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THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836]
of your enchanted abode. The knight who roused the
Sleeping Beauty could not have witnessed stranger
marvels in his progress than he who has at last contrived
to obtain an interview with the sleeping Secretary.
The moment that I had passed the Foreign Office an
air of profound repose seemed to pervade Downing Street,
and as I approached the portal of your department, it
was with difficulty I could resist the narcotic influence
of the atmosphere. Your porter is no Argus. "His
calm, broad, thoughtless aspect breathed repose," and
when he "slow from his bench arose, and swollen with
sleep," I almost imagined that, like his celebrated pre-
decessor in the Castle of Indolence, he was about to
furnish me with a nightcap, slippers, and a robe de chambre.
I found your clerks yawning, and your under-secretaries
just waking from a dream. A dozy, drowsy, drony hum,
the faint rustling of some papers like the leaves of autumn,
and a few noiseless apparatus gliding like ghosts, just
assured me that the business of the nation was not
neglected. Every personage and every incident gradu-
ally prepared me for the quiescent presence of the master
mind, until, adroitly stepping over your private secretary,
nodding and rembunt at your threshold, I found myself
before your Lordship, the guardian of our colonial
empire, stretched on an easy couch in luxurious listless-
ness, with all the prim voluptuousness of a puritanical
Sardanapalus.
I forgot who was the wild theorist who enunciated the
absurd doctrine that "ships, colonies, and commerce,"
were the surest foundation of the empire. What an in-
finitely ridiculous idea! But the march of intellect and
the spirit of the age have cleansed our brains of this
perilous stuff. Had it not been for the invention of
ships, the great malady of sea-sickness, so distressing
to an indolent Minister; would be unknown; colonies,
like country-houses, we have long recognised to be
sources only of continual expense, and to be kept up
merely from a puerile love of show; as for commerce, it
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is a vulgarism, and fit only for low people. What have such daintiy nobles as yourself and Lord palmierston to do with cottons and indigoes? Such coarse details you fitly leave to Mr. Poulett thomson, whose practical acquaintance with tallow is the only blot on the scutcheon of your refined and aristocratic cabinet.
Although a grateful nation has seized every opportunity of expressing their confidence in your lordship and your colleagues, and although myself, among more distinguished writers, have omitted no occasion of celebrating your inexpressible panegyric, it appears to me, I confess, that scant justice has hitherto been done to the grand system of our present administration, and which they are putting into practice with felicitous rapidity and their habitual success. This grand system, it would seem, consists of a plan to govern the country without having anything to do.
The meritorious and unceasing labours of the noble Secretary for Foreign affairs on the continent will soon permit his lordship to receive his salary without any necessary attendance at his office. Lord morpeth1 has nearly got rid of ireland. The selection of your lordship to regulate the destinies of our colonies insures the speediest and the most favourable results in effecting their separation from what one of your principal supporters styles the unjust domination of the mother country; and we have already promised a lord chancellor who is not to preside over the chancellor. The recent government of lord william bentinck will, I fear, rob sir john hobhouse of half the glory of losing India, and the ministerial corporations, if they work as well as you anticipate, may in due season permit lord john russell to resume his relinquished tyranny. Freed of irish affairs, westminster hall delivered over to your cheap lawyers, and our domestic policy regulated by
1 chief secretary for ireland. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 305.jpg |
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### THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836]
vestries and town councils, there is a fair probability that the First Lord of the Treasury, who envies you your congressional repose, may be relieved from any very onerous burden of public duty, and that the Treasury may establish the aptness of its title on the *non lucendo* character of its once shining coffers.
*Vive la bagatelle!* His Majesty's Ministers may then hold Cabinet Councils to arrange a whitebait dinner at Blackwall, or prick for an excursion to Richmond or Beulah Spa. Such may be the gay consequences of a Reform Ministry and a reformed Parliament! No true patriot will grudge them these slight recreations, orazard even a murmur at their sinecure salaries. For to say the truth, my Lord, if you must remain in office, I for one would willingly consent to an inactivity on your part almost as complete as could be devised by the united genius for sauntering of yourself and that energetic and laborious nobleman who summoned you to a worthy participation in his councils.
Affairs, therefore, my dear Lord Glenelg, are far from disheartening, especially in that department under your own circumspect supervision. What if the Mauritius be restive—let the inhabitants cut each others' throats: that will ultimately produce peace. What if Jamaica be in fames—we have still East India sugar; and by the time we have lost that, the manufacture of beetroot will be perfect. What if Colonel Torrens, perched on the Pisgah height of a joint-stock company, be transporting our fellow-countrymen to the milk and honey of Australia, without even the preparatory ceremony of a trial by jury—let the exiles settle this great constitutional question with the kangaroos. What if Canada be in rebellion—let not the menacing spectre of Papineau1 or the suppliant shade of the liberal Gosford2 scare your Lordship's dreams. Slumber on without a pang, most
1 The French leader of the rebellion in Canada.
2 Lord Gosford, Governor of Canada. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 306.jpg |
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# 1836] THE MEMBER FOR COVENTRY 301
**vigilant of Secretaries. I will stuff you a fresh pillow with your unanswered letters, and insure you a certain lullaby by reading to you one of your own despatches.**
March 12, 1836.
### LETTER XIV
**To the Right Hon. EDWARD ELLIC**
**Sir,--** In this age of faction, it is delightful to turn to one public character whom writers of all parties must unite in addressing in terms of unqualified panegyric. From "a man discreetly known in the City," you have become a statesman creditably known at Court. Such is the triumph of perseverance in a good cause, undaunted by calumny and undeterred by the narrow-minded slanders of petty intellects. That influence which, in spite of prejudice, you have gained by the uniform straightforwardness of your conduct, you have confirmed by that agreeable and captivating demeanour which secures you the hearts of men as well as their confidence. Uninfluenced by personal motives, always ready to sacrifice self, and recoiling from intrigue with the antipathy native to a noble mind, you stand out in bold and favourable relief to the leaders of that party whose destinies, from a purely patriotic motive, you occasionally condescend to regulate.
