidence, but which had met with less than was usually accorded to them'." This rebuff they treated as a Vote of Want of Con- fidence, and determined to resign. When Melbourne placed the resignation in the Queen's hands, she " held his hand for 211 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES a little while, unable to let go/' and said, " You will not forsake me." Lord John Russell, as Leader of the House of Com- mons, came to explain the case, and thanked the Queen for her kindness, " which quite set me off crying, and I said it was a terrible thing for me." Later in the day Melbourne returned, " having written down what he thought the Queen should do." The conclusion of the paper was : " Your Majesty had better express your hope that none of Your Majesty's Household, except those who are engaged in politics, may be removed." This done, the Queen sum- moned the Duke of Wellington, as titular Leader of the victorious party, Melbourne good-naturedly smoothing the Way by say- ing that the Duke was very deaf — " Mind the Duke understands what you say." The Duke came, and " was kind " ; and on his advice the Queen summoned Sir Robert Peel, whose strategy had defeated the Government. What then ensued is best given in the Queen's words :— " The Queen repeated what she had said to the Duke 212 A QUEEN READY-MADE about her fortn'er Government, and asked Sir Robert to form a newl Ministry. He does not seem sanguine ; says entering on the Governm'ent in a minority is Very difficult. . . . 'He felt the task arduous, and that he wbuld require me to demon- strate (a certain degree, if any, I can only feel) confidence in the Government, and that my Household would be one of the marks of that. The Queen mentioned the same thing about the Household, to which he at present would give no answer, but said nothing should be done without my knowledge or approbation. . . . He is such a cold, odd man. She can't make out what he means. . . . The Queen was very much collected, civil, and high, and betrayed no agitation during these two try- ing Audiences. But afterwards, again, all gave way." -What Peel meant was dis- closed in an Audience on the 9th of May, which Her Majesty thus described in a letter to Melbourne : — Sir Robert has behaved very ill. He insisted on my giving up my ladies, to which I replied that I 213 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES never would consent, and I never saw a man so frightened ; he said he must go to the Duke of Welhngton and consult with him. ... I was calm, but very decided ; and I think you would have been pleased to see my composure and great firmness. The Queen of England will not submit to such trickery. Keep yourself in readiness, for you may soon be wanted. Later in the day Peel came again, urged the dismissal of the Ladies, and u^as told that the Queen would " reflect, but felt certain she should not change her mind." Then came Melbourne, and " approved all, and said I could not do otherwise. I acted quite alone, I said, and feared I might have embarrassed the Government. ' I must summon the Cabinet,' said Lord M., 'at once; it may, have very serious consequences.' " The Cabinet met, deliberated, and recom- mended the Queen to write as follows to Peel :- The Queen, having considered the proposal made to her yesterday by Sir Robert Peel to remove the Ladies of her Bedchamber, cannot consent to adopt a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage and which is repugnant to her feelings. 214 A QUEEN READY-MADE On receipt of this very clear decision, Peel declined the task of forming an Administration, and Melbourne and his colleagues resumed the offices which they had not technically vacated. Disraeli, in Sybil, trounced the Con- servative Leader for his maladroit dealings with a young and impressionable Sove- reign, and ridiculed the policy which had been " brained by a fan." Charles Greville wrote : " It is a high trial to our insti- tutions when the wishes of a Princess of nineteen can overturn a great Minis- terial combination." Lord Esher tells us that the Queen, in her old age, said : " I was very young then, and perhaps I should act differently if it was all to be done again "; ; and that Melbourne blamed himself in after years for not having warned the Queen of the changes which Peel might demand ; but this self-reproach seems unnecessary in view of the Queen's words quoted above. Whether Peel ever repented of his share in the transaction is ex- tremely doubtful. It was all very well 215 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES for Disraeli, who had hoped for sornle modest preferment under Peel's Adminis- tration, to say that " the Leader of the Tory Party should have vindicated his natural position, and availed him^self of the gracious occasion. He missed it, and the Whigs enjoyed its occurrence." But prob- ably when, two years later, Peel became Prime Minister, at the head of a trium- phant majority and with a conciliated Court, he was glad that he had not clutched the Premiership at a moment when neither Queen nor Commons wished him well. The "Bedchamber Plot" of 1839 was the last event of political importance Iwhich these volumes record, for on the 1 5th of October, 1839, the Queen proposed to Prince Albert, and the remainder of the narrative is a smooth tale of love. 216 II AN UNCROWNED KING Thirty -FIVE years ago the great Lord Shaftesbury told me what was then a piece of secret history. He said that Queen Vic- toria had been very anxious that the title of King-Consort should be conferred on Prince Albert, and that, as this could only be done by Act of Parliamlent, she had repeatedly urged Lord Melbourne to bring in a Bill conferring the title. Melbourne demurred ; the Queen persisted ; and then the sagacious! statesman gave the necessary warning : — -"' For G— — 's sake, Ma'am, let's hear no more of it. If you once get the English people into the way of m'aking Kings, they'll learn the way of unmaking them." This Lord Shaftesbury had direct from Melbourne (who was Lady Shaftes- bury's uncle), and Memoirs published under 217 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Royal authority in recent years have proved it to be true. But the refusal of the Crown Matri- monial made no difference to the actual power of Prince Albert, though much to his seeming dignity. He was a man of high intelligence, assiduously cultivated. He devoted himself to the study of constitu- tional and international law. He watched every turn, and every sign of a turn, in domestic and foreign policy, and he was the adored husband of the Queen of England. " Through more than twenty years, which flowed past like one long, unclouded summer day " — the words are Gladstone's— their lives were one. No woman ever leaned more fondly, and no Queen had ever had so much cause to lean. . . . Even among happy marriages this marriage was exceptional, so nearly did the union of thought, heart, and action both fulfil the ideal, and bring duality near to the borders of identity. That in this combination of circumstances the Prince Consort should have become virtually joint -Sovereign was neither won- 218 ^A^ UNCROWNED KING derful nor, in spite of constitutional grumblers, regrettable. The law* of nature gave in reality what an Act of Parliament could only have given in form, and Prince Albert was, for all practical purposes, a King. Those who wish to understand the mind and character of Queen Victoria must consult the letters and journals which she wrote before 1841 ; and (if their lives are spared ) those which she wrote after 1 8 6 1 . In the intervening twenty years they may indeed be reading the Queen's words, but they are conversing with the Prince's mind ; and in that mind they may per- haps discover reasons for the unquestion- able fact that the Pjrince was unpopular. Those who knew him' intimately admired and respected him' ; but the English people generally, and not least the aristocracy, misunderstood and disliked him'. It is a sorry confession ; but, when we remember the social and ethical tradition of England under George IV and William IV, it seems obvious that the Prince's unpopularity was due, in large part, to his virtues. In a 219 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES debauched and profligate age, he had set from early youth an example of manly, rectitude. At a time when drunkenness was less a disgrace than an accomplish- ment, he was rigidly abstemious. -Whereas the Princes of the former generation had spent their lives in accumulating debts which the nation had to pay, he sedu- lously kept his expenditure within the limits of his income. But not his virtues only —his very accomplishments — were charged against him as offences. To a generation which had only just left off cock-fighting, and which still patronized the Erize Ring, there was something offensive in the notion of a young man who played the piano, composed music, and etched. In the displeasure of the younger " Bloods," who were the Prince's most persistent detractors, there may have even been a spice of jealousy. The Prince was brilliantly good-looking, though with a type of beauty neither English nor German ; and he had secured in mlarriage a hand to which others had aspired. The gueen 220 AN UNCROWNED KING herself has told us of a rem'ark which", in the first year of her reign, she nUade to Lord Melbourne : — " I observed that marrying a subject Was making yourself so much their equal, and brought you so in contact with the whole fam'ily." But it is not impossible that the Duke of Carabas and Lord Tomnoddy were blind to these disadvantages, and saw much to dislike in the successful wooer from over the seas. They avenged them'selves in the oddest Way. They ridiculed the Prince because he disliked long sittings over after- dinner wine ; and again because, after a morning's shooting, he went home for luncheon. They said he could not ride, and were dumbfounded with astonishment when they saw him going well with the Belvoir hounds. They accused him' of cowardice, or at least sympathy with cowardice, because he set his face against the damn- able wickedness of duelling. Oddest of all, they affirmed that he was a Roman Catholic in disguise, whereas he was a Lutheran with latitudinarian sympathies. 221 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Some more obvious reasons for unpopu- larity could be traced in the Prince's char- acter and conduct. In the first place, he was undeniably a foreigner, and seventy years ago foreigners were quite as unpopular in England as they are to-day. Of course the Royal Family were of German extraction ; but from' long residence in the country had lost nearly all trace of Ger- manism. Queen Victoria's uncles had been bluff English gentlemen, of gracious presence and hearty bearing ; properly dignified on public occasions, but overflowing with jollity in private life ; and it Was an abrupt change from them to this reserved and meditative stripling. Gladstone, who loved him sincerely, has recorded a ti^ait which certainly could not conduce to popularity : — • A mildly foreign mark upon his exterior and manner, together with a perpetual endeavour to turn every man's conversation, every man's particular gift and knowledge, to account for his own mental improve- ment, most laudable as it was, yet may have prevented his attaining that charm of absolute ease in his intercourse with the world which he possessed in the circle of his family. 222 ^A^ UNCROWNED KING That thirst for information, though, as Gladstone calls it, " most laudable," must have been a little uncomfortable in society, especially when the person questioned did not feel very sure of his ground ; and the lack of " ease " in the Prince's public manner made an unfavourable impression on those who had no opportunity of seeing him in private life. He was thought to insist unduly on small points of etiquette, and to be horrified if a guest stood on the hearthrug after dinner. It was re- ported that the Queen said to a delicate lady : " Pray sit down, and, when the Prince comes into the room', Lady Douro " (an ample natron) " can stand in front of you." People saw the ladies of the Court standing in the Royal Opera Box while the Prince sate through the long perform- ance. Thackeray, in the Book of\ Snobs, made fun of the ritual of Royal shooting, as depicted in the Court Circular. In a word, people thought the Prince too stiff. The thirst for infonnation which Glad- 223 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES stone described was allied in the Prince with a love of instructing. Not only in affairs of State and diplorrtacy, but in almost every department of national life, he caused his views to be made known. In things military and naval, in matters affecting Public Education, Public Health, and the Dwellings of the Poor, in every form of art, and in every development of science, he was ready with theories and advice. Perhaps the most remarkable in- stance of this all -pervading activity is the letter which he addressed to Samuel Wilber- force on his elevation to the Episcopate. The writer of the letter was then twenty - six years old, a foreigner by birth and education who had lived four years in England, and a Lutheran by religious pro- fession. The recipient of the letter was forty, an Englishman by birth and educa- tion, reared in the strictest traditions of English Churchmanship, and himself in turn a Parish Priest, an Archdeacon, a Dean, and now "a called Apostle." The letter is a serene and thoughtful discourse on 224 AN UNCROWNED KING the duties of an English Bishop ; the Hne which he should take in Parliament, and the attitude which he ought to maintain towards those of "other confessions." It is certainly a rem'arkable composition ; and it is only fair to add that it concludes with a half-tone of apology : "I have spoken as thoughts have struck me, and am sure you will be better able than I am to take a comprehensive view of the position." Perhaps enough has now been said to account for the fact that the Prince Con- sort was unpopular, and more than enough to explain the violent reaction Which ensued on his death. On the 23rd of April, 1862, Gladstone, speaking in Manchester before " the Association of Lancashire and Cheshire Mechanics' Institutes," said : " In the ancient Palace of our Kings a Womian's heart lies bleeding " ; and the unanimous outburst of sympathy with the widowed Queen was accompanied by sincere though unavailing regrets. All at once the nation realized what the Queen had lost. The clouds of p 225 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES misapprehension and injustice were blown away by the breath of a new spirit, and people saw revealed a character singularly pure, lofty, and duty -loving, and a life devoted to the service of England. The reaction ran, as popular reactions commonly run, to ridiculous excess. The face of the country was studded with memorials to the Prince, like knots in network, and books purporting to describe his character and tell his life poured from' the press. Besides a vast profusion of these un- authorized efforts, the Queen in 1867 commanded the publication of The Early^ Years of the Prince Consort. This was followed by Leaves from the Journal of oar Life in the Highlands, written by the Queen herself. The Prince's Speeches were edited, with an instructive Introduction, by Sir Arthur Helps. Between the years 1875 and 1880 the Authorized Life of the P.rince Consort was published in instalments by Sir Theodore Martin . Quite recently we have had three volumes of the Queen's Letters and two of her Early Journals, 226 AN UNCROWNED KING in all of which Prince Albert plays a prominent part ; not to mention the innumerable host of Memoirs and Recol- lections by various onlookers who from time to time came in contact with him. Lord Esher tells us, in solemn tones, that " it m'ay be many years before it would be wise or prudent to make public any more of the private histoiy of Queen Victoria's reign." So far as that history concerns the Prince Consort, we have already had enough of it. Abundant material is now available for any one who wishes to estimate the character of that remarkable man, and to place him in due relation with the events of his time. A persistent attempt to exaggerate his great- ness, and to insist on all his opinions as infallibly true, can only result in the pro- duction of unpleasant counterblasts, such as The Married Life of Queen Victoria. In that book much labour has been mis- applied to the collection of every scurrilous rhyme and paragraph, and every insolent caricature, by which malicious partisans 22f POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES chose to annoy the Prince, and through him the Queen ; his smallest foibles and errors are held up to contumely, some of his most conspicuous virtues are ridiculed or denied, and his m'arried life is repre- sented as a series of mbrtifications . Yet even the writer of that ill-conditioned book was forced to end upon the note of eulogy : — " The lasting work of the Prince Consort was not that upon which he had expended his energies and his life, for he did not increase the Monarchical poWer in England —it was the pulling of the Crown per- manently out of the Georgian rmid, and proving that those in high places could be virtuous and intellectual." 