Chapter VIII.: Dissolution and Character of the Reform Ministry.

The abrupt dismissal of the Reform Ministry had more resemblance to the capricious movements which happen within the courtly atmosphere of despotism than of a constitutional monarchy. So far as has yet transpired, the blow was unexpected, and at least undeserved, from the quarter it came. Like Cardinal Wolsey, the errors of the Whigs consisted rather in excess of devotion to the service of their ‘royal master’ than of their country. Whatever may have been the cause of their downfall, the change in the king’s councils augurs no good to the people. If the design were to form a more popular administration, the court would not have resorted to the chancellor of Oxford, but to Lord Durham, Lord John Russell, Mr. Hume, or some other of the more thorough-going reformers. As the Soldier has been called in, it is plain a retrograde movement is intended—the repeal of the Reform-Act, or some other desperate effort of expiring conservatism. It is a mad resolve, as events will prove; but before endeavouring to ‘trammel up its issue,’ let us advert to the position and character of the displaced ministry. As they have been suddenly dismissed, they may be suddenly recalled; in the latter case it is important to ascertain their claims to the confidence of the nation.

It must be conceded that the difficulties which beset the late go-government were of no ordinary character. If the measures they brought forward had any thing of a radical hue about them, they were immediately at issue with the House of Lords; and if they were not of a popular character, they were at issue with the people: so that between both their situations were both precarious and uncomfortable.

It may be urged that they might easily have escaped the dilemma by allying themselves heart and soul with the popular cause and boldly leading on the battle against the Peerage. So they might. This is what they ought to have done, and what must be done, as we have shown in the chapter on the House of Lords, before the constitution can be brought into equilibrium. But, to say nothing of the obstacles which might have been opposed in a higher quarter, there are two reasons why the late government was not so patriotically devoted. First, it was much too aristocratic in its composition; many of the ministers were peers themselves, and to have joined in an attack like that to which we have alluded, they, doubtless, considered would be to attack themselves, and terminate in the extinction or humiliation of their own order. Besides motives of self-preservation there were others. In the opinion of some of them, no doubt, they had already gone as near the quick as they safely could without coming into the jaws of democracy; they thought, therefore, it was time to make a stand,—at least they were not disposed individually to share the responsibility of any farther advance into radicalism.

Besides these, which may be considered the external difficulties of ministers, there were others of an internal character, originating among themselves. Upon the great questions impending relative to church, corporation, and law reform, it would perhaps be impossible to find in the united kingdom twelve persons exactly agreed in opinion; we do not mean as to the necessity of reform at all, but as to the degree, kind, and extent. For shades of difference, therefore, excuses may be found; but there were important differences in the Cabinet, especially as regards the Church; and this was a constant source of weakness and disunion. In fact the original Whig ministry had been constantly sloughing away ever since its formation.

The first cast-off was earl Durham, whose general inability to agree with his colleagues called into play a portion of Whig wit, and he was designated the ‘dissenting minister.’ His retirement was ascribed, in the newspapers, to indisposition. Indisposition no doubt—indisposition to co-operate with wavering apostacy! The plain and straightforward mind of his lordship could not comprehend the policy of neglecting the tried friends of the people to keep up a sort of bribery and coquetry with their old and irreclaimable foes. Neither could the noble lord understand the sophistries by which it was sought to substitute illusive procrastination for the prompt and substantial removal of ‘recognised abuses.’

The next swarming away from the ministerial hive consisted of the Stanleyites. By the secession of Mr. Stanley, the earl of Ripon, the duke of Richmond, and sir James Graham, a positive improvement was effected in the sentiment if not in the speaking organs of the administration. These gentlemen were infected with a semi-conservatism that much impeded the full development of the reform principle. Besides entertaining very exalted notions of the social importance of the landed interest, they were opposed to the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical property, and maintained, as part of their creed, the very fantastical conceit that the revenues of the church ought not to be graduated to the number of its members but of its ministers—the clergy themselves, forsooth! Dogmas like these are irreconcileable with reason; and the ministry must have felt greatly relieved by the withdrawal of the political mystics who held them. An opportunity was thus afforded of infusing more common sense and robustness into the ministry, but it was thrown away; instead of recalling lord Durham, and strengthening themselves in public confidence by bringing forward Mr. Hume and sir H. Parnell, they filled up the vacuum with such unmeaning and unknown things as lord Auckland, and the marquis of Conyngham, and thus put together ‘the lath-and-plaster’ administration.