I omitted, perhaps, before this to have congratulated you on your return to that country whose interests are never absent from your thoughts; but I was unwilling to disturb, even with my compliments, a gentleman who, I am aware, has been labouring of late so zealously for the commonweal as the Right Hon. Mr. Ellic. Your devotion in your recent volunteer visit to Constantinople has not been lost on the minds of your countrymen.
*1 "Bear" Ellice was a business man connected with the northwest fur trade, Secretary for War in Lord Grey's Government, he went out with Melbourne in 1834, and never again took office.* | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 307.jpg |
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### THE LETTERS OF RUNNNYMEDE [1836]
They readily recognise your pre-eminent fitness to wrestle with the Russian bear; and they who have witnessed in a northern forest a duel between those polished animals, must feel convinced that you are the only English statesman duly qualified to mingle in a combat which is at the same time so dexterous and so desperate. Happy England, whose fortunes are supervised by such an unsalaried steward as the member for Coventry! Thrice fortunate Telemachus of Lambton Castle, guided by such a Mentor!
After the turmoil of party politics, you must have found travel delightful! I can fancy you gazing upon the blue Symplegades, or roaming amid the tumult of Troy. The first glance at the Algean must have filled you with classic rapture. Your cultured and accomplished mind must have revelled in the recollections of the heroic past. How different from the associations of those jobbing politicians, who, when they sail upon Salamis, are only reminded of Greek bonds, and whose thoughts, when they mingle amid the imaginary tumult of the Pnyx at Athens, only recur to the broils of a settling day at the Stock Exchange of London!
In your political career you have emulated the fame, and rivalled, if not surpassed, the exploits of the great Earl of Warwick. He was only a King-maker, but Mr. Ellice is a maker of Ministers. How deeply was Lord Grey indebted to your disinterested services! Amid the musings of the Liturnum's of Howick, while moralising on the gratitude of a party, how fondly must he congratulate himself on his fortune in such a relative. It is said that his successor is not so prompt to indicate his sense of your services as would be but just. But the ingratitude of men, and especially of Ministers, is proverbial. Lord Melbourne, however, may yet live to be sensible of your amiable exercise of the prerogative of the Crown. In the meantime the unbounded confidence of Lord Palmerston in your good intentions may in some degree console
1. The town to which Scipio Africanus retired. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 308.jpg |
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you for the suspicions of the Prime Minister, to say
nothing of the illimitable trust of the noble Secretary for
the Colonies, who sleeps on in unbroken security as long
as you are the guardian angel of his slumbers.
Distinguished as you are by the inflexible integrity of
your conduct, both in public and private life, by your
blond manners and your polite carriage, your total
absence of all low ambition and your contempt for all
intrigue and subterranean practices, you are, if possible,
still more eminent for your philosophical exemption from
antiquated prejudice. The people of England can never
forget that it was your emancipated mind that first
scared superior to the mischievous institution of a
National Church, and that, with the characteristic
liberality of your nature, yours was the intellect that first
derived the ingenious plan of appeasing Ireland by the
sacrifice of England. Had you been influenced in your
conduct by any factious object of establishing your
friends in the enjoyment of a power to exercise which
they had previously proved themselves incapable, it
might in some degree have deteriorated from the singleness
of your purpose; but no one can suppose, for an
instant, that in forming a close alliance one year with a
man whom twelve months before they had denounced
as a rebel, and in decreeing the destruction of an institu-
tion which they had just recently pledged themselves to
uphold, your pupils of the present administration were
actuated by any other motives but the most just, the
most disinterested, and the most honourable.
You have recently been gratified by witnessing the
proud and predominant influence of your country in the
distant and distracted regions of the East. The compli-
ments which were lavished on yourself and your com-
panion by the Czar must have been as flattering to the
envoy as they were to the confounding sovereign with whose
dignity you were entrusted. It must be some time before
the salutes of Odessa cease ringing in your ear, and it
cannot be supposed that your excited imagination can | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 309.jpg |
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### THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836]
speedy disembarrass itself of your splendid progress in a steamer over the triumphant waters of the Luxine. Yet, when you have in some degree recovered from the intoxication of success and the intoxicating influence of Royal and Imperial condescension, let us hope that you may deign to extend your practised attention to our domestic situation. The country is very prosperous; the Stock Exchange has not been so active since 1825. They certainly have missed you a little in Spanish, but the railways, I understand, have been looking up since your return, especially the shares of those companies which have no hope or intention of prosecuting their designs. In the meantime, perhaps, for you may be destined the glory of inducing Lord Melbourne to tolerate the presence of Mr. O'Connell at an official banquet. That would be an achievement worthy of your great mind. The new Liberal Club, too, which, like Eldorado, is to supply
"Shirts for the shirtrees, suppers for the starved,",
may merit your organising patronage. For the rest, the unbounded confidence which subsists between our gracious Sovereign and his Ministers, the complete harmony at length established between the two Houses of Parliament, the perfect tranquillity of Ireland, vouched by the *de facto* member for Dublin, and guaranteed by Lord Plunket, and the agreeable circumstance that the people of England are arrayed in two hostile and determined parties, all combine to assure us of a long, a tranquil, and a prosperous administration of our affairs by the last Cabinet which was constructed under your auspices.
*March 20, 1836.* | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 310.jpg |
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### 1836] RECREATION FOR THE EASTER RECESS 305
#### LETTER XV
**To Viscount Melbourne**
My LORD,—I always experience peculiar gratification in addressing your Lordship—your Lordship is such a general favourite. I have read somewhere of “the best-nurtured man with the worst-nurtured muse,” I have always deemed your Lordship the best-nurtured Minister with the worst-nurtured party. And really, if you have sometimes so lost your temper—for those Epit loggerhead students of the shoulder, and mir admirari smiles, which were once your winning characteristics, you have occasionally of late substituted a little of the Cambyses’ vein, and demeaned yourself as if you were practising “Pistol” for the next private theatres at Panshanger—very extenuating circumstances may, I think, be found in the heterogeneous and Hudibrastic elements of that party which Fate, in a freak of fun, has called upon your Lordship to regulate. What a crew! I can compare them to nothing but the Swalbach swine in the Brunnen Bubbles,1 guzzling and gruntling in a bed of mire, fouling themselves, and bedeviling every luckless passenger with their contaminating filth.