328 Ill MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE " Sure enough ! it is Rip Van Winkle — it is himself ! Welcome home again, old neighbour ! Why, where have you been these twenty long years ? " " Rip's story was soon told, for the whole twenty years had been to him but as one night. The neighbours stared when they heard it ; some were seen to wink at each other, and put their tongues in their cheeks." Washington Irving must, I suppose, be included in that remarkable company of authors (cbntaining Scott, Macaulay, Dickens, and George Eliot) of whom the High- brows tell us that " nobody reads them now." But I belong to a less supercilious generation, and The Sketch Book, with Irving's delightful version of Rip Van 229 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Winkle's history, recurred to my memory when I read, in the Coniliitl Magazine, a paper by Dr. W. H. Fitchett on "A Curious Chapter in WelHngton's Life." Dr. Eitchett's slumber seems to have lasted even longer than Van ^Winkle's, for the world has. been acquainted with "Miss J.," and her remarkable flirtation, ever since the year 1889. ^^^ ^^^'^^ Y^^** an American firm published The Letters of the Duke of Wellington to Miss J., 1 834-1 8 5 I," and they were pwrom^ptly repro- duced in England by the enterprise of Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. I do not know whether the book attained any wide circu- lation, but among such as are interested in the curiosities of literature it was welcomed with effusion. It became, like Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands, and Tlie Diary, of a Nobody, the oracle of a circle. It was freely quoted, and copiously reviewed. Some of its choicest phrases became catchwords. An enormous discourse founded on it, as a sermon is founded on a text, may be read 230 MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE in the Spectator for the 1 1 th of January, 1890, and no one who remembers the spirit of that exemplary, paper, when Hutton ruled it, will be suiprised to learn from it that the Duke of Wellington, " deep down in his nature was religious — a firm, reverent believer." It v/as inevitable that a critic who took this view should misunderstand the correspondence, iwhich reveals nothing of the Duke's beliefs, but a greait deal of Miss J.'s. While serious people took the book seriously, Historians add that there were some who laughed. They believed that the whole affair was an ingenious hoax, designed to attract dollars by the spell of aristocratic mystery ; and there certainly was a good deal to justify this unworthy suspicion. The book purported to be edited by " Christine Ter- hune Herrick " — a. name which in itself conveys a sense of unreality — and to be compiled from a mass of papers which had " lain for years in a trunk in the attic 231 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES of a country house within thirty miles of New York City." It does not need a very sceptical temper to suspect fraud in a literary curiosity thus engendered. While some were thus swayed by external evidence^ others found internal evidence not less damaging. If I remember aright, the late Duke of Wellington pronounced unhesi- tatingly against the genuineness of the letters, founding himself on the fact that they constantly refer to " Strathfieldsaye," whereas his grandfather always contracted the word into " S-Saye," or, if he wrote it in full, spelled it " Stratfieldsaye." One theory was that the discoverer or inventor of the letters had created a " Miss J." out of some confused recollections of a lady celebrated in her day^ — " Mrs. Jones of Pantglas " — whom the Duke was known to hold in high esteem. I Another possible candidate ' This lad}', born Margaret Charlotte Campbell, was a niece of Lord Chancellor Campbell, and became by her second marriage Lady Levinge. The letters which she received from the Duke of Wellington were pub- lished a few years ago in an American review. 232 MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE for the honour of being " Miss J." was the Hon. Mary Ann Jervis, whom the Duke always called "The Syren." i Although, on his own. showing, he was " old enough to be her great-grandfather," he paid her elaborate attentions, and corresponded with her freely. Miss Jervis, on the other hand, made no secret of her willingness to be Duchess of Wellington. So the laughers laughed, and the critics criticized ; but the pi-esent waiter, although he was fully alive both to' the positive comicality, and to the possible humbug, of the whole affair, always held fast to the belief that the letters were genuine. He — or to speak more simply, I — had been trained, by those who remembered the Duke, to remark the strong coinmon -sense which always characterized his utterances ; and common -sense is precisely the quality which is most conspicuous in these letters. Further- more, I was a student of style and I ' This lady was a daughter of the second Lord St. Vincent, and was married first to David Dyce Sombre and secondly to Lord Forester. 233 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES did not believe that there was a wi-iter alive who could imitate so exactly the Duke's epistolary mannerisms. After a lapse of ten years, my faith was rewarded by proof. In 1899 Sir Herbert Maxwell published his excellent Ll^e of Welllngfon, and in it he dealt at length' with the case of " Miss J.," writing neither as a convinced believer nor as a formal sceptic. After the book had been printed, but before it was published. Sir Herbert discovered that the Duke's letters " were in the hands of a private collector," ' who permitted him to examine them. " Having done so critically, I have not the slightest hesitation in pronouncing them to be genuine. There remains not a shadow of doubt that all the letters are in the Duke's own hand. Most of them are addressed to Miss A. M. Jenkins, No. 42 Charlotte Street, Portland Place, a few having been sent to the care of a tradesman in the same street. The discrepancy in the spelling of Strathfield- ' Qy — Lord Rosebery ? 234 MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE s,aye arises from the printer of the letters having extended the Duke's contraction, S-Saye, into the full name." Since 1899 we have all had a good deal to think about, and attention has, been diverted from the Duke of Wellington's flirtations to topics of more pressing interest. Dr. Fitchett, living apparently in a happy remoteness from actual affairs, has done a good service to the piublic by recalling its attention to a really amusing and for- gotten book. But his interpretation of the correspondence does not convince me, and I shall restate the case as it presents itself to a mundane mind Anna Maria Jenkins (1814-62) be- longed, we are told, to " the smaller English gentry," and was an orphan. She twas profoundly, practically, and en- thusiastically religious ; and, using the word " enthusiastic " in the sense in which it was used in the eighteenth century, I mean no disparagement. Her religion was of the OEvangelical type, and she evan- gelized wherever she went, even minister- 235 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES ing to a murderer in the condemned cell, and leading hlnl to confession and repent- ance. " It was not so common then as now to make pets of condemned prisoners ; and the success of this young girl in subduing a man with whom priests and parsons had hopelessly laboured, created a sensation and called forth comment from the Press." By a transition of ideas not -easily traceable, Miss Jenkins came to think that, after shriving the murderer, her next duty was to convert the Duke of Wellington, who was now sixty -five years old, con- queror of Napoleon, ex-Prime Minister of England, and — what is perhaps mm'e to her purpose — a. widower. It is only fair to Miss Jenkins to say that she never concealed from herself the fact that she wished to be Duchess of Wellington. " She believed it was the will of God that she should become the wife of the Duke." But, as she had in girlhood refused a suitor because he was not sufficiently religious, so now she determined to cou- 236 MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE vert the t)uke before she became his wife. •With this high end in view, she addressed to him, on the i 5th of January, 1834, a letter " on the necessity, of a new birth unto righteousness",; and three days later the Duke rvvrote his answer— the first of the 390 letters which compose the series. Curiously enough, this letter was not pre- served ; but we are told that the Duke made two blots and put a wrong date, and these symptoms Miss Jenkins attri- buted to " the feelings which overwhelmed him on the receipt of my epistle." Three months later Miss Jenkins, who had now come to live in London, went to Apsley House, and left there for the Duke's acceptance a Bible, with "a suitable note." To this note the Duke replied that he would like to meet the writer ; Miss Jenkins immediately conceded the privilege, and asked the Duke to call on her. The great man replied : " Although the Duke is not in the habit of visiting young unmarried ladies with whom he is not acquainted, he will not decline to attend Miss J." 237 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES And on the 12th of November, 1834, the first interview took place. Here it is necessary to mention one all-important trait which was omitted above. We are told that Miss Jenkins was " a very beautiful woman." In all ages of the Church, beautiful saints have exercised great power over inflammable sinners ; and the Duke, who had seen much of beauty but not much of saintship, seem's to have succumbed instantly to the double spell. •When the day for the Duke's visit arrived, Miss Jenkins prayed for divine guidance in every incident of it, " even my dress " ; and she regarded it as an answer to prayer that, when her illustrious visitor was announced, she was wearing her " old turned dark merino gown, da'dy worn," and was not " decorated in any way likely to attract notice." But, in spite of these providential pre- cautions, the spell did its work. Miss Jenkins " offered her hand " to her visitor, who " received it graciously and respect- fully." The oddly assorted couple then sat 238 MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE down, one on each side of the fire-place ; Miss Jenkins produced her " large, beautiful Bible," opened it at the third chapter of St. John, and began to p)reach on the necessity of the New Birth, " pointing her finger emphatically, with the solemnity so important an occasion demanded." The sermon was abruptly closed, for the Duke, from whom " all power of speech seemed to be withdrawn," suddenly seized the preacher's hand and exclaimed : " Oh ! how I love you ! Hoiv I love you ! " This was his first utterance — ^and quite enough', too, for a first visit. When the Duke took his leave, he asked Miss Jenkins to write to him, and this she promised to do ; but she felt what Quakers call " a stop in her mind," and did not keep her promise. Twice the Duke enquired the reason for this silence, and, receiving no answer, called again. On this occasion he behaved even more ecsta- tically than before, exclaiming : " This must be for life ! " But what was to "be for hfe " ? He did not propose marriage. 239 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES A fortnight elapsed, and Miss Jenkins, having considered the situation, wrote to the Duke that his visits had better cease, " as they are of so different a nature from those I anticipated." The Duke replied that he " entirely, concurred " in this decision. By so replying, he irritated the lady past endurance ; and she wrote him a letter which faintly uttered the feelings of her indignant soul. She told him that, if she had suspected him of anything but an honourable intention, she would have " spurned him from her as a serpent whose sting was capable of producing not only instantaneous but eternal death " — with much more to the same effect. The Duke apologized ; friendly intercourse was renewed, anid the correspondence waxed brisker than before. Very often the correspondents nearly quarrelled. The lady was beyond measure peevish, exacting, and ready to take offence. The Duke was uniformly good-tempered, though terse. Thus, if her overweight letters (were returned, Miss Jenkins thought an insult was intended, but the 240 MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE Duke quietly explained the law of franks and postage. If the Duke sealed with' a plain seal, instead of his armorial bear- ings, Miss Jenkins thought herself treated with disrespect, and the Duke explained that the armorial seal sometimes got too hot for use : if he used black wax. Miss Jenkins must know the reason why. The Duke wrote rather illegibly ; Miss Jenkins misconstrued his words, and the Duke wrote patient explanations. Once Miss Jenkins was annoyed by a fellow-traveller in a stage-coach who indulged in blas- phemy. When this occurrence was reported to the Duke, he took no notice, and was sharply rebuked for his indifference to her outraged feelings ; but he was quite equal to the occasion — " I don't consider with you that it is necessary to enter into a disputation with every wandering blasphemer. Much must depend upon the circumstances." Sometimes he substituted his initial for his signature, and w'as promptly asked if he intended a disrespectful familiarity : to which he replied that " the most important Q 241 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES parts of a letter were its contents," and that he " never much considered the signature, provided he knew the hand- writing." After this last instance of unreason on his friend's part, the Duke's equanimity seems to have given away, and he marked his annoyance by writing in the third person . Even worse — he burned her letters, and thereby, in her judgment, committed "a sin in the sight of God, in destroying epistles intended for his everlasting good." But, as she kept copies, no harm was done. Presently, the first person was resumed, and Miss Jenkins noted the change with unconcealed satisfaction ; she still kept a watchful eye on the Duke's doings, and never failed to read him a spiritual lesson when she got the chance. The Duke had a fall and bruised his knee, and Miss Jenkins promptly reminded him that " it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps — a divine lesson which I was so anxious from time to time to impress upon his mind." When 242 MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE the Duke got about again, he hastened to visit Miss Jenkins, and, when she asked him how his knee was getting on, " he appeared delighted, pushing up his chair nearer to mie, which of course met with the withdrawal on my part due to Christianity." During the year 1836 Miss Jenkins received fifty-six letters from her illustrious admirer. On the i 5th of November, he wi^ote that he was coming to London, and was at her service if she wished for a visit. On this the lady comments as follows in her diary : " How little did the poor Duke think when he wrote thus that the great Lord of lords had decreed he should not behold me again for nearly eight years — ^namely, until the summer of 1844. O how mysterious are His unerring ways ! " But, although the Duke did not see this enchantress for " nearly eight years," bodily separation had no effect on the exchange of thoughts. They corre- sponded incessantly ; she preaching, scold- ing, and complaining ; he accepting her rebukes, explaining, and when needful, 243 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES apologizing — " The Duke of Wellington presents His Compliments to Miss Jenkins. She is quite mistaken. He has no Lock of Hair of Her's. He never had one, The Duke is not aware that he has been guilty of presuniption, of daring presumption y As the Duke was born in 1769, it must have been about the year 1839 that he wrote the following rebuff. " What would be said if I, a man of seventy years of age, nearly, was to take in marriage a lady young enough to be my grand- daughter?" Poor Miss Jenkins! It was the rebuke of a vaulting ambition, which is thus expressed in her diary : " I looked forward to becoming as ' a city set on a hill, which cannot be hid,' conceiving such exaltation would admit of showing forth' His praises openly before men." A subtle attempt in the same direction is reflected in a letter of the Duke written in 1840 — " The Duke is very sensible of Miss Jenkins's offer of service in case the Duke should be sick or afiflicted. The 244 I MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE Duke is much obliged to her. He is quite well. He has no reason to believe that he will have occasion to trouble her upon any subject whatever." Influenced, I suppose, by motives of self-preservation, the Duke now ceased to write. From 1840 to 1844 Miss Jenkins received no letter from him ; but, nothing daunted, she continued to ply him with advice, " as the Lord condescendingly in- fluenced me." On the loth of June, 1844, the Duke replied comprehensively to all these hortations, and professed himself " very sensible of your kindness in giving me so continually such good Counsel." The correspondence now resumed all its former briskness, and before long the spell of the enchantress prevailed. At the ead of August the Duke again paid her a visit, being dogged, to his great annoyance, by a band of observers, who probably thought they had caught the great man in some discreditable adventure. This tiresome in- cident seems to have had its effect upon the Duke, for soon afterwards his visits 245 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES ceased for ever. He was bne of the busiest men in England. " I am employed," he wrote, " every day from six in the morning till twelve at night "—but, unless he promptly answered every scrap of written nonsense and paid frequent calls, Miss Jenkins gave him' no peace. In June 1845 she wrote him one of her customary rebukes, " little imagining that the Lord of lords had decreed he should never call again, knowing far better what is good for us than we do for ourselves." In spite of this, the correspondence continued for some time on its accustomed lines ; but a fatal rupture was at hand. Miss Jenkins took a cottage in thei country, and required some money to furnish it. She consulted the Duke on the subject and he, apparently by mistake, understood that she wished to borrow the money from him, and seemed quite ready to lend it. This suggestion she regarded as an insult, and rebuked in her most vigorous terms. But shortly afterwards she fell into bad health; her illness required a good many 246 MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE comforts, and her means were suddenly diminished to vanishing-point. In this step she boldly told the Duke of her needs :— It would appear that it is the will of God to place my life, humanly speaking, in your hands, as the friend, next to Himself, most dear to the heart of Yours devotedly, A.J. The Duke replied with prompt and practical kindness, asking what was the sum required, and where it should be paid. But poor Miss Jenkins, irritated by illness and poverty, treated these very natural enquiries as fresh insults. She had no banker, knew nothing of business, could not and would not answer the Duke's questions. She apparently thought it his duty to undertake the cost of her maintenance, without entering into details of more or less, when or how ; and, when he demurred to this erratic way of' doing business, she told him roundly that she would " rather beg her bread from door 247 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES to door than receive a favour at such hands." i Ira' antaiitiunt— soon the correspondence was renewed : by Miss Jenkins with " changed feelings " ; by the Duke with unchanged patience. The lady still toiled indefatigably for his " regeneration," and he persisted in replying that he did his duty to the best of his ability, and could not concur in Miss Jenkins's view of it. On the loth of March, 185 i, he wrote the last letter in this extraordinary correspondence. It concludes with these words : — I know well that Miss Jenkins's Mind is occupied by Reflections on Spiritual things ; and that she must despise the occupation of one who considers it His duty to serve the Public to the best of His Ability ! With due respect for Her Higher occupations, I hope she will excuse my adhering to my own Course of duty ! Ever Miss Jenkins's most faithfully obedient, Humble Servant, Wellington. In September 1852 the Duke died. Soon afterwards Miss Jenkins left England to join her married sister in the United States ; 248 MISS JENKINS AND THE DUKE but " iher peculiarities had developed so unpleasantly that the two could not live peacefully in the same house." She died in 1862, and was disinterred, twenty -seven years later, by Christine Terhune Herrick. 