Leader Perforce

DURING the first six weeks of this famous committee the attendance of its members was not very regular, and its labours attracted little attention.  The evidence on the East-India part of the question was closed and reported to the House by the end of February; after that period the evidence was reported to the House every week or ten days.  Towards the end of March, rumours began to circulate of the extraordinary vigour and ability with which this investigation was pursued, and of the novel, authentic, and striking evidence that had been elicited.  The proceedings were talked of in the House of Commons and on the Royal Exchange; the City men who were examined went back to their companions with wondrous tales of the energy and acuteness of Harcourt House, and the order, method, and discipline of the committee-room at Westminster.  As time elapsed, the hopes of the colonial interest again revived.  It was generally felt that Lord George had succeeded in establishing an irresistible case.  It was rumoured that the government could not withstand it.  Those who had originally murmured at the course which he had adopted of moving for a committee of inquiry, instead of proposing a specific measure of relief, and had treated an investigation as a mere means of securing inaction, now recanted their rash criticism, and did justice to his prescience and superior judgment, as well as to his vast information and indefatigable exertions.  The week during which the committee sat on their report was a very anxious one; the divisions were known every day in the House of Commons; the alternations of success and discomfiture, and the balanced numbers that so often called for the interposition of the chairman, were calculated to sustain the excitement; and when, on the 29th of May, it was known that the report was at length agreed to, and that a committee of free traders had absolutely recommended a differential duty of 10s. in favour of our own produce, one might have fancied from the effect visibly produced, that a government was changed.

A few days before ­it was the day after the Derby, May 25th ­the writer met Lord George Ben-tinck in the library of the House of Commons.  He was standing before the book-shelves, with a volume in his hand, and his countenance was greatly disturbed.  His resolutions in favour of the colonial interest after all his labours had been negatived by the committee on the 22nd, and on the 24th, his horse Surplice, whom he had parted with among the rest of his stud, solely that he might pursue without distraction his labours on behalf of the great interests of the country, had won that paramount and Olympian stake, to gain which had been the object of his life.  He had nothing to console him, and nothing to sustain him except his pride.  Even that deserted him before a heart which he knew at least could yield him sympathy.  He gave a sort of superb groan: ­

’All my life I have been trying for this, and for what have I sacrificed it!’ he murmured.

It was in vain to offer solace.

‘You do not know what the Derby is,’ he moaned out.

‘Yes, I do; it is the blue ribbon of the turf.’

‘It is the blue ribbon of the turf,’ he slowly repeated to himself, and sitting down at the table, he buried himself in a folio of statistics.

But on Monday, the 29th, when the resolution in favour of a 10s. differential duty for the colonies had at the last moment been carried, and carried by his casting vote, ’the blue ribbons of the turf were all forgotten.  Not for all the honours and successes of all the meetings, spring or autumn, Newmarket, Epsom, Goodwood, Doncaster, would he have exchanged that hour of rapture.  His eye sparkled with fire, his nostril dilated with triumph, his brow was elate like a conqueror, his sanguine spirit saw a future of continued and illimitable success.

‘We have saved the colonies,’ he said, ­’saved the colonies.  I knew it must be so.  It is the knell of free trade.’

Notwithstanding the formal renunciation of the leadership of the Protectionist party by Lord George Bentinck, it was soon evident to the House and the country that that renunciation was merely formal.  In these days of labour, the leader of a party must be the man who does the work, and that work cannot now be accomplished without the devotion of a life.  Whenever a great question arose, the people out of doors went to Lord George Bentinck, and when the discussion commenced, he was always found to be the man armed with the authority of knowledge.  There was, however, no organized debate and no party discipline.  No one was requested to take a part, and no attendance was ever summoned.  The vast majority sitting on the Protectionist benches always followed Bentinck, who, whatever might be his numbers in the lobby, always made a redoubtable stand in the House.  The situation however, it cannot be denied, was a dangerous one for a great party to persevere in, but no permanent damage accrued, because almost every one hoped that before the session was over, the difficulty would find a natural solution in the virtual chief resuming his formal and responsible post.  Notwithstanding his labours on the two great committees of the year ­those on colonial and commercial distress, ­Lord George Bentinck found time to master the case of the shipping interest when the navigation laws were attacked, to impugn in a formal motion the whole of the commercial policy of Sir Robert Peel, even while the sugar and coffee planting committee was still sitting, and to produce, early in March, a rival budget.  It was mainly through the prolonged resistance which he organized against the repeal of the navigation laws, that the government, in 1848, was forced to abandon their project.  The resistance was led with great ability by Mr. Herries, and the whole party put forward their utmost strength to support him.  But it is very difficult to convey a complete picture of the laborious life of Lord George Bentinck during the sitting of Parliament.  At half-past nine o’clock there called upon him the commercial representatives of the question of the day; after these conferences came his elaborate and methodical correspondence, all of which he carried on himself in a handwriting clear as print, and never employing a secretary; at twelve or one o’clock he was at a committee, and he only left the committee-room to take his seat in the House of Commons, which he never quitted till the House adjourned, always long past midnight, and often at two o’clock in the morning.  Here he was ready for all comers, never omitting an opportunity to vindicate his opinions, or watching with lynx-like vigilance the conduct of a public office.  What was not his least remarkable trait is, that although he only breakfasted on dry toast, he took no sustenance all this time, dining at White’s at half-past two o’clock in the morning.  After his severe attack of the influenza he broke through this habit a little during the last few months of his life, moved by the advice of his physician and the instance of his friends.  The writer of these observations prevailed upon him a little the last year to fall into the easy habit of dining at Bellamy’s, which saves much time, and permits the transaction of business in conversation with a congenial friend.  But he grudged it:  he always thought that something would be said or done in his absence, which would not have occurred had he been there; some motion whisked through, or some return altered.  His principle was that a member should never be absent from his seat.