We are all now going into the country, and you and your colleagues are about to escape for a season from what your Lordship delicately terms the “badgering” of Parliament. I trust you will find the relaxation renovating. How you will recreate yourselves, we shall be anxious to learn. I think the Cabinet might take to cricket—they are a choice eleven. With their peculiarly patriotic temeraments and highly national feelings, they might venture, I think, to play against “all England.” Lord Palmerston and Lord Glenelg, with their talent for
1 Sir Francis Bond Head’s “Bubbles from the Brunnen of Nassau” (1834). | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 311.jpg |
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# THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836]
keeping in, would assuredly secure a good score. Lord John, indeed, with all his flourishing, will probably end in knocking down his own wicket; and as for Sir Cam, the chances certainly are that he will be “caught out,” experiencing the same fate in play as in politics. If you could only engage Lord Durham to fling sticks at the seals of the Foreign Office, and the bhile Mr. Ellice to climb a greasy pole for the Colonial portfolio, I think you will have provided a very entertaining programme of Easter sports.
My Lord, they say, you know, when things are at the worst, they generally mend. On this principle our affairs may really be considered highly promising. The state of Spain demonstrates the sagacity of our Foreign Secretary. The country is divided into two great parties; we have contrived to interfere without supporting either, but have lavished our treasure and our blood in upholding a Camarilla. This is so bad that really the happiest results may speedily be anticipated. Canada is in a state of rebellion, and therefore after Easter we may perhaps find loyalty and peace predominant, especially when we recall to our recollection the profound intellect your Lordship has selected for the settlement of that distracted colony. The Whigs, my Lord, seem indeed to have a happy knack in the choice of Governors, and almost to rival in their appointments the Duke in “Don Quixote.” To them we are indebted alike for the President firmness of a Gosford and the substantial judgment of a Sligo.1 The spring-like promise of the experienced Elphinstone will explain the genial seed so deftly sown by the noble member for Glasgow,2 and complete the trio. Three wise and learned rulers ! To whomsoever of the leash my Lord Glenelg may award the golden palm, I doubt not it will prove an apple of sufficient discord.
“But all our praises why should Lords engross?”
---
1 Formerly Governor of Jamaica.
2 Lord William Bentinck, ex-Governor-General of India. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 312.jpg |
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1836] "TRANQUIL." IRELAND 307
particularly when the appointments of Lord Auckland and Lord Nugent1 are duly mentioned.
“Rise, honest m use, and sing Sir Francis Head!”,2
The convenient candour of that celebrated functionality will at least afford one solacing reminiscence for your Easter holidays.
But what is Spanish anarchy or Canadian rebellion, the broils of Jamaica or the impending catastrophe of Hindostan, when Ireland is tranquil? And who can doubt the tranquillity of Ireland? Has not your Lordship the bond of the trustworthy Mr. O'Connell, whose private praises you celebrate with such curious felicity, and the choice collateral security of the veracious Lord Plunket. With such a muniment in the strong box of your Cabinet securities, what care you for the charges of Baron Smith and the calendar of Tipperary? And yet, my Lord, though Ireland is tranquil, and though the Papists, in their attempts on the lives of their rivals, seem of late charitably to have substituted perjury for massacre, I fancy I mark a cloud upon your triumphant brow at my incidental mention of that fortunate land. Be of good cheer, my Lord; and if you cannot be bold, at least be reckless. In spite of the elaborate misrepresentations of party, the state of Irish affairs is very simple. The point lies in a nutshell, and may be expressed in a single sentence. Your Lordship's accommodation bills with Mr. O'Connell are becoming due, and unless you can contrive to get them renewed, the chances are your Lordship's firm will become bankrupt.
It seems, my Lord, that the hon. member for Finsbury3 is about to move a petition to our gracious sovereign to intercede with the King of the French in favour of the State-victims of the three glorious days, persecuted like other great men for anticipating their age, and attempting to do that in 1830 the consummation of which was re-
1 High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands.
2 Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada.
3 Mr. Thomas Slingsby Duncombe. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 313.jpg |
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```
308
THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836
served for 1835. My Lord, buffoonery after a while
wearies; put an end, I bes batch your, to the farce of your
government, and, to save time, consent at once that you
and your colleagues should be substituted in their stead.
Nay, I wish not to be harsh; my nature is not vindictive.
I would condemn you to no severer solitude than the
gardens of Hampton Court, where you might saunter
away the remaining years of your now ludicrous existence,
sipping the last novel of *Paul de Kock*, while lounging
over a sundial.
March 30, 1836.
LETTER XVI
To the House of Lords
My Lords,—If there be one legislative quality more
valuable than another, it is the power of discriminating
between the Cause and the Pretext.1 For two sessions
of Parliament an attempt has been made to force upon
your Lordships' adoption a peculiar scheme of policy
under the pretext of doing "justice to Ireland." A
majority of the members of the House of Commons, no
matter how obtained, have not felt competent, or in-
clined, to penetrate beneath the surface of this plausible
plea. They have accepted the pretext as a sound and
genuine principle of conduct, and have called for your
Lordships' co-operation in measures which you have
declined to sanction, because you believe you have dis-
tinguished the concealed from the ostensible motive of
their proposition. Your Lordships believe, that under
the pretext of doing "justice to Ireland," you are called
upon to do "injustice to England," and to assist the
cause of Irish independence and papal supremacy.
1 "A very good pretext may be the delusive cloak of a very
bad cause" (Disraeli in the *Morning Post*, August 21, 1835).
"It is an important principle in morals and in politics not to
mistake the cause for the pretext, nor the pretext for the cause,
and by this means to distinguish between the concealed and the
ostensible motive" (Isaac D'Israeli: "Curiosities of Literature").
``` | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 314.jpg |
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1836] CAUSE AND PRETEXT 309
My Lords, the English nation agrees with you. The experience of the last few years has not been lost upon your reflective countrymen. Under the pretext of emancipating the Irish people, they have witnessed the establishment of the dominion of a foreign priesthood—under the pretext of Parliamentary Reform, they have witnessed the delusive substitution of Whig Government—under the pretext of Municipal Reform in England, they have seen a sectarian oligarchy invested with a monopoly of power, tainting the very fountains of justice, and introducing into the privacy of domestic life all the acerbities of public faction—and under the pretext of “justice to Ireland,” they have already beheld the destruction of Protestant ascendancy, and the Papacy, if not supreme, at least rampant. The English nation are reaping the bitter fruits of not sufficiently discriminating between the ostensible and concealed purposes of legislation. Had they been aware some years back, as they now keenly feel, that they were only extending power and privileges to a priesthood when they thought they were emancipating a people, the miserable dilemma of modern politics would never have occurred. They would not have witnessed the gentlemen of Ireland driven from its parliamentary representation, and deprived of their local influence; they would not have witnessed a fierce and bloody war waged against the property of the Protestant Church and the lives of its ministers; they would not have witnessed the Imperial Parliament occupied in a solemn debate on the propriety of maintaining the legislative union. Political revolutions are always effected by virtue of abstract pleas. “Justice to Ireland” is about as definite as “the Rights of Man.” If the Irish have an equal right with ourselves to popular corporations, have they less a right to a domestic Legislature or a native Sovereign? My Lords, are you prepared to go this length? Are you prepared to dismiss circumstances from your consideration, and legislate solely upon principles? Is the British Senate an assembly
``` | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 315.jpg |
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### THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE
[1836]
of dreaming schoolmen that they are resolved to deal with words in preference to facts? Is a great empire to be dissolved by an idle logomachy? If Dublin have an equal right with Westminster to the presence of a Parliament, is the right of York less valid? Be consistent, my Lords, in the development of the new system of politics. Repeal the Union, and revive the Heptarchy.
When the Irish papists were admitted to the Imperial Parliament, we were told that they would consist of a few gentlemen of ancient family and fortune. That class is already banished from our councils. When the Protestant Establishment in Ireland was reformed by the Whigs, we were told that the Church in Ireland would then be as safe as the Church in Yorkshire. That Establishment is now an eleemosynary one. When the repeal of the union was discussed in the English Parliament, we were told that it was only supported by a feeble section. That section now decides the fate of the British Government and the policy of the British Empire. Because much has been conceded, we are told that all must be given up; because the Irish papists have shown themselves unworthy of a political franchise, we are told that it necessarily follows that they should be entrusted with a municipal one; because
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This new system of inductive reasoning may pass current with some bankrupt noble, panting to nestle in the bowers of Downing Street; this topsy-turvy logic may flash conviction on the mind of some penniless expectant of the broken victimals of the official banquet; but the people of England recoil with disgust from the dangerous bric-a-brac, and look up to your Lordships as their hereditary leaders, to stand between the ark of the constitution and the unhallowed hands that are thrust forward to soil | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 316.jpg |
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1886] O'CONNELL AGAIN 311
its splendour and violate its sanctity. The people of England are not so far divorced from their ancient valour, that, after having withstand Napoleon and the whole world in arms, they are to sink before a horde of their manumitted serfs and the *nisi prius* demagogue whom a foreign priesthood have hired to talk treason on their blasphemous behalf. After having routed the lion, we will not be preyed upon by the wolf. If we are to fall, if this great empire, raised by the heroic energies of the English nation—that nation of which your fathers formed a part—is indeed to be dissolved, let us hope that the last moments of our career may prove at least an euthanasia: let no pestilent blight, after our meridian glory, sully the splendour of our setting; and whether we fall before the foreign foe we have so often baffled, or whether, by some mysterious combination of irresistible circumstances, our empire sinks, like the Queen of the Adriatic, beneath the waves that we still rule, let not the records of our future annalist preserve a fact which, after all our greatness, might well break the spirit of the coming generations of our species. Let it not be said that we truckled to one, the unparalleled and unconstitutional scope of whose power is only equalled by the sordid meanness of his rapacious soul. Let it not be said that the English constitution sank before a rebel without dignity and a demagogue without courage. This grand pensionary of bigotry and sedition presumes to stir up the people of England against your high estate. Will the Peers of England quail to this brawling mercenary—this man who has even degraded crime, who has deprived treason of its grandeur and sedition of its sentiment; who is paid for his patriotism, and whose philanthrophy is hired by the job—audacious, yet a poltroon—agitating a people, yet picking their pockets; in mind a Cato, in action a Cleon?
This disturber is in himself nothing. He has neither learning, wit, eloquence, nor refined taste, nor elevated feeling, nor a passionate and creative soul. What ragged | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 317.jpg |
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### THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836]
riboaldry are his public addresses, whether they emanate from his brazen mouth or from his leaden pen! His pathos might shame the mourn Romeo of a barn; his invective is the reckless abandonment of the fish-market. Were he a man of genius, he would be unsuited to the career for which he is engaged; for, after all, he is but a slave. But it is the awful character of his master that invests this creature with his terrible consideration. However we may detest or despise the *misi privus* lawyer hired to insult and injure the realms of England, we know that he is the delegate of the most ancient and powerful priesthood in Europe. It is as the great papal nominee that this O'Connell, with all his vileness, becomes a power to control which requires no common interference.
My Lords, the English nation believes that that interference can be efficiently exercised by your august assembly. In you are reposed their hopes; you will not disappoint them. In a few hours, in obedience to the mandate of the papal priesthood, that shallow voluntary who is still Prime Minister of England, will call upon your Lordships with cuckoo note, to do "justice to Ireland." Do it. Justice to Ireland will best be secured by doing justice to England. The people of England created the empire. At the time when we were engaged in that great strife which will rank in the estimation of posterity with the Punic wars and the struggles of the Greeks against Asia, the very men who are now menacing your illustrious order, and stirring up war against our national institutions, were in communication with our most inveterate foe, and soliciting invasion. My Lords, you will not forget this; you will not forget to distinguish their pretext from their cause. These men cannot be conciliated. They are your foes because they are the foes of England. They hate our free and fertile isle. They hate our order, our civilisation, our enterprising industry, our sustained courage, our decorous liberty, our pure religion. This wild, reckless, indolent, uncertain, and superstitious race have no sympathy with the English character. Their | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 318.jpg |
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PAPAL INFLUENCE
fair ideal of human felicity is an alternation of clannish
brooms and coarse idolatry. Their history describes an
unbroken circle of bigotry and blood. And now, for-
sooth, the cry is raised that they have been misgoverned!