249 IV A NEST OF WHIGGERY Though my title may be rather reminis- cent of Shakespeare's " nest of spicery," still nothing offensive is intended. A bird reared in the Nest of Whiggery could never befoul it or belittle it ; though perhaps he might perceive, with advancing years, that it had some laughable aspects. "The Sacred Circle of the Great -Grandm'otherhood," though used as a gibe by Beresford-Hope, was the expression of a serious truth, and the Early Correspondence of Lord John Russell, given to the world by his son, Mr. RoUo Russell, illustrates that truth afresh. I The book is a Book of Russells. On every page a Russell writes to a Russell ' Early Correspondence of Lord John Russell, 1805-1840. Edited by his son, Rollo Russell. 250 A NEST OF WHIGGERY — Amurath to Amurath— and a Russell makes reply. Each Russell adores the Russell to whom he or she is writing, and the principal topics of the Corre- spondence are the virtuous doings of the other Russells. When a letter is headed as from or to " Russell," without prefix or suffix, the person indicated is Lord John Russell— afterwards Earl Russell, and twice Prim'e Minister. The rest of the family are distinguished by Christian names ; but, as those names were frequently repeated in successive generations, it is not always easy to discern identities. Thus the letters refer to two Lord John Russells, two Lady John Russells, two Lord William Russells, Lady WillianK Russell, Lady Rachel Russell, Gertrude Russell, and, as in private duty bound, to " William Lord Russell, the Martyr." The Martyr, indeed, was well out of the way, having lost his head in 1683; but at the period w^hich the Letters cover— 1805-40— there were four William Russells in being, and to distinguish between them is a task which has some- 251 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES times baffled even the editor. Then, besides the characters who were palpably and by designation Russells, there are a good mJany concealed Russells lurking in the book— twb Dukes of Bedford, a Duchess of Bedford, a Lord TaVistock, a Lady Tavistock, a Duchess of Abercorn, a Lady Georgiana Romilly. Trace the " Circle," and it is found to contain Cowers, Howards, Vemons, Capels, Keppels, Cavendishes, and Ponsonbys, all of whom figure largely in these pages ; stretch it a little, and it includes (by Virtue of relationship to the Russells) Byngs, Thynnes, Bridgemans, Seymours, Clives, Gordons, Montagus, Listers, Abercrombys, and Elliots. Outside the " Circle " so far as blood was con- cerned, but closely allied] to it by senti- ment and aim, were Eoxes, Greys, L'ambtons, Spencers, Fortescues, EUices, Fitzmaurices, and Lambs— in short, all the famous names of Whiggcry. Macaulay, though born out- side the " Circle," had found his way into it by political affinity ; Stanley, afterwards the great Lord Derby, wlas born in it, but 252 A NEST OF WHIGGERY worked his way out ; and Brougham, also an aUen by birth, was som'etimes inside it and oftener not. Moore sang its praises to an Irish harp, Horner and Mackintosh supphed it with a philosophy, Rogers feasted it, and its Domestic Chaplain was Sydney Smith. I have thus enumerated some of the company who contributed to the Corre- spondence now before us, and it is time to turn from the writers to the things written. The letters are, as a rule, easy, familiar, rather sHpshod, and, when the Writer wrote an exceptionally bad hand, not always intelligible. But they deal With a momentous period, and with such con- troversies at home and abroad as try the pith and marrow of political character. Throughout they breathe what was best in the spirit of Whiggery — vehement hatred of tyranny and oppression, firm regard for law and order, patient zeal for cautious progress, and a proud contempt for pres- sure, whether applied from above or from below. John, sixth Duke of Bedford (Lord 253 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES John Russell's father) was a Whig of the deepest dye. " The principles of Whiggism," he said, " have taken such deep root in my breast that nothing can shake them whilst Life and Reason remain within me." He had been Viceroy of Ireland in the Adminis- tration of " All the Talents," and had in- curred some censure for what was thought the undue lenity of his administration. In 1 8 1 7, looking back over ten years, he wrote : "I was urged to resort to strong measures and put in force the Insurrection Act. I felt convinced in my own mind that the ordinary operations of the law, administered in a combined spirit of temper and firmness, were sufficient to put an end to the disturbances, and the result justified my opinion." The Duke's Irish experience dictated his Enghsh policy at a moment when England was seething with discontent. If strong and conceive measures should now be adopted by Parliament, if the Right of Petition should be unnecessarily infringed, if the power of the Crown should be strengthened for the sole purpose of abridging the People's liberties, then indeed will the breach be widened between the Government and the 254 A NEST OF WHIGGERY People ; then will distrust and suspicion take the place of confidence and harmony, and I foresee nothing but misery and calamity as the inevitable results. Here speaks the Whiggish hatred of Tyranny, but the Whiggish mistrust of extreme counsels is not far off^ If a few factious demagogues have been talking to ignorant assemblages of the lower classes about Annual Parliaments and Universal Suffrage, the nonsense is justly scouted by the great mass of the community, and surely we ought not on such insufficient grounds to be called upon to " draw an indictment against a whole nation." Naturally, the letters trace in some detail the steps which preceded the Reform Act of 1832, and the part played by Lord John Russell, acting under Lord Grey and in concert with Althorp and Durham. It was the great achievement of his long life, and it was attained before he was forty. In 1826 the "Borough Reeve of Manchester " sent him a Resolution of Thanks, carried at a Public Meeting, for " the important service which, as a Member of the House of Commons, he has rendered 255 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES to the Town of Manchester in furtherance of its just claim to be represented in ParUament." In 1831, when the fight was at its hottest, his brother wrote to him :— You have raised a noble spirit in the country, far beyond anything I could have imagined. I know no sight so grand as a People roused from their apathy, determined to assert their rights and freedom. A few months ago all was gloomy, dark, sad, and ominous ; now all is cheerful, gay, happy, and promising. It is like the burst of spring after a severe winter. That it proved possible to carry the Bill through the Lords, without creating the peerages which the King had authorized, caused Lord John unfeigned satisfaction. " The Pitt party," he said, three years later, " has been weakened and not strengthened by making so many dull country gentlemen duller Lords. And we should lose in the same proportion. Two or three now and then may be useful, but I should regret any large creation." " Dull country gentlemen "—here speaks the Whig whose various schemes of political and educational reform have been retarded 256 A NEST OF WHIGGERY or defeated by the landed classes. "The landed gentry are very respectable, and I have always found them kind and humane ; but they are certainly the class in this country most ignorant, prejudiced, and narrow-minded of any. The unedu- cated Labourers beat them' hollow in in- telligence." This Was written in 1835, but fifty years were to elapse before that intelligence was allowed to apply itself to politics. In spite of strong prepossessions. Lord John's was always a receptive mind. "I am," he said, " very warm in political .ques- tions " ; but however " warm " he might be in pursuit of a political course, he never was ashamed to change his views as circumstances changed — ■" ' Bygones are bygones ' and ' Alors comme alors ' are two great maxims in politics." By 1836 he had come to see that the settled policy of the House of Lords was such as to demand strong action by the Whig Government, even though that action approached to what a year before he had deprecated. R 257 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES He wrote as follows in a Memorandum for the Cabinet : — It is evident that a majority of the House of Lords are comliined, not to stop or alter a particular measure, but to stop or alter all measures which may not be agreeable to the most powerful, or, in other words, the most violent, among their own body. Both the Tories and the Radicals have the advantage of a definite course with respect to this state of things. The Tories praise the wisdom of the Lords, and wish to maintain their power undiminished. The Radicals complain of a mischievous obstacle to good govern- ment, and purpose an elective House of Lords. The Ministers stand in the position of confessing the evil and not consenting to the remedy. ... It is possible, nay probable, that if the Tories could see a steady and gradual creation of Peers, to meet their obstinate resistance, they would be disposed to yield. Before the passing of the Reform Bill they were coerced by the dread of a large creation, and by that alone. It appears to me, therefore, that this opportunity should be taken for the creation of eight, ten, or twelve peers, and the Ministry be prepared to advise a similar measure whenever it is provoked. The love of justice was as strongly marked in Russell as the love of freedom. ■He could make no terms with what he thought one-sided or oppressive. Mel- bourne strangely held that the fact that a 258 A NEST OF WHIGGERY man was " a trader " necessarily disqualified him for the magistracy, apparently on the ground that his private interests might clash with his official duties. Russell replied that, " if the principle was worth anything, country gentlemen ought not to judge about hares and pheasants." When the starving labourers of Dorset combined in an association which they did not know to be illegal, he urged that incendiaries in high places, such as the Duke of Cum- berland and Lord Wynford, were " far more guilty than the labourers, but the law does not reach them, I fear." When a reform of the judicature became manifestly neces- sary, and was resisted on the ground of expense, he wrote : "I am' not deterred by that argument, so long as the object is to give the suitor justice. If you cannot afford to do justice speedily and well, you may as well shut up the Exchequer and confess that you have no right to raise taxes for the protection of the subject, for Justice is the great and primary end of government." 259 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Although, as these extracts show, the interest of the letters is mainly political, they contain here and there fragments of lighter stuff. It appears to have been Sheridan who said of Lord Lauderdale what was often repeated of a later statesman (also Scotch), " A joke of 's is no laughing matter." Fox's useful maxim for debate was " to say strong things, but not in strong language." Shelley justified the immoralities of Laon and Cynthia on the ground that, being " much confined within the circle of his own thoughts, he had formed to himself a very different measure of approbation or disapprobation for actions than that which is in use among mankind." Melbourne's opinion of Archbishop Whately is worth recalling — " It is impossible to be with him for ten minutes upon affairs with- out perceiving not only that he can do no business, but that no business can be done where he is." Brougham's rule for social discussion, if not tending to make things pleasant, was, as he said, " simple " — " I always oppose whatever I hear said. If 260 A NEST OF WHIGGERY A abuses B, I defend B, and vice versa.'' An author sent a copy of his book to Lord John as "an offering to one whose name is indissolubly connected with the Historical Literature of this country, and who has begun by writing, and progressed by acting, History." Surely the author must have been the young Disraeli ? No ; it was Bulwer-Lytton. 261 V DEMAGOGUES When the aristocratic reformer in Sybil absurdly told the Chartist's daughter that the Aristocracy were the natural leaders of the People^ she replied, with excellent sense : " The leaders of the People are those whom' the People trust." The demagogue must have the faculty of making great masses of people believe that he is in earnest, that he sees quite clearly the ends which he would secure, and that he will not flinch from a fight when the time for fighting comes. It was one of Lincoln's best sayings that " You can fool all the people some of the time, and som.e of the people all the tim'e, but you can't fool all the people all the time." The downfalls of demagogues— and history records plenty of them— occur when people dis- 262 DEMAGOGUES cover that they have been " fooled," and that the orator who promised to lead them to victory was false to the cause, or shrank from the inevitable conflict. I say " the orator," for oratory has in all ages been the chief instrument of the demagogue. Of course the spoken word reaches only, at the most, a few thousand hearers, whereas the Press has an incalculable range ; but it is the personal contact with an audience — the m'agic of eye and voice and tone and gesture— that gives the demagogue his power. The nineteenth century was peculiarly rich in demagogues ; they sprang from' all ranks ; they had been trained by various processes ; they preached .quite diverse doc- trines ; but they all had the faculty of speaking to great masses of their country- men in a way which carried conviction and excited passion. Each had his turn, his fame, his following. Of each, succes- sively, it was said : " He is the greatest demagogue England has ever seen " ; but for most of them the end was failure 263 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES and collapse ; and few indeed are their memorials . I put Daniel O'Connell in the forefront of my list because he combined in the highest perfection the physical, embtional, and histrionic powers which go to make the demagogue. His voice of music travelled fabulous distances ; he played at will on every emotion of the hearer's heart ; he could dissolve a huge audience in laughter or in tears, according to the necessities of his theme ; and he loved his country and his religion with an inspiring enthu- siasm. He lives as " the Liberator," but his reign was over long before he died. If we give the first place to an Irish- man, the second belongs of right to a Scotsman. Henry Brougham's ungovernable eloquence, with its passionate resistance to every form of tyranny, and its wrath, and bitterness, and clamour, and evil-speaking against opponents, was a tradition which lasted into our own day. Yet he vanished from public observation when he ceased 264 DEMAGOGUES to be Lord Chancellor in 183 4, and lived till 1868 in unhonoured obscurity. O'Connell and Brougham' were demagogues by instinct, but lawyers by profession ; and their training at the Bar Was supposed to have developed their natural powers of popular appeal. But t\Vo of the most effective demagogues of the nineteenth century were men who owed nothing to professional training. Lord Durham! (1792- 1840) and Sir Francis Burdett (i 770-1 844) were mten who, in birth, education, and personal qualities, typified all that is meant by aristocracy. Their traditions were those of their order, and their habits those of country gentlemen, sportsmen, and men of fashion. Each had the birthright of a com- manding eloquence, each detested tyranny, and each was ready to suffer for his faith. Burdett 's imprisonment in the Tow*er was one of the events which shook the autoc- racy of Toryism, and Durham's administra- tion of Canada laid the foundations of her settled government. But Burdett lived to desert the cause of which he had been 265 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES a confessor, and Durhami died at forty -eight, crushed by the ingratitude with which his own party had rewarded his work. In the stirring times which preceded the Reform' Act of 1832 there were no more effective demagogues than " Orator " Hunt, the hero of the " Manchester Mas- sacre " of 1 8 19, who broke the domination of the Stanleys at Preston, and then was himself broken by recalcitrant Whigs ; and Daniel Whittle Harvey, who, after sway- ing the London mob as no one since him has swayed it, subsided into the Commis- sionership of the Metropolitan Police, and suppressed the disorder which he had formerly fomented. Harvey died in 1863, and by that time two notable successors had appeared in the democratic politics of London. One was George Odger, " the inspired shoemaker," and the other Charles Bradlaugh. Henry Fawcett considered Odger the finest orator he had ever heard ; and I have seen Bradlaugh subdue the turbulence of an excited mob by merely raising his hand. Odger died, as he had 266 DEMAGOGUES lived, neglected by those who should have been his friends, and the dismal doctrines which Bradlaugh taught are as dead as the Hutchinsonian system*. The latter part of the nineteenth century was enlivened by two of the most consum- mate demagogues whom England has ever produced— Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. Each had an almost preternatural insight into the desires, emo- tions, and prejudices of the people to whom he appealed ; and it is to be observed that, though in their popular speeches they took diametrically opposite Views of questions purely pohtical, they both dug down far below the surface of mere politics, and addressed themselves to the root -instincts of human nature. Neither created political opinion, as Bright and Gladstone and Disraeli did ; so neither could be called, in the highest sense, a political genius. But each knew exactly what his hearers wanted, and gave it with consummate skill. When names so famous have been men- tioned, Mr. Lloyd George cannot be offended 267 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES if he finds hiraself included in the company. From' the extraordinary success which has attended his pubhc speaking I am inchned to draw a moral, which, to me at any rate, is exceedingly welcome. People had come to believe— and men in high political place acted on the belief— that the right form of public speaking was dry, hard, clear, unemotional, " faultily faultless, icily regular "—even "splendidly null." A Par- liamentary critic said : " Demosthenes him- self would nowadays be no match for a careless and jerking speaker who had ground down his facts in the mill of Select Committees." But Mr. Lloyd George has taught us that, now as of old, the strongest appeal to the common people is the appeal of the emotions. Here is an instance : — The honour of Britain is not dead. Her might is not broken. Her destiny is not iullilled. Her ideals are not shattered b)^ her enemies. She is more tlian ahve. She is more potent. She is greater than she ever was. Her dominions are wider, her influence is deeper, her purpose is more exalted than ever. Why should her cluldren not sing? 268 DEMAGOGUES A statesmanlike discourse, committed to manuscript or niemoiy^ reads very well in next morning's Times, but the true spring of oratory is the old Holy Well of Romance . 