After this what could be expected? Next and closely after followed the Littleton mess, and embroilment with Mr. O’Connell, which terminated first in the resignation of lord Althorp, and then of the premier himself. The retirement of the last has been ascribed to an intrigue. We believe, however, there is no ground for this imputation. According to the statement of the Chancellor (House of Lords, July 29th) earl Grey had six times during the preceding twelve months expressed a wish to resign, and it was only by the earnest entreaty of his colleagues that he had been prevailed upon to remain in office. The testimony, too, of lord Lansdowne on the same occasion is decisive of the charge of ‘treachery.’ There is no need, indeed, of resorting to the mysteries of a conspiracy, to account for the resignation of the premier. The noble lord’s case was palpable enough. He shrunk from carrying out the principle of the Reform Acts; he must have felt that he could not successfully carry through the practical ameliorations the country expected from him without a ‘collision’ with the House of Lords, and this was an alternative he seems to have declined either from the morgue aristocratique, or unwillingness to falsify his previous pledge to ‘stick by his order.’ To escape from so equivocal a position and secure his own retreat, he availed himself of the hasty retirement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The difficulties which beset the ministry of lord Grey descended to his successor. In the approaching session of parliament only two courses were open to the Melbourne ministry—either they must face the peers or the people. Upon these alternatives, differences of opinion may have subsisted; one part of the cabinet may have inclined this, and the other that way, and there may have been a third portion that inclined to neither, but preferred leaving the task to the duke: and hence may have originated the break-up of the administration; or it may have originated solely in royal caprice, or in the desire to get rid of one unruly member, and which could only be effected by an internal effort, like that with which the lobster is said to cast off its shell.

Leaving these surmises to be confirmed or not by subsequent disclosures, we shall here observe that the Melbourne ministry was perhaps as good as any of its predecessors under the Reform Act. There was a great deal of rubbish in it certainly, but there were also good materials. There was merit even in its errors. Although the Poor Law Act and the Irish Tithe Bill were both, as we have shewn, highly objectionable in principle and detail, yet they were bold measures, and the way they were adjusted and forced through parliament evinced an energy—a determination to go on, without which it is impossible the difficulties of the country can be surmounted. As a Tory government would be a complete upsetting of all that has been done during the last four years, we consider its permanent existence an utter impossibility; it is likely, therefore, that the whole, or a portion of the late ministry will be recalled: let us ascertain then by personal analysis the good and evil in its composition, so that the people may be apprised of what they ought to wish for and what they ought to reject in its possible reconstruction.

We shall begin with the noble ex-Premier, about whom the public knows little, and whom we had always considered rather in the light of an epicurean aristocrat than a man of business. He certainly left a favourable impression of talent as Home Secretary, having evinced good sense and firmness in the little he had to do during his fair-weather administration of that mostly irksome department. But his lordship is an ‘old stager’ in public life, and he has not, to our knowledge, placed on record either word or deed calculated to inspire very exalted hopes of future development as an enlightened and very superior statesman. Some years since we remember sir F. Burdett took him to task for an attempt to apply the arbitrary principles he had deduced from a recent study of Roman history to the government of this country. Our impression is that he has more of the inertness of conservatism in him than his predecessor. He obviously views with no favourable eye the admission of Dissenters into the Universities; and if his recent declarations in respect of the church may be trusted, great things need not be expected in that direction.

On the 9th of August lord Melbourne said, ‘He reverenced and loved the mild and tolerant spirit of the church:’—of course he did; all lords love the church because it is a church for lords, not for the people. On the same occasion he said, ‘If he were to speak his own individual opinion, he would say that he for one was not dissatisfied with the church as it stood at present.’—No, my lord, not dissatisfied with the legislation of the bishops, nor with the dignitaries, pluralists, and non-residents! This is disheartening enough in all conscience; the only three great reforms remaining are ecclesiastical, municipal, and legal, and if the Whigs do not intend to come up to the mark on the first and most important, we shall say, in the language of Portia, they are ‘no men for us,’ nor we believe the country.