How many who sound this party shibboleth have studied
the history of Ireland? A savage population, under the
influence of the Papacy, has, nevertheless, been so regu-
lated, that they have contributed to the creation of a
highly-civilised and Protestant empire. Why, is not that
the paragon of political science? Could Machiavel teach
more? My Lords, shall the delegates of these tribes,
under the direction of the Roman priesthood, ride rough-
shod over our country—over England—haughty and still
imperial England? Forbid it all the memory of your
ancestors! Rest assured that if you perform your high
and august office as becomes you, rest assured that in this
-British empire, the English nation will not desert you. All parties and
all sects of Englishmen, in this fierce and yet degrading
struggle, must ultimately rally round your House. My
Lords, be bold, be resolute, be still "the pillars of the
State."
April 18, 1836.
LETTER XVII
To the House of Lords
My Lords,—You have unfurled the national standard.
Its patriotic and hearty motto is, "Justice for England."
The English nation will support you in your high en-
deavours. Fear not that they will be backward. They
recognise your Lordships as their natural leaders who
have advanced, according to your hereditary duty, to
assist them in the extremity of their degraded fortunes.
The time is come for bold and vigorous conduct; the time
is come to rid ourselves of that base tyranny, offensive
to the pride of every Englishman, no matter what his
religious sect or class of political opinions. The English | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 319.jpg |
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### THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836]
nation will not be ruled by the Irish priesthood. Five years of Whig government have not yet so completely broken our once proud spirit that we can submit without a murmur or a struggle to such a yoke. If Athens, even in her lower fortunes, could free herself of her thirty tyrants, let us hope that England, in spite of all the jobs of our corrupt and corrupting Government, may yet chase away those gentlemen who, fresh from the unction of M’Hale and the mild injunctions of the apostolic Kehoe, have undertaken to guard over the rights and liberties, the property and the religion, of Protestant England. We have not reformed the third estate of the realm in order that England should be governed by the nominees of the Papacy. There is not a man in Britain, Tory or Radical, Episcopalian or Presbyterian, who can stand this long; there is not a man in Britain who at the bottom of his heart is not proud of our empire, and who does not despise the inferior race who dare to menace its integrity. However faction may corrupt and machinate, the people of England will never long submit to a Milesian master; and when they reflect upon their present degradation, and are conscious that they have experienced it only to secure in power the dull and desperate remains of a once haughty oligarchy, long baffled in their anti-national attempts upon the free realm of England, the nation will rise in its wrath, and execute vengeance upon the cabal which has thus trifled with this great country’s immortal honour.
The English nation requires justice; and it is not content to receive that justice by instilments—a process that may suit their lately manumitted serfs, but which will not accord with their stern and determined spirits, habituated to the ennobling exercise and the proud enjoyment of an ancient liberty. They require justice, and they will have that justice full and free. It must be meted
1 John M’Hale (1791-1881), appointed Archbishop of Tuam in 1834; and possibly John Keogh (1740-1817), the Irish Catholic leader, to whose efforts the passing of the Relief Act of 1793 was mainly due. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 320.jpg |
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1886] JUSTICE FOR ENGLAND
out speedily and not scantily. They require this justice, with the Peers of England at their head, and the result will prove whether the Milesian peasantry, led on by the papist priensthood, can cope with this proud and powerful society. It is not just to England that the Sovereign should be deprived of his undoubted prerogative; it is not just to England that M'Hale and Kehoo should dictate to our King the servants whom our Royal master should employ; it is not just to England that the King of England should by any such an anti-national process be surrounded by the Ministers, not of his choice, but of his necessity; it is not just to England that a knot of papist legislators should deal with the polity and property of our Protestant Church; it is not just to England that no English blood in Ireland should be secure from plunder or assassination; it is not just to England that a hired disturber, paid by the Roman priesthood, should ramble over our country to stir up rebellion against your Lordships' august estate; that his ribald tongue should soil and outrage all that we have been taught to love, honour, and obey—our women, our princes, and our laws; and lastly, it is not just to England that its constitution should be attacked, its empire menaced, and its religion scoffed at.
My Lords, the same party that demands justice for Ireland is not less clamorous in its requisition of justice for Canada. Will you grant it? Justice for Botany Bay, too, is, I have heard, in the market, and the cry is said to be worth some good £2,000 per annum. The noble member for Glasgow, the vigorous writer of that lucid address which I had the honour of transferring from its original Sanscrit and first introducing to the notice of the British public, has, I believe, already done justice to India. My Lords! when and where is this dangerous nonsense to terminate? How compatible is the prevalence of such windy words with the subsistence of an empire? It may be as well for your Lordships to ponder on the consequences. The English nation formed the empire. Ours is the imperial isle. England is the Metro-
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## THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE
### [1836]
politan country, and we might as well tear out the living
heart from the human form, and bid the heaving corse
still survive, as suppose that a great empire can endure
without some concentration of power and vitalily.
My Lords, the season is ripe for action. In spite of all
the machinations of the anti-English faction, never was
your great assembly more elevated in the esteem and
affection of your countrymen than at this perilous hour.
The English are a reflecting and observant people; they
ponder even amid tumult; they can draw a shrewd moral
even from the play of their own passions; and they cannot
but feel that—after all the revolutionary rhetoric which
has been dinned into their ears of late in panegyric of
a Reform Ministry and a Reformed Parliament, and in
simultaneous depreciation of your Lordships’ power and
usefulness—not only in eloquence and knowledge, in
elevation of thought and feeling, and even in practical
conduct, your Lordships need fear no comparison with
that assembly which, from a confusion of ideas, is in
general supposed to be more popular in its elements and
character, but that on all occasions when the dignity of
the empire and the rights of the subject have been threat-
ened and assailed, the national cause has invariably found
in your Lordships’ House that support and sympathy which have been denied to it by the other Chamber.
Your Lordships, therefore, commence the conflict with
the anti-English party under great advantages. Not only
is your cause a just one, and your resolution to maintain
its justice unshakable, but there happens in your instance
that which unfortunately cannot always be depended on
in those great conjunctures which decide the fate of crowns
and nations. The sympathy of the nation is arrayed
under your banner. And inasmuch as the popularity
which you now enjoy is to be distinguished from that
volatile effusion which is the hurry-skurry offspring of
ignorance and guile, but is founded on the surer basis of
returning reason and mellowed passions and sharp experi-
ence, you may rest assured that the support of your | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 322.jpg |
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1838] A STRUGGLE WITH THE PAPACY 317
countrymen will not be withdrawn from you in the hour
of trial.