269 IV FROM ROME TO LONDON " At last he came ; the great man in a great position, summoned from Rome to govern England." In this sentence Lord Beaconsfield was describing Sir Robert Peel, who made that journey in November 1834. King 'William IV had just dismissed his Whig Ministers, and had commanded Peel to form an Administration. But Peel was travelling in Italy, and arrived in hot haste, " after a most extraordinarily rapid journey of twelve days only, travelling by night over precipice and snow, eight nights out of the twelve." Mr. Asquith's journey has been per- formed in a less exhausting fashion, and he returns i not to begin, but to continue, the work of Premiership ; yet there are circumstances in his career which inevit- ' This was written in 1916. 270 FROM ROME TO LONDON ably suggest comparison with' Peel, to whom of all hi^s predecessors, he bears the closest resemblance. Both sprang from the hardy north and both' from' the commercial class. Both had covered themselves with glory at school and at Oxford. Both were en- dowed by Nature with an inexhaustible faculty for hard work. Both had excep- tionally strong constitutions. In both the distinguishing quality was hard common sense, and both had very early contracted a habit of clear and accurate speech, as far as possible removed from eloquence, but admirably adapted to a business-like assem- blage. Both were conspicuously free from sentiment and romance ; both held strong but not fanatical opinions, and both were ready to modify those opinions and to change their course as the exigencies of public life seemed to require. In two words, both were consummate politicians. But there were considerable differences between the lots of the two men, and those differ- ences made themselves felt both in their characters and in their actions. 271 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Peel's father had accumulated great wealth, and could bequeath to his son not only opulence but an assured position ; Mr. Asquith has pushed his way to the front with no other aids than the thews and sinews of a truly English brain. Peel, from his earliest days, had been trained by his father for the business of public life; when Mr. Asquith went up to Balliol he had, I believe, destined himself to the Nonconformist ministry. Peel was returned to Parliament for a pocket -borough when he was twenty-one ; Mr. Asquith toiled strenuously at tuition, journalism, and law till he was thirty -three. Peel entered the Cabinet at 34; Mr. Asquith at 40. Peel became Prime Minister at 46; Mr. Asquith at 56; but Peel quitted office for ever when he was 58; and died at 62; Mr. Asquith at 63 is still Prime Minister and has, as we all hope, a long spell of vigorous life before him. Just now, when for the second time a Prime Minister is " summoned from Rome to govern England," it is interest- 272 FROM ROME TO LONDON ing to look back, and to see Mr. Asquith' as his contemporaries saw him in the 'seventies : — I remember him, says one of these, at the lectern in BaUiol Chapel, reading the lessons with a strong, equable voice, strange at his age, and with a curiously critical air. It was remarked that he always seemed to be arguing with the sacred writer, and to be conscious of getting the best of it. He had a lean and hungry look, with no promise of that broad solidity which now confronts the House of Commons. There was no eagerness in his manner ; he took everything with an air of confidence that often bordered on arrogance. His academic career, as tested by examinations, was sufficiently distinguished, but his most decisive superiority was attained at the Union. As an under- graduate he spoke very much' as he speaks to-day, in sentences so exactly constructed that they might have been taken down verbatim and printed without correction. His period at Oxford coincided with a marked decline of Liberalism. The Ministry of All the Talents, which Gladstone had constructed in 1868, was now, as Disraeli s 273 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES said, " a range of exhausted volcanoes." All its great work was done. The Irish Church was disestablished ; the Irish Land Act was law ; National Education was made compulsory ; Purchase in the Army was abolished. A series of blunders and follies, cumulative in effect, was now begin- ning to destroy the popularity of Gladstone's govemm'ent, and every one talked, not without reason, about a " Conservative Reaction." In the Autumii Term of 1873, ^^-l^r. Asquith moved a resolution at the Union to the effect " That this House neither believes in nor desires the Conservative Reaction " ; but before four months were over Gladstone and his colleagues had been swept out of power, and the " Con- servative Reaction " was a dismal reality. In 1874 Asquith took his degree and vanished from Oxford. The remorse- less deep of professional life closed o'er the head of Balliol's Lycidas, and people who remembered him at Oxford used to say : " What an extraordinary place the Bar is I There are Stryver and Buzfuz 274 FROM ROME TO LONDON and Snubbin, making their five thousand a year — and even young Pendennis and Percy Popjoy doing quite comfortably— but one never hears Asquith's name." So stood the case at the end of 1885. Then came the Home Rule Kite, the sudden conversions, the defeated Bill, and the dis- solution of 1886. Mr. J. Boyd Kinnear, an excellent Liberal, who, since the previous November, had sat for East Fife, declined to change his views about Ireland, and voted against the Home Rule Bill. The wire-pullers determined, if possible, to turn him out, and, having heard of a young man called Asquith, who spoke well and was willing to vote for Home Rule, they sought him, caught him, and sent him down to Fife — with what result we loiow. Mr. Asquith's career since August 1886 belongs to our political history^ and there is no need to recapitulate it here. Glad- stone was four times Prime Minister, and his four Premierships together amounted to a little over twelve years. Mr. Asquith has been Prime Minister only once, but 275 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES has already cotnpleted a term of eight years : — ■ , Is there anything left for ambition ? When the highest station is gained, does the noble infirmity become a desire for incense and for smoking altars? Does the praise of men count for more in itself than when tangible prizes were still to be grasped ? Or are there yet greater possibilities ? To be leader of the dominant party in the State is no small matter ; but, if the Party system is in decay, there is room for a new departure. Can he create ? This question was asked (not by me) on the day when Mr. Asquith became Prime Minister, and I leave it unanswered. 276 VII THE POWER OF SPEECH To every one who frequented the Oxford Union between 1870 and 1874 the name of Asquith was a household word. There were two Asquiths, brothers ; both, I think, of Balhol, and both distinguished undergraduates. But, \vhen one mentioned " Asquith " in connexion with' the Union one meant " H. H." The traditions of early oratory are generally misleading, but, in this particular case, tradition is amply reinforced by memory. In October 1870 —the first term' ofl Jowett's Mastership; — • there came up from the City of London School a thin, pale, rather prim-looking young Scholar of Balliol, who immediately began to make his mark. He was said to be a Yorkshireman by birth, but a boyhood spent in London had obliterated 277 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES all resemblance to John Browdie. It was understood that he had chosen the Non- conformist Ministry as his profession, and he seemied likely to play a part similar to that played, two or three years later, by Mr. R. R. Horton. He was an excellent scholar, though by no means of the Eton type ; much stronger in his mastery of his books than in the elegancies of com- position. At Balliol a man had to be, whatever else he was, a reader ; and, if he had any leisure left over from reading, and did not like boating, it was natural to bestow it on the XJnion. Asquith's leisure was more than most men's, because his method of reading was so rapid and exhaustive ; and he bestowed it on the cultivation of his natural gift of speech. If the City of London School possessed an institution corresponding to " Pop " at Eton, or " Debater " at Harrow, I feel sure that young Asquith led the House there, as he subsequently led a greater one. At Balliol he was heard with awe at the mysteriously -named' " Devorgilda," and 278 THE POWER OF SPEECH from his college his fame spread to the Union, which soon got an opportunity of judging for itself. The verdict was at once, continuously, and finally favourable. Some young speakers begin on a high level, and gradually slip down. Som'e begin in very humble fashion, and gradually ascend. H. H. Asquith began on the topmost level, and remained there till the end. Not that he was what is called a " beautiful," or fascinating, or moving speaker. Pathos, imagination, humour — those Three Graces of oratory — were equally and conspicuously absent ; but he was cogent, even commanding, in argu- ment, shrewd in detecting a fallacy, ruthless in exposing it, and ostentatiously conteaipt- uous of what he regard'ed as superstition, ignorance, or delusion. " I can see and hear him now " — writes a contemporary — " without the smallest trace of boyish rhetoric or epigram, hammering out his theme in clear-cut periods of dispassionate argument." I believe, as I said on a previous page, that, even in those very 279 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES early days, his speeches might have been taken down in shorthand, and sent to the Press without the correction of a word. Five years is a vast space in the shifting Hfe of a University ; but for that period, and longer, Asquith remained the Plancus of the Oxford Union, and, nascent politicians of a later day were told that the level of debate was no longer what it had been " when Asquith was President." He took his degree in 1874, and very soon afterwards vanished from an assured position at Oxford into the treacherous waters of professional life, where the waves seemed to close over his head. But, even in that submerged period of his existence, he was not silent, though he appealed to other audiences. As a lecturer for University Extension, as an electioneerer for the Eighty Club, at legal Debating Societies, and (when the solicitors were obliging) at the Bar, he was constantly speaking, and always with the same verbal exactness and logical force. His power of speech was by no means his only 280 THE POWER OF SPEECH equipment, for he was also a vigorous and incisive writer, in so much as one of his early eulogists thought it necessary to assure the solicitors that he had now abandoned the dangerous company of the Economist and the Spectator. But he was, as he always has been, a speaker first and foremost, and a speaker, not for the mere love of speaking, but with a definite purpose and a concrete result. In the earlier 'eighties one would have said that his speaking was essentially forensic, and that the Bar was the place where if he only got the chance, his triumphs would be won. It was his skilful cross-examination of the manager of the Times before the Parnell Commission which first won him general recognition, and even as late as 1895 Gladstone's verdict on him was : " Asquith makes a very good speech on a legal point." But in the field of politics even the hard-bitten hecklers of East Eife found him a tough' customer ; and experience of the House of Commons, with regular participation in debate, con- 281 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES verted what had been a legal into a Parliamentary style. At first his speeches were even too accurately prepared. " Faultily faultless, icily regular," though certainly not " splen- didly null." I remember an old Parlia- mentarian saying : " Asquith would do better if he took his chances a little more freely, and risk the plunge without the corks." But the habit of over -preparation, though it clings to Second Reading speeches, cures itself in Committee. When a man has to defend or attack the niceties of a complicated measure, against opposition which may arise at any moment from the most unexpected quarter, he learns to trust to his stars, and his style gains in flexibility what it loses in finish'. Before Mr. Asquith had been ten years in the House, he could (with all due respect to Gladstone's great authority) do much' more than make " a very good speech on ' a legal point." He did not indeed quite equal Sir Edward Grey in thai special quality of Parliamentary speaking which 282 THE POWER OF SPEECH consists in uttering an obvious truth in a; convincing form ; but for the ever -varying exigencies of official business in the House of Commons it would be very hard to beat him. In one respect, and that certainly not the least important, Mr. Asquith sets an example to all public speakers — I mean his brevity. Of an eminent preacher who still enchains us, it has been said that he never used one word when twenty would do as well. Invert the sentence, and you describe Mr. Asquith's speaking. Alike the habit of his mind, his taste in diction, and the structure of his sentences, all tend to brevity. Few men, I should think, who have made so many speeches, have used so few words and have wasted so little time. But, in spite of all its merits, Mr. Asquith's is not a style which lends itself to quotation. It is difficult to recall more than one or two phrases which had the power of sticking in the memory, or passed into the current speech of politics. In the 283 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Parliament of 1892-5, when the House of Lords destroyed or mutilated every Bill which the Commons sent up to them, Mr. Asquith truly said that the occupation of Liberals was " ploughing the sand." In more recent times, " -Wait and see " became proverbial ; and " I draw my salary " was re-echoed with enthusiastic applause. But his latest utterance as Prime Minister was perhaps his best : " I do not Uke the title ' Dictator.' " For my own part, I like neither the word nor the thing ; and I trust that my friend Mr. Lloyd George will restrain any Dictatorial tendencies which his colleagues may have acquired in Africa or India.' ' I Written at the moment when Mr. Lloyd George brought Lord Milner and Lord Curzon into his War Cabinet. 