Some allowance may be made for the atmosphere in which the preceding morceaux were delivered. The ex-premier, as well as his colleagues, was often compelled to throw a kind of verbal dust into the eyes of his opponents, in order, if possible, to steal a march upon them. We have heard that lord Melbourne is more a man of expediency than inflexible principle. It may savour perhaps of laxity to observe that, in the existing crisis, we do not like him the worse for it. Our opinion is that no set of men can cut through present difficulties unless they will adapt the means to the end. Tithes, and other great and complicated questions, can never be settled on principles of strict equity, no more then a man can walk the crowded pathways of the metropolis in a direct line. If ministers cannot go straight, they must go awry;—at all events they must do the thing and get on!

As to the poor ex-Chancellor, he is politically dead, and we shall allow him the privilege of dead men, by speaking of him tenderly. He has sinned against all the proprieties; as minister, legislator, judge, and ci-devant reformer. His ‘lark’ in the North cleared up whatever mystery attached to his character, and his name is no longer a ‘tower of strength.’ He is obviously a man of the most pitiable foibles, a lover of vulgar notorieties of all sorts, and which wise men mostly despise. That he has done much for liberal government—has exposed and helped to amend many devouring public abuses—and possesses great industry and cleverness are undoubted facts; but he grievously lacks the discretion, steadiness, and comprehension which constitute a safe and leading mind. If a vague desire of the premiership ever flitted across his ambitious thoughts, he may erase it from remembrance, for we verily believe not one person—save one—in the united kingdom would countenance his pretensions.

Lord Brougham, like Napoleon, sinned against the ‘spirit of the age’ and has fallen. In his latter days he affected conservative principles—lauded the duke of Wellington, and prostrated himself before sir Edward Sugden, both of whom he had reviled. At one place in Scotland he told his hearers that he was no radical, (he had been though, as well as an admirer of Mr. Pitt and many other things,) and that he could hold no disputation with persons who denied the utility of a House of Lords. How could he? he ought to have been sworn on a voire dire first; of course the parvenu and vain Henry Brougham considered himself, as well as Brougham Hall, pieces of the ‘order,’ without which this great empire could not hold together.

The fatal delusion of this unhappy man appears to have been, that he alone was the Atlas to support the tottering throne and peerage of England; that he could say to the march of reform, as Canute said to the waves,—‘so far shalt thou go and no further.’ Hence, like another Peter the Hermit, he went to and fro in the country declaiming against republicans and rash innovations. But what an ungrateful return for his conservative labours—for all his fulsome eulogies of prince and peers to receive only a most ungracious kick-out!

In one respect we rejoice at the unceremonious turn out of the Whigs; it has given that proud aristocracy a taste of the sweets of monarchy, as well as the people who pay half a million a year for it, and three or four times as much more for its trappings. The fall of their chief has had one bad consequence, it has thrown discredit on science by showing how much learning may subsist—though the remark is trite—with little sense. We had always our misgivings of lord Brougham; a certain etourderie of organization conjoined with mental impetuosity, precluded all nice discrimination of both men and things. On his first assumption of the great seal we said of him (Black Book, edit. 1831, p. 426.) that,—“It is the judgment more than anything else we distrust in the noble and learned lord, and if he does not bring his resolves to wait on a more patient discretion, it is probable his chancellorship will be signalised by some very unusual eccentricities.” All we apprehended has come to pass; but we trust the noble lord’s pension will be saved. The Tories may not think him a fit person to be keeper of the king’s conscience, for, in truth, he needs a keeper himself; but why not put him into the Exchequer agreeably to his own desire, in room of Lyndhurst, who received the appointment from the Whigs, in part at least from the economical consideration of saying his retiring allowance?

Lord Brougham has been so fully dissected by the public press, that it is needless to enlarge further in his illustration. His lordship said, “the school-master is abroad,” and he did something to set him forth, therefore he cannot complain that he has had a wipe of his birch. Among his evil and faulty deeds we shall not forget all his good ones, for we are not of that class who are constantly seeking out bad motives for virtuous actions.—Let us proceed to the next.