But, my Lords, do not undervalue the enemy which, at
the head of the English nation, you are about to combat.
If you imagine that you are going to engage only an
ignorant and savage population, led on by a loose-tongued
pontifoon, you will indeed deceive yourselves, and the
truth will not be in you. My Lords, you are about to
struggle with a foe worthy even of the Peers of England,
for he is a foe that has placed his foot upon the neck of
Emperors. My Lords, you are about to struggle with the
Papacy, and in its favourite and devoted land. Whether
the conspiracy of the Irish priests be more successful than
the fleets of Spain, and more fatal to the freedom and the
faith of England, time can alone prove, and Providence
can alone decide. But let us not forget that Heaven aids
those who aid themselves, and, firm in the faith that
nerved the arms of our triumphant fathers, let us meet
without fear that dark and awful power that strikes at
once at the purity of our domestic hearths and the
splendour of our imperial sway.
April 23, 1836.
LETTER XVIII
To the LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lord,—The gay liver, who, terrified by the con-
sequences of his excesses, takes to water and a temperance
society, is in about the same condition as the Whig
Ministers in their appointment of a Lord Chancellor,
when, still smarting under the eccentric vagaries of a
Brogham, they sought refuge in the calm reaction of
your sober Lordship. This change from Master Shallow
to Master Silence was for a moment amusing; but your
Lordship has at length found the faculty of speech, and
your astonished countrymen begin to suspect that they
1 Lord Cottenham.
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### THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836]
may not be altogether the gainers in the great transition from Humbug to Humdrum. We have escaped from the eagle to be preyed upon by the owl. For your Lordship is also a Reformer, a true Reformer; you are to proceed in the grand course of social amelioration and party jobbing, and the only substantial difference, it seems, that a harassed nation is to recognise, is that which consists between the devastation of the locust and the destruction of the slug.
Your Lordship has figured during the last week in the double capacity of a statesman and a legislator. With what transcendent success let the blank dismay that stamped the countenance of the Prime Minister bear flattering witness; as he hung with an air of awkward astonishment on the accents of your flowing eloquence, and listened with breathless surprise, if not admiration, to the development of those sage devices which, by a curious felicity of fortune, have succeeded in arraying against them the superficial prejudices of all parties. Yet one advantage, it cannot be denied, has resulted from your Lordship’s last triumphant exhibition. The public at length become acquainted with the object of Lord Langdale’s surprising elevation, and the agreeable office which it appears the noble Master of the Rolls is to fulfil in the Senate of Great Britain. We have heard before of a Lord Chancellor’s devotion; but my Lord Cottenham is the first guardian of the Great Seal whom his considerable colleagues have supplied not only with a coronet, but a critic.
That your Lordship should be an advocate for “justice to Ireland,” might reasonably have been expected from your eminet situation. Your party may share with you the odium or the glory of your political projects, but the laurels which you have recently acquired by your luminous eloquence and your profound legal knowledge are all your Lordship’s own, and I doubt whether any of your friends or your opponents will be aspiring enough to envy you their rich fruit. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 324.jpg |
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1886] CUSTODY OF THE GREAT SEAL 318
And here, as it is the fashion to do “justice to Whig-
gism,” I cannot but pause to notice the contrast, so
flattering to the judgment and high principle of your
Lordship’s party, which their legal appointments afford
when compared with those of the annihilated Tories, and
especially of the late Government. The administration of
justice is still a matter of some importance, and we
naturally shrink from the party who have entrusted its
conduct to men so notoriously incompetent as a Sugden
or a Scarlett, or placed upon the judgment seat such mere
political adventurers as an Alderson and a Park, a
Patteson and a Coleridge, a Taunton and a Tindal ! How
refreshing it is, after such a prostitution of patronage and
power, to turn to a Lord Chief Justice like a Denman,
raised to his lofty post by the sheer influence of his un-
equalled learning and his unrivalled practice, or to recog-
nise the homage which has been paid to professional
devotion in the profound person of Mr. Baron Williams !
I say nothing of your Lord Chancellors; one you have
discarded, and the other you are about to deprive of his
functions. And, indeed, it cannot be denied, that the
appointment of your Lordship to the custody of the
Great Seal, as a preliminary step to the abolition of the
office of Lord Chancellor itself, displayed a depth of
statecraft in your party for which the nation has hitherto
given them scarcely sufficient credit. Had it been en-
trusted to a Hardwicke, an Eldon, or a Lyndhurst, to
some great functionality to whom the public had been
accustomed to look up with confidence, and the pro-
fession with respect, some murmurs might naturally have
arisen at the menaced disturbance of an ancient order
which had long contributed to that pure and learned
administration of justice which was once the boast of
Britons. But if the Whigs, as their organs daily assure
us, are indeed to be our perpetual masters, we may be
excused for viewing with indifference, if not with com-
placency, that promised arrangement by which the most
important duties of the State are no longer assigned at the
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caprice of a party, which, with a singularly sound judgment, has periodically selected for their performance an Erskine, a Brougham, and finally your learned Lordship. The still haughty Venetians sometimes console themselves with the belief that their State would not have fallen if the last of their Doges had not unfortunately been a plebeian; the Bar of England, that illustrious body which has contributed to our fame and our felicity not less than the most celebrated of our political institutions, may perhaps, in a sympathetic strain of feeling, some day be of opinion that they would not have been expelled from their high and just position in our society if the last of the Lord Chancellors had been worthy of being their chief; and posterity may perhaps class together, in the same scale of unsuitable elevation, the ignoble Manini and the feeble Cottenham.