284 VIII CONSCIENCE AND ACTION It is good for us all, now and then, to be driven back from practice to principle. It is well to consider whether our con- duct, in any department of human life, is governed by any moral law, or is merely the product of carelessness or self-interest. In reply to several correspondents, I have recently been urging one particular prin- ciple — that Conscience, not expediency or convenience, should be our guide in political perplexities. Few will be found to gainsay this principle when stated abstractedly, but now let us look at it " pragmatically," observing the effects which it produces when practically applied. As soon as we so regard it we see that it works c^^uite differently in different cases. No two consciences are exactly alike. Some are torpid, some lively, some seared 285 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES and horny through habitual misuse, some acutely and even painfully sensitive. Of the sensitive conscience in political per- plexities a leading instance is supplied by Gladstone's retirement from' office in 1845, when Peel proposed to increase the grant to Maynooth. Here was a young and suc- cessful statesman who resigned a place in the Cabinet sooner than be responsible for legislation inconsistent with his earlier opinion ; though now he was ready to support the very Bill which he would not be a party to introducing. No wonder that he Was voted whimsical, fantastic, and impracticable — " a man whose conscience was so tender that he would never go straight." Charles Greville said : " Gladstone's expla- nation was ludicrous : he only succeeded in showing that his resignation was .quite uncalled for." And Disraeli wrote : " He m!ay have an avenir, but I doubt it." The sovereignty of conscience never had a more eager champion than the author of the Analogy and the Sermons on Human Nature, and yet Butler prayed to be 286 CONSCIENCE AND ACTION delivered from the " offcndiculum of scrupulousness " — a real infirmity to which the highly sensitive conscience is naturally prone. If any man ever passed through a long life of public service without deviating by a hair's -breadth from' the line marked out by conscience, that man was John Bright. He jeopardized his seat by, opposing the Crimean War ; he sacrificed it by opposing the Chinese War. He retired from the Cabinet as a protest against the bombardment of Alexandria. He surrendered the friendships of a life- time sooner than comply with the Irish demand for self-government. In each of those decisive actions we see the working of the principle that conscience is supreme ; but, when we come to examine the precise grounds of his decision against Home Rule, some of his admirers perceive " the offeti- diculum of scrupulousness." The world in general has forgotten the late Lord Caf- Qarvon, yet for a good many years he filled a large place in the public eye, and seemed destined to fill a larger. He was 287 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES a chivalrous, patriotic, and accomplished gentleman, of great nam^ and great estate —in short, an ideal leader for the Tory, Party, if only he had not so closely resembled " that scrupulous good m'an " whom Cowper depicted under the name of " Dubius " :— He would not with a peremptory tone Assert the nose upon his face his own. Twice he resigned office in the Tory, Cabinet — first when Lord Derby conceded Household Suffrage, and secondly when Lord Beaconsfield w'as siding with Turkey, against Russia. He returned to office as Lord -Lieutenant of Ireland, in eager sym- pathy with national demands, and found himself treacherously, deserted by astuter poHticians who had used him. Politically, his life was a failure ; morally, it was a triumph . So far I have illustrated the working of my principle by the cases of men whose consciences were exceptionally, and even painfully, acute. I turn now, for another illustration of that working, to a man of a very different type. Nobody ever charged 288 CONSCIENCE AND ACTION the late Duke of Devonshire with the " offendlciiliim of scrupulousness." 'His mental nature was singularly clear, simple, and direct. His biography has made it abundantly plain that, throughout his long association with Gladstone, he never learned to understand his chief's n:i!ind, or to antici- pate his point of View. " The plain -minded Whig nobleman, educated at Cambridge University, honestly endeavoured to follow this great man through the bewildering phases of his strange career." When allowance is made for an anti-Gladstonian bias in the Writer, this sentence is true enough, and the " honest endeavour " con- stantly landed the owner of the " plain mind " in political embarrassments. Again and again he felt uneasy ; doubted if he was right ; thought he ought to resign ; and, in short, experienced all the pangs of political indecision. The mere effort of making up his mind was distasteful to him, aiid that is an effort clearly requited of a political leader who leaves his party. Twice he made the effort with notable T 289 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES result. In 1886 he declined to join Glad- stone in his attempt to amtend the govern- ment of Ireland. "Mr. Gladstone and I do not mean the same thing," he said, and he was right. His second, and final, severance with Party was forced upon him by his conscientious objection to Tariff Reform. In opposing Home Rule, he had deserted the Party with which his youth and middle age had been associated ; in opposing Tariff Reform, he cut himself off from the Party of which for the last eighteen years he had been the most important member, " Throughout his political career his attitude was that of a man refusing to be hurried," and his attitude exactly ex- pressed his mind. His conscience repudiated what Lord Goschen called " a gamble in the food of the people," and forced him to retire from a Govemm'ent which played with it. But in his case the operation of conscience was quite unlike what it was in Gladstone and Bright and Lord Carnarvon. Those highly -strung natures 290 CONSCIENCE AND ACTION and rapidly -moving minds sprang to their decisions. Their consciences were not sensitive only, hut impatient and im- perious. The Duke of Devonshire moved, not less obediently, to the law of convic- tion, but with an extreme and even per- plexing deliberation. The mental exercises which he underwent between the promul- gation of the new fiscal policy in May 1903 and his resignation in the following October, form a most interesting study in the work- ings of the political conscience. That the eventual result of those exercises irritated Mr. Balfour into undignified ill -temper was not surprising. Men who are mentally alert are impatient of long deliberations, and not least when those deliberations issue in action hostile to themselves. What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter ? We grant that conscience is the supreme guide in political per- plexities, but, if our neighbour's decision differs, however widely, from our own, we are bound to remember that no two consciences act exactly alike. 291 IV MISCELLANEA I DESTINY " Sir Gawain said, Methinketh this shall betide ; but God may well fordo Destiny." This Arthurian quotation supplies me with the word I need, for I had found it difficult to choose a heading for this chapter. If I had called it, more amply, Predestination, I should at once have run on the *' rocky dangers " of controversial theology. If I had called it Determinism, I should have frightened away every one except the Pro- fessors and the learned ladies. " Necessity " introduces flippant associations, and the memory of the Scottish judge. Lord Cringletie, concerning whom' a disappointed rival at the Bar wrote :— Necessity and Cringletie They balance to a tittle — Necessity knows no law, And Cringletie as little. 295 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES But the wbrd " Destiny " covers wider ground. It represents a factor in human thought, which is by no means abstract, but has had a most practical and definite effect on human hfe. Ten thousand are the pleas which an uneasy conscience invents for shifting its responsibilities on to something else than the conscious and guilty self ; and nothing is easier than to charge one's shortcomings or wrongdoings on Destiny. In ages less materialistic than our own, the conception of a spiritual destiny was made to justify the most ghastly crimes. Man was preordained to do certain acts ; and, when he did them, he was merely obeying an irresistible decree, and was in no sense amenable to moral censure. Sir Walter Scott, one of whose most entrancing gifts was the power of weaving thought into narrative, made fine use of this sinister belief in the case of the intending murdjerer, whose purpose was defeated, and who himself was killed. As he lies stricken with his mortal wound, Dryfesdale murmurs in his agony — 296 DESTINY strange turns of fate ! I designed what I could not do, and he has done what he did not perchance design. Wondrous, that our will should ever oppose itself to the strong and uncontroulable tide of destiny — that we should strive against the stream when we might drift with the current. And Douglas, as he bends over the dead body, says to him' who actually dealt the fatal blow :— I blame thee not, though I lament the chance. There is an overruling destiny above us, though not in the sense of that wretched man, who, beguiled by some foreign mystagogues, used the awful word as the ready apology for whatever he chose to do. The " foreign mystagogues " might in- deed, had they thought it worth while, have justified themselves by high, though perverted, authority. A little while ago I gave some offence by writing about the " Calvinistic travesty of Religion," which had upset a young man's faith. A critic wrote : " It is scarcely fair to charge upon Calvin, or upon his perhaps too zealous followers, the sole responsibility for the doctrine of Predestination. Unhappily he was a too diligent student of St. Augus- 297 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES tine, and, possibly, a too faithful Paulinist.'^ But, whether we lay the blame on Paul, or Augustine, or Calvin, the belief in Destiny was made to justify hideous Crimes ; and its effects in destroying mental peace was scarcely less deplorable. I suppose that it reached its consummation of logical and ordered horror in the theology of New England, and in the spiritual influence exercised by such men as Edwards and Hopkins and Brainerd. The mother clasped her babe to her bosom, and believed, with an awful shudder- ing, that, long before it had a separate existence, its ultimate destiny had been irrevocably fixed, and that, in the huge majority of instances, that destiny was doom : — In no other time or place of Christendom have so fearful issues been presented to the mind. Some Church interposed its protecting shield ; the Christian- born and baptized child was supposed in some wise rescued from the curse of the Fall, and related to the great redemption. Augustine silenced the dread anxieties of trembling love by prayers offered for the dead, in times when the Church above and on earth 298 DESTINY presented itself to the eye of the mourners as a great assembly, with one accord lifting interceding hands for the parted soul. But the clear logic and intense individualism of New England deepened the problems of the Augustinian faith, while they swept away all those softening provisions so earnestly clasped to the throbbing heart of that great poet of theology. It Was the allusion to St. Augustine in my critic's letter that induced me to venture on this quotation from — what I generally detest — a theological novel. The Minister's Wooing, by Mrs. Beecher-Stovve, herself a New Englander, presents with rare force and fidelity the struggle between predestinarian theology and human love— and love carries the day, in spite of Calvin and all his gloomy crew. When Calvinism was desolating hearts and homes in the New World, it was be- ginning to lose its hold on England. It was in 1770 that the Methodist Conference made its ever -memorable decision, and, in spite of the enormous force wielded by George Whitefield' and his friends, declared for universal redemption. Calvinism drove Cowper mad, and so wrecked one of the 299 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES most beautiful of human spirits. Mindful of what my critic said, I will not lay the blame on this teacher or on that ; but against the theory that God has pre- destined some of His creatures to eternal misery I will set the Church's faith that God has created all His creatures for eternal happiness, but has left them a free choice to accept or reject the boon. It was a theologian ' pre-eminent for Orthodoxy who wrote — " Hell may be, after all, only the last a-v^ful prerogative of the human will ", ; and it was a Cardinal who said to me — > " I believe in an eternal Hell, eternally empty." But all these considerations belong, more or less closely, to the realm of theology, and, as such, Kvill by some readers be dis- missed with proper contempt. Let me turn, therefore, to another quarter, not at all theological, where the doctrine of Destiny has had disastrous effects. In this quarter the fetish is called Heredity, and it is made to bear all those moral reproaches ' J. K. lUiiigwoith. 300 DESTINY which aforetime were heaped on the head of Predestination ; and 'Heredity is rein- forced by a convenient ally called Environ- ment. A perverted spiritualism produced reaction, and the reaction took a materialistic form. Charles Kingsley was one of the earliest of our religious teachers to give the body its due place, and the things of the body their real importance, in the for- mation of human character ; but it was his nature to overstate every truth which he held. Thus he put the language of the reaction into the mouth of Sandy MacKaye :— Say how ye saw the mouth o' Hell, and the twa pillars thereof at the entry — the pawnbroker's shop o' one side and the gin-palace at the other — twa monstrous deevils, eating up men, and women, and bairns, body and soul. Look at that boy gaun out o' the pawnshop, where he's been pledging the handkerchief he stole the morning, into the ginshop ! Look at that girl that went in wi' a shawl on her back and cam' out wi'out ane ! Drunkards frae the breast ! harlots frae the cradle ! damned before they're born ! John Calvin had an inkling o' the truth there, I'm a'most driven to think, wi' his Reprobation deevils' doctrines ! 301 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Another prophet of the Reaction was Ohver Wendell Holmes, who, in his eager revolt against the Calvinism in which he had been reared, cast the blame for moral aberrations on Heredity— a pre-natal inocu- lation with the poison of the rattle-snake— a drop of Red Indian blood unwittingly intro- duced into the straitest sect of New England Puritanism. And so increasingly for fifty years the doctrine of iHeredity strengthened its hold, until some of our teachers laid it down that sin was merely a disease, and that we may be exonerated from the guilt of the most abominable crimes if only we can prove that our great -grandmother drank, or that our grandfather, when he beat his father, was repeating what the victim had himself done sixty years before. Of more recent years, science has come to the rescue of common sense and morality ; and now we are taught the obvious truth that each of us has an infinite number of ancestors, and that, while they have bequeathed to us lan equal number of con- tending influences, it is our business to 302 DESTINY decide 'which of those influences is to pre- vail. So conscience and will have once again resunned their kingdom, and we have learned what our Arthurian forerunners meant when they said that "God may well fordo Destiny." 303 II THE SPIRITS IN PRISON My title is taken from; one of the most mysterious passages in the New Testament ; but I am not going to attempt a theo- logical discourse nor to perplex my readers with doubtful interpretations. I am thinking of those who, like ourselves, are Confined and pestered in this pin-fold here, but, unlike us, find one of the five ways of exit barred. The physical senses used to be called " The Five Gateways of Know- ledge," but it is not less true that they are five ways of escape from the cares which "confine" and "pester" us. The subject is forced upon my thoughts by the spectacle, most pathetic, most exalting, which just now encounters us every day in the parks, in the streets, and in the 304 THE SPIRITS IN PRISON hospitals— the spectacle of mien who, for their country's cause, have sacrificed what may Well seem even more precious than life itself. Mankind has agreed to regard the sense of Taste as the humblest of the five gate- ways. Honest folks who really enjoy their food are ashamied to say so ; and, as people undervalue the blessing of taste, so naturally they ' do not compassionate its loss. Yet I think that Dean Stanley, who was born without taste or smell, would have been a happier and a healthier man if he had been encouraged to eat by the incentive of the palate, and not merely by the feeling of faintness if the m'eal was forgotten. Harriet Martineau was born without taste or hearing ; but once, for a rapturous moment, the sense of taste was vouchsafed to her when she was eating a mutton-chop, and she exclaimed, in transport : " This is heaven ! " What would she have said if she had been eating strawberries and cream? I mention Taste, only because it is one U 305 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES of the Five Gateways. The sense of Smell is infinitely more poetic, for the mere mention of it recalls " the rich and balmy eve," breathing roses and cloves and mignonette and heliotrope and syringa ; and, even when these glories have departed, it reminds us of the wholesome freshness of neW-turned earth and new -cut grass, and the strange, penetrating aroma of the autumn woods. " Golden vials full of odours " have their place in the Apocalyptic worship, and who is there that does not know the power of a long-forgotten scent to wake a sleeping memory ? One opens a cabinet, or takes the stopper out of a smelling-bottle, or unfolds a packet of letters long since put away, and forthwith the magical whiff of musk or cedar or sandalwood carries one back over an inter- space of thirty years, and one touches again the vanished hand that locked the cabinet and docketed the letters. The loss of smell would be a very real privation. The sense of Feeling is, I suppose, the sense which most people value least. -When 306 THE SPIRITS IN PRISON Walter Pater brought out his Studies in the History of tlie Renaissance, he had them printed on a curiously ribbed paper, because life ought to be a series of physically agreeable sensations, and it was a pity to lose the gratification of the finger-tips. But this, though strictly Eesthetic, was rather namby-pamby, and, except for utilitarian purposes, most men would suffer little from' the loss of feehng. The sense of Sight is, I suppose, the sense which we generally regard as the most precious of all. " Blind Bartimseus " is the eternal type of darkened humanity striving for the light. We all have had repeated occasion to admire the noble patience and courage of the blind, and our sightless soldiers are exemplifying it anew. By their endurance they make their souls their own. Blind men and blind women, poor, friendless, and bereft, yet bear the burden of life with unflagging cheerfulness, and cherish