We heard so little of the noble ex-President of the council during the reform ministries, that he reminded us of the lady Egeria, who was better known as an oracle of wisdom in private than a speaker in public. Lord Lansdowne always recommended himself to us by his junction with George Canning; for though the last was a trickster, the union with him was a fortunate jostling or breaking up of the relations of the two great factions, and the first shove to perdition the hulk of Toryism received. Earl Grey was well nigh making a shipwreck of his reputation by some unseasonable, not to say envious speeches directed against the coalition ministry, and which, as a step towards a more enlightened administration and consistently with his own principles, he ought to have steadily supported. In some sort the marquis appears to have an orbit of his own, and though as liberal perhaps as a lord may be, he has not always mixed himself up with the party combinations of the Whigs. He is reputed to be the foster-father of the first brood of Edinburgh Reviewers, who during the last four years have virtually grasped the government of the country. A dubiousness about consequences, which results from viewing questions too abstractedly and on all sides, will prevent him, we apprehend, as well as lord Holland, from going very far or fast in the way of effective reformation.

Of lord Duncannon we know little, and of lord Auckland nothing at all, nor have we ever met any body that did. The last, we had concluded, was dead and the title extinct, till we met the names of his sisters and himself on the Court Pension List as a pauper peer. He seems to have been thrust into the ‘arm-chair’ of the Admiralty as a short and easy way (two years’ sitting only) of acquiring for life the £2000 retiring pension, under the infamous Civil Offices Pension Act.

The late Chancellor of the Exchequer had long subsisted rather on an indulgent system of public credit, than any thing great or brilliant actually performed by him. The dogged manner he stood to the worst parts of that curious ‘boon (query bone?) to the female population’ as he called the Poor Law Bill, was more like the bite of a mastiff than any thing else. Still we cannot help thinking well of a man so highly esteemed by all who intimately know him. If there is really any thing good in him, and we are inclined to think there is, we trust in the new sphere into which his lordship is removed it will be produced, and in such a way that the reporters may be able to transmit it to the public. The little that has been usually given of earl Spencer’s speeches is mostly distinguished by brevity and good sense, and in honesty of purpose he is unsuspected.

Little need be said of the right hon. Thomas Spring Rice. Every body knows that the ex-secretary of the Colonies is a keen landlord and a first-rate artist in politics. He disposed satisfactorily of Mr. O’Connell on the ‘repale’ question, but was not so successful in his encounter with the honourable M. P. for Oldham on the stamp duties.

The motion of lord John Russell at the end of the session for postponing the issue of the writ for the corrupt borough of Warwick, and his prompt abandonment of the Bribery Bill after its maltreatment by the Lords, show that he is not disposed to acquiesce in all the freaks of hereditary wisdom. The name of Russell is a guarantee of attachment to constitutional rights, but has his lordship truly interpreted the change effected by the Reform Acts? It is no longer king, lords, and commons, but in the inverse order—commons, lords, and king!

The hearty and straightforward speech of sir John Hobhouse at the Edinburgh festival ought to be accepted as a peace-offering for prior transgressions. Bating a little petulance, the Baronet possesses sterling qualities, and we are glad to see him again in parliament, though the absence of his opponent, Mr. Eagle, is a real loss to the country; inasmuch as his learning, acuteness, and popular principles would have been of essential use in the approaching discussion of ecclesiastical matters. We cannot, however, forget old services; the rejection of sir John by the electors of Westminster always appeared to us a harsh and hasty measure of justice. What claims his opponent had to supersede him we could never discover. Colonel Evans seems to us a revival of that famous knight-errant sir Robert Wilson,—one very fond of leaving his name at the palace, and of asking questions about our ‘foreign relations!’ Now we have a great contempt for M.P.’s whose diffusive patriotism is such that it extends to Turkey, Russia, or Mehemet Ali, rather than to Lancashire, Yorkshire, or the southern counties. If the Westminster people will have a colonel, why not take colonel Jones,—a man who has really done the cause some service, and against whom, in our opinion, there prevails a very undeserved prejudice?