My Lord, the same spirit that would expel the heads of our Church from the Senate, would banish the head of our law from the King's Council. Under pretext of reform and popular government, your party, as usual, are assailing all the democratic elements of our constitution. The slang distinction of the day between the political and legal duties of a Lord Chancellor tends, like all the other measures of the party which has elevated your Lordship to the peerage, and is now about to lower you to a clerkship, to the substitution of an oligarchical government. We may yet live to regret that abrogated custom which, by giving the head of the law a precedence over the haughtiest peers, and securing his constant presence in the Cabinet of the sovereign, paid a glorious homage to the majesty of jurisprudence, announced to the world that our political constitution was eminently legal, guaranteed that there should be at least one individual in the realm who was not made a Minister because he was a noble, insured the satisfactory administration of domestic justice, and infused into our transactions with foreign Courts and Cabinets that high and severe spirit
1 Ludovico Manini, the last Doge of Venice. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 326.jpg |
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# LEGAL REFORM
of public rectitude which obtained our own rights by acknowledging those of others.
Will the hybrid thing which, under Lord Cottenham's scheme of legal reform, is to be baptised in mockery a Lord Chancellor, afford these great advantages in the Cabinet or the Senate? He is to be a lawyer without a court, and a lawyer without a court will soon be a lawyer without law. The Lord High Chancellor of England will speedily subside into a political nonentity like the President of the Council; that office which is the fitting appanage of pompous imbecility. Lord Cottenham may be excused for believing that to make a Lord Chancellor it is enough to plant a man upon a woolsack, and thrust a wig upon his head and a gold-embroidered robe upon his back; but the people of England have been accustomed to recognise in a Lord Chancellor, a man who has won his way to a great position by the exercise of great qualities—a man of singular acuteness and profound learning, and vast experience, and patient study, and unwearied industry—a man who has obtained the confidence of his profession before he challenges the confidence of his country, and who has secured eminence in the House of Commons before he has aspired to superiority in the House of Lords—a man who has expanded from a great lawyer into a great statesman, and who brings to the woolsack the commanding reputation which has been gained in the long and laborious years of an admired career.
My Lord, this is not your portrait. You are the child of reform, the chance offspring of political agitation and factious intrigue. The Whigs have stirred up and made muddy even the fountain of justice; for a moment an airy bubble, glittering in the sunshine, floated on the excited surface; but that brilliant bubble soon burst and vanished, and a scum, thick and obscure, now crests the once pure and tranquil waters.
*April 30, 1836.* | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 327.jpg |
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### LETTER XIX
**To Viscount Melbourne**
MY LORD,—I had the honour of addressing you on the eve of your last holidays; the delightful hour of relaxation again approaches: I wish you again to retire to the bowers of Brocket with my congratulations. The campaign about to close has been brief, but certainly not uneventful; I will not say disastrous, because I wish to soothe, rather than irritate, your tortured feelings. The incidents have been crowded, as in the last act of one of those dramas to which it was formerly your ambition to supply an epilogue. Why did that ambition ever become so unnaturally elevated? Why was your Lordship not content to remain agreeable? Why did you aspire to be great? A more philosophical moderation would have saved you much annoyance and your country much evil; yourself some disgraceful situations, perhaps some ludicrous ones. When I last addressed you, your position was only mischievous; it is now ridiculous. Your dark master, the Milesian Eblis, has at length been vanquished by that justice for which he is so enamoured, and which he has so long outraged. The poisoned chalice of revolutionary venom which your creatures prepared for our august Senate, august though you are a member of it, has been returned to their own lips. The House of Lords, decreed for its ignorance and inefficiency by adventurers without talents and without education, has vindicated its claims to the respect of the country for its ability and its knowledge. Held up to public scorn by your hirelings as the irreponsible tyrants of the land, a
¹ *Cf. “The reformed House of Commons, proud of its new-fangled existence ... permitted a Minister of State to stigmatize a vote of the House of Lords as ‘the whisper of a faction’; but now the poisoned chalice is returned to their own lips” (Dispatch in the House of Commons, May 27, 1841).* | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 328.jpg |
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1886J WHIG MACHIAVELISM 323
grateful nation recognises in the Peers of England the hereditary trustees of their rights and liberties, the guardians of their greatness, and the elegant and un-daunted champions of the integrity of their empire. The greater portion of the nation has penetrated the supernatural characteristics of Whig Machiavelism. Your hollow pretences all evaporated, your disgraceful manouvres all detected, your reckless expedients all exhausted, we recognise only a desperate and long-baffled oligarchy, ready to sacrifice, for the possession of a power to which they are incompetent, the laws, the empire, and the religion of England.
My Lord, it requires no prophet to announce that the commencement of the end is at length at hand. The reign of delusion is about to close. The man who obtains property by false pretences is sent to Botany Bay. Is the party that obtains power by the same means to be saved harmless? You have established a new colony in Australia; it wants settlers. Let the Cabinet emigrate. My Lord Glenelg, with all his Canadian experience, will make an excellent colonial governor. And there your Lordship may hide your public discomfiture and your private mortification. And, indeed, a country where nature regulates herself on an exactly contrary system to the scheme she adopts in the older and more favoured world, has some pretensions, it would seem, to the beneficial presence of your faction. The land where the rivers are salt, where the quadrupeds have fins and the fish feet, where everything is confused, discordant, and irregular, is indicated by Providence as the fitting scene of Whig government.
The Whigs came into office under auspices so favourable, that they never could have been dislodged from their long-coveted posts except by their own incompetence and dishonesty. From circumstances which it would not be difficult to explain, they were at once sanctioned by the King and supported by the people. In the course of five years they have at once deceived the
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324 THE LETTERS OF RUNNYMEDE [1836]
sovereign and deluded the nation. After having reconstructed the third estate for their own purposes, in the course of five years a majority of the English representatives is arrayed against them; waited into power on the wings of the public press, dusty from the march of intellect, and hoarse with clamouring about the spirit of the age, in the course of five years they are obliged to declare war against the journals, the faithful mirrors of the public mind. With peace, reform, and retrenchment for their motto, in the course of five years they have involved us in a series of ignoble wars, deluged the country with jobs and placemen, and have even contrived to increase the amount of the public debt.