an even proud independence. Let any one to whom this thought appeals visit St. Dunstan's or 307 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES the Royal College at Norwood, and see the m'arvels of activity and intelligence and physical courage which are there the com- monplaces of daily, experience. Music is to the blind m'an the very gate of heaven, and through it the imprisoned spirit escapes into light and joy. There is an irritating commonplace, glibly uttered by those who excel in finding reasons why other people should be patient, and it runs thus : " Oh ! but blind people are so cheerful. It is the deaf who are so cross and disagreeable." There is an element of truth in the saying, and the reason of it is surely obvious. The time when one is talking to a blind friend is the time when he feels his afflic- tion least. For the moment he is on even terms with those around him, and he rejoices in his opportunity. We do not see him during the long hours of silence and solitude, when he is alone with his own thoughts in a darkness which can be felt. 1 always remember the pathetic tone in which Henry Fawcett — the bravest 308 THE SPIRITS IN PRISON of blind men— used to say " Good-bye " when one left him, though it might be only to cross the room'. On the other hand, the hour of con- versation is the hour when the deaf m'an resents his deafness. Every open mouth' in the room, every animated face, every token of eager or interesting talk, reminds him of his loss ; and the vocal clumsiness with which people generally address them- selves to the deaf aggravates the vexation. What music is to the blind, that, I hope, books are to the deaf. A man may forget his prison -walls when he is visited by Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Scott and Dickens, and the goodly company which they bring in their train. It constantly falls to ray lot to speak on behalf of some society or institution devoted to the assistance of the " Spirits in Prison," and I anticipate some such opportunities as the result of the war. It is a joyous task, and yet it has its difficulties. The " Spirits," like the rest of us, have their prejudices and their pre- 309 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES dilections. They dislike, most rightly, any attempt at buffoonery. They dislike not less the feeling that they are patronized or talked -down -to. They dislike being publicly pitied. It is best on such occasions to say nothing about the pathetic side of things, for that side speaks for itself in a gymnastic exhibition by the blind, or a cricket -match played by two dumb elevens. A word of friendliness, a word of encouragement, above all a word of fun, is what the imprisoned spirit needs ; and thrice happy is he who, whether by voice or pen, has the privilege of saying it. "The lessons of Hope," said Gladstone, " are, upon the whole, the lessons of wisdom ; and the labooir of life is cheered by the song of life." 310 Ill EDUCATION *' It is tiresome to hear education dis- cussed, tiresome to educate, and tiresome to be educated." In this emphatic cry of Lord Melbourne (reported by Queen Victoria) the secret thoughts of mlany hearts found utterance. As to the tire- someness of hearing education discussed, we all are agreed. In The Lighter Side of School Life, Ian Hay, himself a school- master, has described with admirable fidelity the instructive eloquence of the officiant on Speech Day, who informs a jaded audience that education, etymologically con- sidered, signifies the process, not of putting in, but of drawing out. Perhaps Lord Melbourne, in " his green, unknowing youth," had suffered under some such infliction. Her Majesty's journal thus 'elaborates the theme :— Lord M. made us laugh very much with his opinions about Schools and Public Education ; the latter he 311 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES don't like, and when I asked him if he did, he said. " I daren't say in these times I'm against it, but I am against it." He says it may do pretty well in Germany, but that the English would not submit to that thral- dom ; he thinks it had much better be left to Voluntary Education, and that people of very great genius were educated by circumstances, and that " the education of circumstances " was the best ; what is taught in schools might be improved, he thinks. These words were written in 1839, ^^^ it is worthy of note that Melbourne, a good Whig and a friend to civil liberty, already detected the tendency to over- governm'ent which has made Germany what she is ; and, though thirty years later England submitted to the " thraldom " of national and compulsory education, some of our present advisers are apparently anxious to throw it off, or at least to mitigate its rigours. The State has got to econo- mize — let it begin, say these publicists, in the school. The pitifullest and meanest outcry which can be uttered is the outcry of the well-to-do classes against expendi- ture on the instruction of the poor. To put the issue in the vulgarest form, com- 312 EDUCATION pare what, as a nation, we spend on drink with what we spend on education, and you will have good reason to be ashamed of our national housekeeping. Close on eighty years ago Sydney Smith, preaching in St. Paul's Cathedral pn the duty of public education, said : " When I see the village school, and the tattered scholars, and the aged master or mistress teaching the mechanical art of reading or writing, and thinking that they are teaching that alone, I feel that the aged instructor is protecting life, insuring property, fencing the altar, guarding the throne, giving space and liberty to all the fine powers of man, and lifting him up to his own place in the order of creation." Those are not bad words for a dignitary of the Established Churt:h in the year 1837, and Churchmen may take a reason- able pride in the fact that, in the mlatter of public education, as in so many other spheres of secular beneficence, the Church has preceded and led the State. In the darkest days of social exclusiveness the 313 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Church was the nursing-mother of the poor scholar, and provided of her own free- will that career for talent which is now secured by law. Bishop Butler, preaching in 1745 o^"^ behalf of the Charity Schools of London and Westminster, anticipated, and rebutted by anticipation, the views of those who a hundred and seventy years later should selfishly oppose the demands of popular education. He speaks of the successive changes in the world, and shows how they make certain knowledge neces- sary which was not so formerly ; he urges the hardship of exclusion from such know- ledge ; and he ridicules with characteristic satire the absurdity and selfishness of those who are " so extremely apprehensive of the danger that poor persons will make a perverse use of even the least advantage, whilst they do not appear at all apprehen- sive of the like danger for themselves or their own children, in respect of riches or power, how much soever ; though the danger of perverting these advantages is surely as great, and the perversion 314 EDUCATION itself of much greater and worse con- sequence." The sam'e great man in the same great sermon says, with equal insight : " Of educa- tion, inform'ation itself is really the least part." Most certainly it is, and yet, the conditions of life for poor boys and girls being what they are, information is a Very necessary part. The struggle for existence, the pressure of competition, the rivalry of foreigtn nations, makes it imperatively neces- sary that, during the few years that these children are in our hands, we should supply them' with such an outfit in the way of hard knowledge and definite accomplish- ment as will save them from being crushed to death in the struggle for self-support. This much must be secured; and, con- currently with it, there must be the moral education which is supplied by order, discipline, and cleanliness ; the sense of membership of a body ; the encourage- ment of honest pa-ide in good work ; some provision for the aesthetic sense ; some attempt to make good the inevitable short- comings of the perhaps squalid home. 315 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES If this be so, it means, of course, warm, healthy, and convenient school -rooms ; it means something at least in the way of artistic decoration ; it means the cultiva- tion of music ; and, above all, it m^ans a well-paid staff of teachers. No form of public m-eanness can be more suicidal than that of " sweating " the men and the women who are training the next generation of English citizens. Physical exercises, such as drill and swimmingr— the training of the body as well as the intellect — should form a part of any system of national education. And this leads me to a further point — Can all this work of body and mind be done on an empty stomach, or, at the best, a half -nourished frame ? One free mieal a day in every elementary school is, as I conceive, positively due to ill -fed children whom we compel to learn ; and, if any one is found to grumble at the cost, let him' ask a teacher of a County Council school to describe the scraps of food on which, even in the depth of winter, so many of the children 316 EDUCATION subsist ; let himi compare them with the succession of meals which he deems essen- tial for his own family — and then pray God to take away the heart of stone and give him a heart of flesh. Information, then, as Bishop Butler said, is the least part of education. The greatest, I suppose, is the development of the child's natural power to its utmost extent and capacity ; and the duty of so developing it must, I think, be admitted by every one who ponders the Divine teaching about the buried talent, and the pound laid up in a napkin. Unless we enable and en- courage every boy in England to bring whatever physical and miental gifts he has to the highest point of their possible per- fection, we are shamefully and culpably squandering the treasure which God has given to England to be traded with and accounted for. And we have no one but ourselves to blamie if, as a Nenlesis on our neglect, we lose our present standing among the educated nations of the wbrld. 317 IV A DISREGARDED PROPHET Once, in those happier days when men's minds were not wholly occupied with blood- shed, Lord Haldane was discoursing on Education. " I wish," he exclaimed, " we had Matthew Arnold again among us to be our prophet." Arnold preached, all his life long, the doctrine that a State is responsible for the proper education of its children ; and this doctrine fell upon deaf ears. His first point was that at the apex of the pyramid there must be a Minister of Education. " Merely for administrative convenience such a Minister is, indeed, indispensable. But it is even more important to have a centre in which to fix responsibility." In Arnold's time the Lord President of the Council was theoretically President of the Committee 318 A DISREGARDED PROPHET of Council on Education ; but the work — so far as it was done at all — was done by the Vice-President of the Committee ; so authority was dissociated from responsi- bility, with the most injurious results. •When Arnold had retired from his inspec- torship he said to a gathering of teachers : — I know the Duke of Richmond told the House of Lords that, as Lord President, he was Minister of Education — (laughter) — but really the Duke's sense of humour must have been slumbering when he told the House of Lords that a man is not Minister of Education by taking the name, but by doing the functions. (Cheers.) To do the functions he must put his mind to the subject of education ; and, so long as Lord Presidents are what they are, and education is what it is, a Lord President will not be a man who puts his mind to the subject of education. A Vice-President is not, on the Lord President's own showing, and cannot be, Minister for Education. He cannot be made responsible for faults and neglects. Now, what we want in a Minister of Education is this — a centre where we can fix the responsibility.^ This great and responsible officer must, in Arnold's view, be a Cabinet Minister, ' Arnold's aspiration has now (191 7) been realized by the appointment of Mr. H. A. L. Fisher to the Presidency of the Board of Education. 319 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES and was to preside over the whole educa- tion of the country. The Universities, the Public Schools, and the Elementary Schools were all to be subject to his sway. The Minister was to be assisted by a Council of Education, " comprising, with- out regard to politics, the persons most proper to be heard on questions of public educa- tion." This Council was to be consultative, and the Minister was to take its opinions on all-important measures, but the respon- sibility for the decision was to be his alone. All such anomalous institutions as King's College were to be co-ordinated to the existing Universities ; and the Uni- versities were to establish " Eaculties " in great centres of population, supply pro- fessors and lecturers, aiid then examine and confer degrees. Then the country should be niapped out into eight or ten districts, and each of those districts should have a Provincial School-board, which should " represent the State in the country," keep the Minister informed of local requirements, and act as the organ 320 A DISREGARDED PROPHET of communication between him and the schools in its jurisdiction. All schools, from Eton downwards, were to be subject to this provincial jurisdiction, with the Minister as the final authority. The whole face of the country is, studded with small grammar-schools or foundation-schools, having endowments, greater or smaller, and a permanent and corporate life. These schools, enlarged and reformed, were, accord- ing to Arnold's scheme, to be the ordinary training-places of the middle class. Where they did not exist, similar schools were to be created by the State and dubbed "Royal" or "Public" Schools. Arnold contended that ancient schools so revived and modern schools so constituted, would have a dignity and a status such as no school of private venture could attain. Even more important were Arnold's sug- gestions about the elementary schools : — The moment the working class of this country have the question of compulsory education brought home to them, their self-respect will make them demand, like the working classes of the Continent, Public POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Schools lor their children, and not schools which the clergyman or the squire or the mill-owner can call my school. That word which he italicized — Public — is the key to Arnold's whole system. From top to bottom the education of the country was^ to be Public. The Univer- sities were to> be made " public " in the sense that they were to be supervised and regulated by the State. The Public Schools, traditionally so called, were to be made really public by being brought under the Minister and the School-boards. The lesser Foundation Schools were to be made public by a redistribution of their revenues ; and the new schools, public by virtue of their creation, were to be established alongside of the older foundations. This, in broad outline, was Arnold's scheme ; but he saw very clearly the " capital difficulty " of carrying it into effect : — The Public School for the people must rest upon the niunici])al organization of the country. . . . But the country districts, with us, have at present only the feudal and ecclesiastical organization of the Middle Ages. 322 A DISREGARDED PROPHET Of recent years people have come to regard education as far more a matter of public concern, and far less a matter of private venture, than in Mid -Victorian days. We have gradually come to see that the State and the municipality, in their respective areas, have something to say on the matter. Agam, the institutions of local government have developed themselves on the lines desiderated by Arnold in 1868. The sub- ordination of education to County Councils was, m the eyes of many, a risky experiment ; but it was exactly the experiment which he wished to see. The resuscitation of the Edwardian and Elizabethan grammar- schools all over the country has brought the notion of the Public School to the very door of the middle class; and the provision of intermediate schools by local authorities has shaken the strongholds of such as Mr. Creakle. The Parliament of 1868-74— the first elected by a democratic suffrage— was intent on reform in every direction ; and the POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES cherished right of a father to starve his child's mind was strenuously challenged. At this juncture Arnold repeatedly reminded his countrymen, then unaccustomed to the working of compulsory education, that it would be intolerably unjust and absurd if it were applied only to the children of the poor. He contended that the upper and middle classes were every whit as much in need of an obligatory system, if their children were to be properly educated, as the working classes for whom it was proposed to legislate : — The principle is just as good for one class as another, and it is only by applying it impartially that you can save its application from being insolent and invidious. This theme is elaborated, with exuberant wit and fancy, in Friendship's Garland — a delightful book which all who concern themselves with National Education would do well to ponder. 