The session of ’48 had been one of unexampled length, having lasted ten months, and, as usual under such circumstances, the obstacles to the transaction of public business were sought everywhere except in the real quarter.  The forms of the House and the propensity to unnecessary discussion among its members were chiefly denounced.  Lord George Bentinck did not agree in the justness of these criminations; they were eagerly caught by the thoughtless and the superficial, but it was his habit to investigate and analyze everything, and he found that these charges had no basis.  The forms of the House of Commons are the result of accumulated experience and have rarely been tampered with successfully, while on the other hand a parliamentary government is by name and nature essentially a government of discussion.  It is not at all difficult to conceive a mode of governing a country more expeditious than by a parliament; but where truth as well as strength is held to be an essential element of legislation, opinion must be secured an unrestricted organ.  Superfluity of debate may often be inconvenient to a minister, and sometimes perhaps even distasteful to the community; but criticizing such a security for justice and liberty as a free-spoken parliament is like quarrelling with the weather because there is too much rain or too much sunshine.  The casual inconvenience should be forgotten in the permanent blessing.  Acting upon these false imputations a committee was even appointed, two years ago, of the most eminent members of the House of Commons, to investigate the subject and suggest remedies, and some votaries of the Transatlantic type recommended the adoption of the rules of Congress where each speaker is limited to an hour.  But an hour from an uninteresting speaker would be a great infliction.  The good sense and the good taste of the House of Commons will be found on the whole to be the best regulators of the duration of a debate.

The truth is that the delay in the conduct of parliamentary business which has been much complained of during the last few years, murmurs of which were especially rife in 1848, is attributable to the fact that the ministry, though formed of men inferior in point of ability to none who could be reasonably intrusted with administration, had not sufficient parliamentary strength.  After all their deliberations and foresight, ­after all their observations of the times and study of the public interest, their measures when launched from the cabinet into the House were not received by a confiding majority, firm in their faith in the statesmanlike qualities of the authors of these measures and in their sympathy with the general political system of which the ministry was the representative.  On the contrary, the success of the measures depended on a variety of sections who in their aggregate exceeded in number and influence the party of the ministers.  These became critics and took the ministerial measures in hand; the measures became, the measures, not of the cabinet, but of the House of Commons; and a purely legislative assembly became, in consequence of the weakness of the government, yearly more administrative.  This was undoubtedly a great evil, and occasioned, besides great delay, many crude enactments, as will be the case where all are constructors and none are responsible, but the evil was not occasioned by the forms of the House or the length of the speeches.  Sir Robert Peel was unquestionably a very able administrator, but if he had not had a majority of ninety he would have fallen in as ill repute as has been too often the lot of Lord John Russell.

Lord George Bentinck was very anxious that there should be a parliamentary summary of this enormous and eventful session of ’48, that the conduct of business by the ministry should be traced and criticized and the character of the House of Commons vindicated, and he appealed to the writer of these observations to undertake the task.  But the writer was unwilling to accede to this suggestion, not only because at the end of August he shrank from a laborious effort, but principally because he did not hold that his position in the House of Commons warranted on his part such an interference, since, after all, he was only the comrade in arms of one who chose to be only an independent member of the House.  He therefore unaffectedly stated that he thought the office was somewhat above his measure.  But Lord George Bentinck would not listen to these representations.  ‘I don’t pretend to know much,’ he said, ’but I can judge of men and horses.’  It is difficult to refuse those who are themselves setting a constant example of self-sacrifice, and therefore, so far as the labour was concerned, the writer would not have shrunk from the exertion even on the last day of the month of August, and when the particular wish of Lord George was found to be more general than the writer presumed to suppose, he accordingly endeavoured to accomplish the intention.