Notwithstanding the startling advent of the Duke and his myrmidons, we are progressing in good government. Democracy is the advancing flood which must ultimately level all monopolies. The times have marvellously changed! Lord Brougham, after his rejection by the universal-suffrage men of Westminster, always affected a great distaste for men of low politics, and we remember, during a pending election for that city, he thought there was little to choose between Hobhouse and the devil—and said as much. Yet the would-be premier has lived to sit in the same cabinet with the despised radical!

We pass over that ‘pure old Whig,’ lord Palmerston. If the noble lord, by any sort of jockeyship, can manage to keep the saddle under the contemplated ducal ministry, he may be considered a second Talleyrand, destined to survive all vicissitudes of rule. Under the ex-secretary the foreign policy of the Whigs has been the best part of their administration, as their Irish has been the worst. What weakness to send a doting voluptuary to preside over a country that has never yet known the blessings of civil government—that is a complete scene of want, violence, and rapine—a moral and physical chaos which nothing less than the genius of a Peter the Great or some such master-mind could rescue from its complicated maladies! It was this, and the pensioning, salarying, place-finding, and church-jobbing for sycophants, dependents, and undeserving relatives, that abated public zeal in favour of the fallen ministry.

We come to the lower and best stratum, consisting of Messrs. Abercrombie, Ellice, and Poulett Thomson, all of whom are plain men of honest purposes, and we wish the defunct government by incorporating lord Durham, sir H. Parnell, and some others, had consisted more of the same description. They are not shining characters, but they are free from the aristocratic prestige and historical associations which were the chief source of bewilderment of the higher section of the cabinet on the great questions of church and state reform. They are men of the age we live in; whereas the others belong to the by-gone times of Bubb Doddington, Rockingham, Shelburne, Pitt, Fox, and other magnates of the Georgian period. Poulett Thomson’s dividing with Mr. Hume on the corn laws shows that he is not only a person of sound and consistent principles, but of independence, and his rated scale of tea duties deserves public support.

Sir John Campbell was a great promiser of legal reforms, but except laying the first stone and giving a name, he perfected nothing. There were one or two more, which we forget, on the Whig roll, but as late events have rendered the whole, in lieu of a living calendar, a mere bill of mortality, it is not a matter of consequence.

Having thus gone through the ex-Ministry rather in the line manner than with fulness of detail, the important inquiry is—What prospect did it hold out of good government? Our opinion, as before hinted, is, that it was too aristocratic, that it did not sufficiently represent the Commons of England. It consisted of respectable functionaries—liberal in the abstract—intelligent, and within a certain pale, of good intentions—but not intently bent on great practical ameliorations. Unless acted upon by a strong pressure from without, they would have stood still; if they had moved, it would only have been when every excuse for delay had been exhausted, and then with the least possible momentum against abuses. Their prevailing disposition was not to change—for they had no interest in change—but to maintain, with a few unimportant amendments, things as they are—a church with a gorgeous hierarchy—a privileged peerage with an extortionate rental and irresponsible power—and a House of Commons with freedom of debate, but no efficient power of action. What good there was in them had been nearly extracted, and for the future, we believe, they had determined (as lord Brougham prematurely, and to the great mortification of his colleagues, divulged) to incline to a conservative rather than a more radical course. But as all men of ‘woman born’ are the creatures of circumstances, it is impossible to predicate the precise track they would have taken; it would have depended on the spirit of the community—on the relative force of the two great conflicting parties between which they stood—and to the most potent of which they would doubtless have felt the necessity as well as policy of yielding.

We may further observe that the preceding remarks apply in their full extent only to the upper, and not to that lower and better section of the ministry to which allusion has been made, and which, besides the names already mentioned, included those of sir John Hobhouse, earl Spencer and lord John Russell, and perhaps of lords Duncannon and Mulgrave. From these there was ground to hope for substantial reform, and had it not been for the intervention of the Duke it is possible they might have succeeded, backed by a Reform Parliament, in ejecting their timid and more fastidious colleagues, and then formed a really popular administration.