324 V GHOSTS A FRIEND sends me the subjoined cutting ; thinks it " Christmassy " ; and is sure that I have some Family Ghost -stories which would interest the International Club : — It was the Christmas gathering of the International Club for Psychical Research. The members, who are well known in Society and the professions, gathered round the bright little tea-tables and the blazing fires in a room overlooking Piccadilly and told ghost stories — stories of extraordinary happenings, of weird hauntings, and of things strange and most unaccountable. Alas ! I have no contribution to make. I cannot claim a place at that symposium. I am ghost -proof, and was reared in a ghost -proof hom'e. My forefathers helped to plunder the Church under Henry VIII, and had their share in the Sack of Rome. Under Edward VT they suppressed a 325 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES rebellion in Devonshire. During Mary's agitating reign they contrived to keep their heads on their shoulders and their money in their pockets ; and then, acting under Elizabeth's commission, they restored order in Ireland by methods strenuous even for that age. Generally speaking, they bore their part in all the turbulent proceedings, at home and abroad, which made English History in the sixteenth century. It can scarcely be doubted that a family which behaved so actively at a period when human life was little accounted of, must have, sooner or later, done something which deserved a Ghost. Certainly they made a good many people ghosts before their time ; and yet, as far as I know, we have been wholly free from' super- natural visitations. Perhaps three hundred years of ordinary citizenship have obli- terated the traces of tumultuous wrong- doing ; perhaps the fact that one of ourselves was forcibly disembodied has redressed the balance and wiped off the score. Anyhow, the fact remains that, 326 GHOSTS as far as I am personally concerned, I have neither Family Ghosts nor Family Superstitions. My friends have plenty ; and yet, perhaps because I myself am ghost -proof, I have only very dim and confused notions of other people's ghosts. Vaguely I seem to remem- ber that in every country house of any pretensions, from: Hampton Court downwards, mysterious footsteps are heard, and doors open of their own accord, and people walk up and down stairs with their heads under their arms. Sir Frank Burnand got exactly the right " atmosphere " when he described the Haunted Chamber at Bovor Castle. " Childers wants tact. He hopes I shall sleep comfortably, and laugh- ingly trusts I won't see any ghosts. I reply, Fll tell him all about the ghosts in the morning. I remember (just as he says good-night) a story of this sort in Washington Irving, I think, where a man jested about telling them in the morn- ing about a ghost, and was haunted. I think his hair turned white, and he saw 327 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES a picture roll its eyes, and the top of the bed came down. I forget exactly; but it's not the sort of thing to remember just as you are going to bed in the ' Haunted Chamber ' of a strange house." " Bovor Castle "^or at least the house from which it is drawn with curious fidelity — is in the cheerful county of Kent ; but, as we move northward, ghosts become more insistent, and, when once we cross the Border, we are in their peculiar dominion. I suppose that as long as people talk about the Weird and the Uncanny, they will tell, with variants, the tale of G Castle ; and at least one person in each company will know exactly where the Secret Room is, and what it contains, and what became of the rash lady who hung towels out of all the windows she could find, so as to localize, negatively, the room whicJi hadiVt a window. And, when they have exhausted G Castle, they will turn to W , and will affirm that they met " Green Jean " in the passage and were surprised not to 328 GHOSTS find her at dinner ; or to A , where, on Hallow E'en^ the murdered Countess still points reproachflilly to her bleeding breast. I once asked a lady, who, in her earlier life, had lived in the very heart of society, ind who returned to it after a long absence, what was the change which struck her most 'orcibly. She promptly replied : " The growth of superstition. I hear my friends ieriously discussing ghosts. In my day Deople who talked in that way would lave been put in Bedlam ; their relations vould have required no other proof that hey were mad." My own experience con- irms this testimony. People who used o tell ghost-stories told them either to ill gaps when reasonable conversation failed, )r for the fun of hi'aking credulous hearers tare and gasp. Bishop Wilberforce in- dented a splendid story about a priest and L sliding panel and a concealed confes- ion ; and I believe that he habitually ised it as a foolometer, to test the nental capacity of new acquaintances. " Superstition and infidelity usually go 329 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES together. Professed atheists have trafficked in augury, and men who will not believe in God will believe in ghosts." But of late years ghosts have gone out of fashion, and Spooks (a word fashioned, I believe, by Mr. Andrew Lang out of Greek mate- rials) have taken their place. People stuffed with luncheon and coffee and Kiimmel and cigarettes will sit in an admiring circle round some absurd impostor, male or female, who dilates on " that rap, which none who have heard it can ever forget," and narrates imbecile conversation with departed friends whom' one had credited with better sense. Closely connected with " Spook- ery," is Clairvoyance; Mrs. Endor throws herself into a trance, announces what she knows will be acceptable, pockets her cheque, and sets oft on her return journey to America or Australia. But Clairv^oyance is a little old-fashioned. Crystal-gazing is more modish, and as easy as lying. You gather open-mouthed round a glass ball, and the gifted gazer reports that which he or she can see, but which 330 GHOSTS s invisible to the grosser eyes. There ire no bounds to the fascinating range )f a crystal -gazer's fancy, nor to the awe- itruck credulity of his dupes. But crystal s not the only m'edium through which I purged eye can discern the mysterious uture. Coffee-grounds, though less ro- nantic, are very serviceable. Our hostess s an expert in this fonn of science, and, )eing a thoroughly amiable woman, she nakes the coffee say pretty much what we vould like to hear — " Dear Mr. Taper, his is delightful. You will be Prime Minister before you die. Hope on, hope 2ver, and trust your star." " Oh, Mr. Stylo, I have such good news for you. ^our next book will be an immense success, ind, after that, Messrs. Skin and Flint ivill be more liberal, and you will make quite a fortune." Closely akin to the science of coffee-grounds is that of Palmistry. A. wretched gipsy who " tells fortunes " at a race-meeting is sent to prison ; but when the Vi-car of St. Berengaria's gets up a bazaar for a military hospital, a 331 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES bejewelled lady sits in a secret chamber (for admission to which an extra half- crown is charged), and, after scrutinizing your line of life, tells you that you have had influenza, and, projecting her soul into futurity, says that the next time you have it you will get pneumonia unless you are very careful. Of these absurdities one can afford to speak lightly ; but graver reprehension is required for certain malpractices which are grouped together under the name of " Occultism." I have known a most pro- mising boy whose health was destroyed and his career ruined by a hypnotic experi- ment practised on him without his parents' knowledge. I have known a hypnotic clergy- man who cozened the women of his con- gregation out of money, character, and, in some cases, reason. Where Occultism is pursued, veracity and self-respect disappear, and all that is evil finds congenial lodgment. Whoso is wise will ponder these things, and will give occultists, male and female, an uncommonly wide berth. 332 \ GHOSTS But, in pursuing, I seem to have travelled a long way from my starting-point. To it I now return, under the guidance of Charles Kingsley, who, when questioned about his Family Ghost—" Button-cap " yclept— wrote thus to his enquirer :— Of Button-cap— I knew him well. He used to walk across the room in (lopping slippers, and turn over the leaves of books to find the missing deed, whereof he had defrauded the orphan and the widow. Nobody ever saw him ; but, in spite of that, he wore a Howered dressing-gown, and a cap with a button on it. Some- times he turned cross, and played Poltergeist, as the Germans say, roUuig the barrels in the cellar with surprising noise, which was undignified. So he was always ashamed of himself, and put them all back in their places before morning. I believe he is gone now. . . . Perhaps some one had been laying phosphoric paste about, and he ate thereof, and ran down to the pond, and drank till he burst. He was Rats. The last word in this instructive passage has acquired a new sense since Kingsley wrote, and it is a sense which exactly suits the matter in hand. Whenever I listen to tales of the Occult, the exclamation which rises instinctively to my lips is—" RATS ! " 333 VI WHY THURSDAY P " A MEATLESS Thursday " has a curiously perverse sound. In a novel by a highly accomplished lady there is a moving dialogue between the heroine and the hero at a water-party — " ' Sit in the bows,' she said, pointing to the stern." Why? and the same question rises to my lips when I see the Bishop of London combining with journalists, doctors, and dissenting ministers to enjoin a "meatless Thursday." A meatless Friday is prescribed by the Church of which the Bishop is a chief pastor, and is doubtless observed in all episcopal palaces. It is also prescribed by the Church of Rome, and it was observed, until a time well within my own recollection, by the stricter followers of John Wesley . 334 WHY THURSDAY? The Church of England anticipated, by about three hundred years, the salutary efforts of Dr. Saleeby and Mr. St. Loe Strachey. The Church enumerates as " days of fasting or abstinence " (which certainly excludes meat) all the Fridays in the year, unless Christmas Day falls on one of them; the 40 days of Lent, 16 vigils of Holy Days, 12 Ember Days, and 3 Rogation Days— altogether (making allowance for the possibility that some may overlap) at least 120 days out of the 365. It is true that very few, in our degenerate age, can face the 40 days of Lenten abstinence, but every one can manage a meatless Friday, and thereby can improve his health, save his money, and illustrate his churchmanship . But I am a zealous champion of the rights of conscience, and would not for the world impose the Church's rule on my fellow- citizens who are not Churchmen. My Non- conformist brother can enjoy a meatless Thursday; the atheist,, the agnostic, and the nothingarian, can choose a Monday, 335 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES or a Tuesday, or a Wednesday ; and my Jewish friends would probably prefer Saturday, thereby training themlselves for the far greater feat of endurance which they practise between sunset and sunset on the Day of Atonement. To establish one meatless day in seven would be, without reference to any theo- logical predilections, a social reform of great value. The war has taught us that many things. Conscription among the number, which we deemed impossible are possible, and, we hope, salutary. If the war also teaches us that we all eat too much meat, and can be not only as well but much better without it, we shall all be the gainers. " lis mangent comme les ogres ! " was the comment of a French maid on the eating habits of an English family ; and a glance at a common cookery- book or bill of fare will justify her ver- dict. Harold Skimpolc was wise before his time when he contrasted his own habits with those of his carnivorous contemporaries :— - 336 WHY THURSDAY? Some men want legs of beef and mutton for breakfast ; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret ; I am content. I don't want them for themselves ; but they remind me of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of beef and mutton ; mere animal satisfaction. Legs of beef and imutton for breakfast must have been a gastronomical excess even in the days when Mr. Skimpole flourished ; but legs of' beef and mutton for dinner, following one another in hideous alterna- tion all the year round, have maintained their monotonous ascendency even to the present day. The first man who had the courage to challenge this national abuse was Sir Henry Thompson (i 820-1 904), whose long practice as a surgeon convinced him that a large proportion of human disease was directly traceable to excess of meat- eating. Early in the 'eighties he published his excellent treatise on f^ood and Feeding, and showed at once a wholesomer, a cheaper, and a more agreeable, system of aliment than had previously obtained in England. Though he was separated by the distance of the poles from' the eccle- Y 337 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES siastical standpoint, he enjoined a diet which' would come near to making every day in the year a Jour maigre. He claimed for fish and eggs and vegetables and cheese their rightful place in domestic economy ; and, when I add that he also prescribed water -drinking, I secure for him the respectful attention of another band of dietetic reformers . The reform' which Thompson taught has made its Avay slowly but surely. The consumption of animal food in the ordinary diet of the well-to-do has visibly declined, but might be reduced much further with the best results. Of course, all tides are liable to refluences, and all reforms to reaction ; and there was a lamentable recrudescence of meat -eating when " The Salisbury Cure " came into vogue. I have no notion why it was called " Salisbury " —certainly not with reference to the illus- trious statesman so named. It consisted of minced beef, as nearly as possible raw, with jorums of hot water between meals. The tendency of all fanaticism' is to cause 338 WHY THURSDAY? a rebound ; and the victimis of this dis- gusting cure as soon as they recovered betook themselves, with all convenient speed, to "The Haig Cure." This cure was cheese. A mountain of Stilton or Cheddar crowned the festive board, and the chinks, external and internal, were filled up with nuts. It is true of man generally, and of the food -faddist in particular, that he never continueth long in one stay ; and the lively oracles of Salisbury and Haig were soon superseded by those of Metchnikoff. Constitutions which had sur- vived red beef and hot water, cheese and nuts, succumbed to sour milk, which, by its very loathsomeness, gradually recalled people to dietetic sanity ; but not for long. Now the enthusiasts are all agog for the " Fruitarian Cure," which has, at least in the summer, an alluring sound. We have sometimes shuddered at the rigidity of the monastic establishment described in The Ingoldsby Legends : — Where a full choir of monks and a full choir of nuns Lived on nothing but cabbage and hot-cross buns. 339 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES But the rigidity of the " Fruitarian Cure " is much more alarming. It sanctions the cabbage, but forbids the buns. It teaches that all cooking is a mistake, that the h disciple must live on raw vegetables, and I that even bread and tea, being cooked, are poisonous. -When these dismal truths are once grasped, one feels sure that a revolt will ensue and that common sense will resume its reign . In all reforms, religious, social, political, economic, the extremist is the pioneer ; but wisdom consists in following him only half, or at the most three-quarters, of the way. By all means let us go in for the one meatless day in seven, and, if we can make it two, so much the better. In health and in patriotism, as well as in things spiritual, the Church is a trustworthy guide. 340 VII IN HONOUR BOUND Edged with red, white, and bhie bands. Lord Devonport's pledge card was issued yesterday to householders for exhibition in their windows. On a white background it bears the inscription, in red and blue lettering: "In honour bound we adopt the national scale of voluntary rations." Copies may be had free on application to the Publicity Bureau, Ministry of Food, Grosvenor House, W. i. I COPY the foregoing extract from a daily paper, because I wish to know what is implied by the first three words of the pledge-card. No man can be " in honour bound " except by his own engagement. No one on earth— not the King, not the Pope, not the Archbishop of Canterbury, not the Prime Minister, not even Lord Devonport — can put another person " on his honour." I repudiate the " red, white, and blue bands " of the Rubhcity Bureau, and 341 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES cast away its cords from me. I can pledge my own honour, but no one on earth can pledge it for me. To maintain the opposite of this propo- sition would land society in preposterous difficulties. If one man had the power to put another " on his honour," life, property, and character would all be jeopardized. That pleasant rogue, Raffles, contemplating a burglary, could say to his bosom friend : "I mean to try my luck at No. I, Stucco Gardens, to-night, but I put you on your honour not to tell the police." That eminent sporting and poison- ing character. Dr. Palmer, of Rugeley, could have said to a confederate : " I put you on your honour not to mention it, but I mean to give our friend Cooke a dose which he won't recover from'." Thackeray's " dear young literary friend, Tom Garbage," might say to another young lion of Fleet Street : " I'm going to write something libellous about Lady Lilywhite, of course anonymously ; but mind, you are on your honour not to give me away." The claim 342 IN HONOUR BOUND of A. to put B. on his honour, if allowed by society, would make B, a partaker of all A.'s misdoings, and might force him, all against his will, to compound a felony. Of course, if Raffles or Palmer or Garbage said to his friend : " Will you promise not to divulge what I am' going to tell you?" and the friend was fool enough to say " Yes," his honour would be pledged ; but by his own act. Putting aside the extreme though illus- trative instance of crime, only think of the disastrous use which the " Unco' guid," the Faddists, and the Fanatics, would make of the power to^ put other people on their honour. Archbishop Temple or Sir Wilfrid Lawson might have put us on our honour to abstain from alcohol; the Food Re- formers might put us on our honour to eat nothing but water -cress and arrow- root ; the Anti -Tobacco League might put us on our honour to eschew cigarettes ; and the Dress Reformers on our honour to wear vegetarian boots. But, it may be said : " In these cases 343 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES there would be no executive authority behind the Faddist who is meddhng with your honour ; whereas Lord Devonport, if you disregard his decrees, can enforce them by cutting off the supphes." But this docs not mend matters—it makes them worse, because it introduces the element of bully- ing. If Lord Devonport thinks that we ought to eat only a certain amount, by all means let him enforce that amount— if he can. If he thinks he cannot enforce it, let him say : "I appeal to your patriotism and good sense to economize in food as much as you can " — and every good citizen will at once respond . But if he says : " I put you on your honour only to eat as much as I allow," every one who values the few shreds of independence still left to us will reply : " Here you are travelling beyond your powers. My honour is my own affair. If I promise to abstain from food, then I am ' in honour bound ' ; but the fact that you have told me to abstain, and threaten compulsion if I disobey, neither binds my honour nor touches my conscience." 