Three or four days after this, the writer, about to leave London, called at Harcourt House, to say farewell to his comrade in arms.  He passed with Lord George the whole morning, rather indulging in the contemplation of the future than in retrospect.  Lord George was serene, cheerful, and happy.  He was content with himself, which was rarely the case, and remembered nothing of his career but its distinction, and the ennobling sense of having done his duty.

Any misunderstandings that may have for a moment irritated him seemed forgotten; he appeared conscious that he possessed the confidence and cordial regard of the great majority of the Protectionist party, although he chose to occupy a private post, and he was proud of the consciousness.  He was still more sensible of the sympathy which he had created out of doors, which he greatly appreciated, and to which, though with his usual modesty, he more than once recurred.  ’The thing is to get the people out of doors with you,’ he repeated, ’men like the merchants; all the rest follow.’  It was evident that the success of his colonial committee had greatly satisfied his spirit.  He had received that day the vote of thanks of the West-India body for his exertions.  He said more than once, that with a weak government, a parliamentary committee properly worked might do wonders.  He said he would have a committee on import duties next year, and have all the merchants to show what share the foreigners had obtained of the reductions that had been made of late years.  He maintained, that, quite irrespective of the general arrangements of the new commercial system, Sir Robert Peel had thrown away a great revenue on a number of articles of very inferior importance, and he would prove this to the country.  He said our colonial empire ought to be reconstructed by a total abolition of all duties on produce from her Majesty’s dominions abroad.

All his ideas were large, clear, and coherent.  He dwelt much on the vicissitudes which most attend all merely foreign trade, which, though it should be encouraged, ought not to be solely relied on, as was the fashion of this day.  Looking upon war as occasionally inevitable, he thought a commercial system based upon the presumption of perpetual peace to be full of ruin.  His policy was essentially imperial and not cosmopolitan.

About to part probably for many months, and listening to him as he spoke, according to his custom, with so much fervour and sincerity, one could not refrain from musing over his singular and sudden career.  It was not three years since he had in an instant occupied the minds of men.  No series of parliamentary labours had ever produced so much influence in the country in so short a time.  Never was a reputation so substantial built up in so brief a period.  AH the questions with which he had dealt were colossal questions:  the laws that should regulate competition between native and foreign labour; the interference of the state in the development of the resources of Ireland; the social and commercial condition of our tropical colonies; the principles upon which our revenue should be raised; the laws which should regulate and protect our navigation.  But it was not that he merely expressed opinions upon these subjects; he came forward with details in support of his principles and policy, which it had before been believed none but a minister could command.  Instead of experiencing the usual and almost inevitable doom of private members of Parliament, and having his statements shattered by official information, Lord George Bentinck on the contrary, was the assailant, and the successful assailant, of an administration on these very heads.  He often did their work more effectually than all their artificial training enabled them to do it.  His acute research, and his peculiar sources of information, roused the vigilance of all the public offices of the country.  Since his time, there has been more care in preparing official returns, and in arranging the public correspondence placed on the table of the House of Commons.

When one remembered that in this room, not three years ago, he was trying to find a lawyer who would make a speech for him in Parliament, it was curious to remember that no one in the period had probably addressed the House of Commons oftener.  Though his manner, which was daily improving, was not felicitous in the House, the authority of his intellect, his knowledge, and his character, made him one of the great personages of debate; but with the country who only read his speeches he ranked high as an orator.  It is only those who have had occasion critically to read and examine the long series of his speeches who can be conscious of their considerable merits.  The information is always full and often fresh, the scope large, the argument close, and the style, though simple, never bald, but vigorous, idiomatic, and often picturesque.  He had not credit for this in his day, but the passages which have been quoted in this sketch will prove the justness of this criticism.  As a speaker and writer, his principal need was condensation.  He could not bear that anything should remain untold.  He was deficient in taste, but he had fervour of feeling, and was by no means void of imagination.

The writer, in his frequent communications with him of faithful and unbounded confidence, was often reminded of the character by Mr. Burke of my Lord Keppell.

The labours of Lord George Bentinck had been supernatural, and one ought perhaps to have felt then that it was impossible they could be continued on such a scale of exhaustion; but no friend could control his eager life in this respect; he obeyed the law of his vehement and fiery nature, being one of those men who in whatever they undertake know no medium, but will ‘succeed or die.’

But why talk here and now of death!  He goes to his native county and his father’s proud domain, to breathe the air of his boyhood and move amid the parks and meads of his youth.  Every breeze will bear health, and the sight of every hallowed haunt will stimulate his pulse.  He is scarcely older than Julius Cæsar when he commenced his public career, he looks as high and brave, and he springs from a long-lived race.

He stood upon the perron of Harcourt House, the last of the great hotels of an age of stately dwellings with its wings, and court-yard, and carriage portal, and huge outward walls.  He put forth his hand to bid farewell, and his last words were characteristic of the man ­of his warm feelings and of his ruling passion:  ’God bless you; we must work, and the country will come round us.’