344 IN HONOUR BOUND I remember an incident of my Harrow days which illustrates Lord Devonport's method. The master under whom I began had a laudable wish to make us learn some English poetry, in addition to the Virgil with which we were daily crammed, so he proposed a voluntary repetition of Milton, for which he promised high marks. But we were young and thoughtless, and Paradise Lost seemed no paradise — rather a purgatory. Whereupon the master said : " If you do not act on my suggestion about the Voluntary Repetition, I shall be obliged to make it compulsory." This method of contingent, or conditional, coercion, was ludicrous enough ; but the master did not enhance the absurdity by saying : "I put you on your honour to learn Raphael's speech by heart, and if you don't, I shall punish you." Young as we were, I think that some of us would have replied : " Wait till we've promised, sir, and then punish us if we break our word." I have made no promise to Lord Devonport, and therefore I cannot break it. I have not pledged 345 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES my honour to him, and he cannot pledge it for me. Not all the Red, White, and Blue Bands in the " Publicity Bureau "— not all the red tape and blue pencils in Grosvenor House — can make me " in honour bound " to do what I have not promised to do. I heard the other day a curious demurrer to my doctrine that no man can bind another's honour — " \Mien you consult a priest, or a doctor, or a banker, he is bound in honour not to divulge what you tell him." Most true ; but I do not bind him; he binds himself. A man who enters the priesthood binds him- self in honour, and by the Common Law of Christendom', to keep what he hears in Confession as secret as the grave ; and the same effective though unspoken pledge is given in substance by every man who becomes a doctor or a banker. In each case the man pledges his own honour by the very act of entering his profession. I have made this protest against what I think a monstrous assumption, but in 346 IN HONOUR BOUND making it I am not actuated by any dis- respect for Lord Devonport (whose public spirit I sincerely admire), or by any dis- sent from the system of diet which he is trying to establish. Quite apart from all considerations arising out of the war, he will be rendering a Valuable service to the national health if he persuades Englishmen that what Harold Skimpole called " legs of sheep and oxen " are not the appointed food of man. Only, if he is going to cut off our meat, he must induce his colleague, Mr. Prothero, to give us some potatoes. tf that eminent agri- culturist says that there are none to be got, let him turn his attention to a certain district of Bedfordshire, over which, as agent to the Duke of Bedford, he has long exercised a benevolent despotism. It is almost a pity that he cannot stand again for that division. " Prothero and Potatoes " would be an exhilarating cry. 347 VllI HA TFIELD Hatfield House is indeed one of " The Stately Homes of England." It combines all the elements of grandeur— scale and position, architectural beauty, historical interest, and a very real influence over a considerable town and a large district of an important county. In the winter of 1835 this sacred ark of territorial ascendency was nearly destroyed by fire. One wing perished, the Dowager Lady Salisbury (affectionately called "Old Sarum") being burnt to death in it. The rest was saved by the exertions of family, household, friends, and neighbours, among whom one of the most active was a young Mr. Talbot, a cousin of Lord Salisbury. When the fire was extinguished the thankful owner called young Talbot to 348 HATFIELD him and said : " You have worked right well, and have helped to save a great disaster. I will show tuy gratitude in a practical way. If you will take Holy Orders I \vill make you Rector of Hat- field, which is worth £1,500 a year, with" a capital house." The offer was accepted; Mr. Talbot was ordained, and retained the rectory of Hatfield till he died, at a good old age, in 1888. He was succeeded by Lord William Cecil. Lord William now ' becomes Bishop of Exeter, and the right of presenting to Hatfield lapses to the Prime Minister. Here, indeed, is an instructive object-lesson. In the first place, we see the principle on which private patronage in the Estab- hshed Church is administered. (Let me say in passing that Lord William' Cecil was, apart from' all considerations of consan- guinity, an exemplary Parish Priest.) In the second, we see the anomalousness of the system on which episcopal appointments are made. Mr. Asquith, who nominated ^ November 1916. 349 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES Lord William to the See of Exeter, is, I believe, a Nonconformist unattached, though the Moravians had a share in his upbringing. For ten years it was his official duty to choose the men who, within the precincts of the Established Church, should be made Successors to the Apostles. That is anomalous enough; but even more quaint is the third phase of the transaction. The Rector of Hatfield becoming a bishop, the law decrees that his successor shall be appointed by the Crown, and the Crown, for this purpose, is now Mr. Lloyd George. " Dod " throws only a very defective light on the religious views of M.P.'s, but I think I have heard that the Baptists claim' our new Prime Minister as their own. Here the object- lesson is complete. An undergraduate helps to extinguish a fire ; he becomes the Rector of an important parish for fifty years. He goes the way of all fiesh— even clerical flesh, which is proverbially enduring — and he is succeeded by the patron's son, a curate of twenty-five, who 350 HATFIELD holds the same benefice for twenty-eight years. A barrister-Premier, who is a Dis- senter if he is anything, turns this Rector into a Bishop ; and the fiery apostle of Welsh Disestablishment — the suddenly chosen head of a War Cabinet — must appoint a pastor for the flock which the Bishop resigns. Surely the force of anomaly could no farther go. I have exhibited this object-lesson in some detail, because it illustrates a system which is as repugnant to some Church- men as it is to all Nonconformists. I have for twenty years presided over an organization called " The Churchmen's Liberation League," and I welcome the opportunity of stating the object for which we stand, and the methods by which we hope— some day— to attain it. We stand for the principle of "A Free Church in a Free State." We desire to liberate the Church of England from the control of the State, because we believe :— I. That State control enfeebles, and tends to destroy, the spiritual life of the Church, by encouraging 351 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES her to lean on the support of, and accommodate her teaching to, the Secular power. 2. That the Church of England, as a religious society, has a right to self-government, free from the influence of Crown or Parliament, and subject only to the Divine law. 3. That in a country where there are many forms of religion, it is unjust and invidious that one should be maintained by the State in a position of privilege and pre-eminence. 4. That the maintenance of an Established Church is harmful to the spiritual life of the nation, because it tends to foster a false conscience, and to make people think that National Righteousness consists in the legal Establish- ment of the Church rather than in the personal religion of individual men and women. 5. That the subjection of the Church to the State is an invasion of the Sovereign Rights of the Lord Jesus Christ as King of the Universal Church and Master of His own House. The Disestablishm'ent of the Church would, in our judgmlent, involve the following changes : — 1. The Sovereign would cease to be " Supreme Governor of the Church." 2. The Bishops would no longer sit in the House of Lords, but the clergy would no longer be disqualified for sitting in the House of Commons. 352 HATFIELD 3. The control of the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church would be withdrawn from Parliament. 4. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council would no longer have authority in religious matters, and Ecclesiastical Courts would cease to possess coercive jurisdiction. 5. Private and official patronage in the Cure of Souls would be abolished. 6. The Bishops would be no longer nominated by the Crown, but elected by the Church. So far, I have spoken of Disestablish- ment only. But it is not likely that the State (as represented by Parliament) would consent to Disestablishment unless it were accompanied by some measure of Disendow - ment. All vested interests, whether of clergy or laity, would be fully protected, and the Church might reasonably hope to retain the use of the cathedrals and parish churches and the modern endowments. In this matter, however, we could safely trust to the sense of justice which is inherent in the English people. It has been well said that " independence from State -aid calls forth energy ; the withdrawal from- compromising situations or z 353 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES unmeaning alliance leads to the concentra- tion of force and the creation of true union. A Church to live must have a clear con- science, and, if its position in the State is felt to compromise that conscience, then, however advantageous such a position may be, not only for temporal purposes (though these are not necessarily to be despised), but also for the advancement of religion and morality, there must be no hesitation. That Church must make up its mind to depart out of Egypt, and to go into the wilderness." In the strong conviction that " the wilderness " is the only way to the Promised Land of Freedom, we solicit the co-operation of our fellow -Churchmen in the endeavour to which we are ourselves committed . 354 IX BISHOPS AND ECONOMY The excellent Bishop of London seemis unduly oppressed by that £10,000 a year of his. He is even painfully anxious to rebut the charge of wealth. The other day his protest went up from' St. Botolph's churchyard — " Referring to his salary of £10,000 a year, he, said that the State took half of this in rates and taxes, and he had to keep up two large houses, with the result that after fifteen years he was £2,000 poorer than when he started." This result would have seemed startling, if it had not happened that the Bishop, stung by the reproaches of his flock, once pub- lished a budget, in which he set forth, with much precision, the details of his expenditure. On such a system, or want of system', as that budget revealed, the 355 \ POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES only wonder is that his two thousand pounds of poverty is not ten. " Bishops hve in high places with high people, or with little people who depend upon them'. They walk delicately, like Agag. They hear only one sort of con- versation, and avoid bold, reckless msn, as a lady veils herself from rough breezes." Let me hasten to say that these words were written by a Canon of St. Paul's, though not by one of the present Chapter. To be sure his day was not yesterday ; but the testimony remains true, and " bold, reckless men," who talk of abuses and reforms, seldom have the oppor- tunity of breathing their thoughts into episcopal ears. They can only study that wonderful paper on Church Difficulties which the Bishop of London wrote when he was Bishop of Stepney^ and shed tears of respectful sympathy over the touching tale of harsh exaction patiently endured which " A Diocesan Bishop " contributed to that paper. They admire when they read that it cost his lordship £2,500 to settle himself 356 BISHOPS AND ECONOMY comfortably in his new house, and wonder if they could have done it more cheaply. They are interested to learn that the most hideous of all known costumes— the episcopal "Magpie" — costs £ioo, and they fancy that Mrs. Bishop could have stitched together something more comely at less cost. Hospitality to the tune of £2,000 a year rather staggers them, for their modest housekeeping assures themi that a great deal of bread and mutton and table-beer can be procured for a very moderate figure. About the expenses incidental to such patriarchal appendages as wives and chil- dren—ball-gowns for the daughters and cigars for the boys — reformers do not presume to dogmatize ; and they are quite prepared to believe the " Diocesan Bishop, " when he assures them that " Stables " — in the present day he would say Garages — " are almost a necessity, and in some respects a saving." " The stair-carpets at Farnham Castle are measured by miles," wrote Bishop Thorold. " My episcopal income goes in pelargoniums," 357 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES murmured Bishop Stubbs. " It takes five chaps to keep this garden in order," said a more vernacular prelate, as he surveyed his lawns. These bitter cries were not unheatd. Such hardships touched even the horny hearts of calculators and economists, and we who are Churchmen had schooled ourselves into a very proper state of mind ; we had persuaded ourselves that things are well as they are, and that " Purple, Palaces, Patronage, Profit, and Power " (as Sydney Smith enumerated them) were not only very nice for those who enjoyed them, but were, in some mysterious way never quite ex- plained, inextricably involved in the well- being of " our pure Established Mother." But the Bishop of London, with his engaging candour and heedless eloquence, has once again stirred the waters of con- troversy. If he were more worldly-wise, he would have imitated the cautious reserve of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York (both Scotsmen), who pocket much larger incomes and say nothing about them ; or he might have followed the 358 BISHOPS AND ECONOMY manly lead of the late Prime Minister, who said, " I draw my salary, and intend to do so," and closed the debate at that point. These public discussions of episcopal incomes disturb my peace. They remind me of John Bright's irreverent declaration : — If I had been a bishop, with an income of five to fifteen thousand a year, I should have had an in- exhaustible source of rejoicing and merriment in the generosity, if not in the credulity, of my countrymen. And I am apprehensive lest the spirit of that grand old iconoclast should revive in these latter days. We are told from every pulpit that, when' the war is over, our national religion is to be something quite different from what we have known before. How terrible if, among other changes, it insists on a primitive episcopate, such as that of Bishop Thomas Wilson, who ruled the diocese of Sodor and Man on £300 a year ! WTien this comes to pass, farewell to Lambeth, with its guard -room'; and Fulhara, with its pleasure-grounds; and Farnhani, with its deer-park ; and Wells, 359 POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES with its moated garden. We have been taught that these things endeared the Church to the toihng masses, and cheered the palUd curate in his dingy lodgings. But, if once the rash career of innova- tion begins, they will not long survive. Instead of them we shall see square, commodious houses of red brick, with " gravelled sweeps " and stunted laurels ; and a buttony boy will discharge the functions of the stately gate -porter, and a neat damsel in a white cap will carve the episcopal beef and pour the foaming lemonade. Where, not many years ago, the Prince Bishop rolled from his castle to the parish church in a coach-and-four, his successor will trudge through the mud or scale the^ knife-board of the bus, carrying with his own apostolic hands the sacred appliances of Mitre or Magpie ; and these will be only the outward signs of more momentous changes. The new Bishop of Exeter ' shows tendencies in this direction, and I understand that some of his elder brethren are ready to follow in his steps. ' Lord William Cecil. 360 BISHOPS AND ECONOMY W. F. Hook, the faimous Vicar of Leeds, was neither a revolutionary nor a dreamer, and this was, seventy years ago^, his remedy for the besetting weakness of the Church of England : — We want not proud Lords, haughty spiritual Peers, to be our Bishops. Offer four thousand out of their five thousand a year for the education of the people, and call upon the more wealthy of the other clergy to do the same, and a fund is at once provided. Let Farnham Castle, and Winchester House, and Ripon Palace be sold, and we shall have funds to establish other bishoprics. Let the Church do some- thing like this, and then the Church will live in the hearts of the people who now detest her. . . . You see, I am almost a Radical, for I do not see why our Bishops should not become as poor as Ambrose or Augustine, that they may make the people truly rich. This letter was addressed to Samuel Wilberforce just before he became a Bishop ; and the admirers of that excellent prelate will not be surprised to learn that he said in reply : "To impoverish our Bishops and sell their Palaces would only be the hopeless career of revolution." 361 X CONSIDER A TION One of the masterpieces of Catholic Htera- ture is St. Bernard's treatise on Considera- tion. The Saint had been appointed by Eugenius III to preach the Second Crusade, which had ended in complete and apparently- hopeless failure. " Soon a murmur of wrath' and reproach was heard, which, rising in ever -swelling volume, at last broke into articulate utterance." Bernard was accused and reviled as the author of the calamities which had overtaken the Crusade.