What rashness and what cowardice, what petty prudence and what vast recklessness, what arrogance and what truckling, are comprised in the brief annals of this last assault of your faction upon the constitutional monarchy of England ! Now hinting at organic changes, now whimpering about the pressure from without; dragged through the mud on the questions of military discipline and the pension list, yet ready at the next moment to plunder the Church or taint the very fountains of justice; threatening the Peers of England on one day, and crouching on the next before the Irish peers ! A few months back you astounded the public by announcing that you had purchased a Lord Chancellor at the price of three coronets.1 The cost has been considered not only exorbitant, but unconstitutional: but the nation, wearied by your vexatious delay of justice, was content to be silent, and awaited the anticipated presence of a Minos. You produced Cottenham. Moses and his green spectacles was not in a more ludicrous position than your Lordship with your precious purchase. Yet this impotent conclusion was announced in January as a coup d'état, and the people of England were daily congratulated on an arrangement now universally acknowledged as the most ridiculous act even of your administration.
1 The four coronets have now decreased to three (see note, p. 241). | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 330.jpg |
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1836] "SWAMPING" THE PEERS 325
ministration. Moralists have contrasted the respective
careers of the knocking and the fool, and have console4.
hardened humanity by the conviction that the thunder in the
long-run is not more fortunate than the simplon. I
leave this controversial question to the fabler and the
essayist; the man of the world, however, will not be sur-
prised at the fate of a political party, the enormity of
whose career is only equalled by the feebleness of their
conduct.
My Lord, the Whigs a century back or so were at least
no fools. When the Dukes of Somerset and Argyle
attended a Privy Council without being summoned,1 and
forced a dying Queen to appoint the Duke of Shrewsbury
Prime Minister, they did not perpetrate a greater out-
rage than the Whig leader, who, by virtue of a papist
conspiracy, returned to the post from which he had
been properly expelled, and became the Minister, not of
the King's choice, but of the King's necessity. These
same Whig leaders, when thus unconstitutionally estab-
lished in power, introduced the Peerage Bill, which if
passed into a law would have deprived the sovereign of his
preogative of creating further Peers, and they
remodelled the House of Commons by the Septennial Act.
The Whigs in 1718 sought to govern the country by
"swamping" the House of Commons; in 1836 it is the
House of Lords that is to be "swamped." In 1718
the coup d'état was to prevent any further increase of the
Lords; in 1836 the Lords are to be outnumbered; different
tactics to obtain the same purpose—the establishment of
an oligarchical government by virtue of a Republican cry.
Where Argyle and Walpole failed, is it probable that
Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell will succeed ?
The Whigs, a century back, were men of great station,
great talents, great eloquence, supported by two-thirds
of the nobles of the land; by the Dissenters, because they
attacked the Church, inasmuch as the Establishment,
like every other national institution, is an obstacle to
- July 3, 1714.
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326 THE LETTERS OF RNNYMEDE [1836]
oligarchical power; and by the commercial and “monied interest” of the country, now, like every other interest of property, arrayed against them. And what are you? Is it your eloquence, your knowledge, your high descent, and vast property, or the following of your order, that introduce you into the King’s Cabinet? No, you are the slave of a slave, the delegate of a deputy, the second-hand nominee of a power the most odious and anti-national in existence, foreign to all the principles and alien to all the feelings of Britons. My Lord, the popular and boisterous gale that originally drove your party into power has long since died away, and though some occasional and fitful gusts may have deceived you into believing that your sails were to be ever set and your streamers ever flying, the more experienced navigators have long detected the rising of the calm yet steady breeze fatal to your course. It is a wind which may be depended on—a great monsoon of national spirit, which will clear the seas of those political pirates who have too long plundered us under false colours.
And yet, my Lord, let us not part in anger. Yours is still a gratifying, even a great position. Notwithstanding all your public degradation and all your private annoyances, that man is surely to be envied who has it in his power to confer an obligation on every true-hearted Englishman. And this your Lordship still can do; you can yet perform an act which will command the gratitude of every lover of his country; you can—Resign.
May 15, 1836.
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[836] THE "VINDICATION" IN LITTLE 327
## THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM
["THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM" was published as an addendum to the book containing the Letters of Runnymede. It is the "Vindication" in little—a popular summary that Disraeli hoped might be easily read and easily remembered. It is perhaps freer from extravagances of style than any other of his writings of the period. Of its genesis little is known. It may be that it represents the original form of the Letter to Lord Lyndhurst, when, as he says, he found that the subject gave rise to so many reflections that what was originally intended for a pamphlet expanded almost into a volume. Published anonymously within a few months of the appearance of the "Vindication" which bore his name, it could not have failed, by similarity of views and of method of expression, to carry conviction that the writer of "Runnymede" was identical with Disraeli the Younger.]
### CHAPTER I
### HISTORICAL
ENGLAND has become great by her institutions. Her hereditary Crown has in a great degree insured us from the distracting evils of a contested succession; her Peerage, interested, from the vast property and the national honours of its members, in the good government of the country, has offered a compact bulwark against the temporary violence of popular passion; her House of Commons, representing the conflicting sentiments of an
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323 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836].
estate of the realm not less privileged than that of the Peers, though far more numerous, has enlisted the great mass of the lesser proprietors of the country in favour of a political system which offers them a constitutional means of defence and a legitimate method of redress; her ecclesiastical establishment, preserved by its munificent endowment from the fatal necessity of pandering to the erratic fancies of its communicants, has maintained the sacred cause of learning and religion, and preserved orthodoxy while it has secured tolerance; her law of primogeniture has supplied the country with a band of natural and independent leaders, trustees of those legal institutions which pervade the land, and which are the origin of our political constitution.
That great body corporate, styled a nation—a vast assemblage of human beings knit together by laws and acts and customs, by the necessities of the present and the memory of the past—offers in this country, through these its vigorous and enduring members, a more substantial and healthy framework than falls to the lot of other nations. Our stout-built constitution throws off with more facility and safety those crude and dangerous humours which must at times arise in all human communities. The march of revolution must here at least be orderly. We are preserved from those reckless and tempestuous sallies that in other countries, like a whirlwind, topple down in an instant an ancient crown, or sweep away an illustrious aristocracy. This constitution, which has secured order, has consequently promoted civilisation; and the almost unbroken tide of progressive amelioration has made us the freest, the wealthiest, and the most refined society of modern ages. Our commerce is unrivalled, our manufactures supply the world, our agriculture is the most skilful in Christendom. So national are our institutions, so completely have they arisen from the temper and adapted themselves to the character of the people, that when for a season they were apparently annihilated, the people of England voluntarily returned
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1836] THE FURY OF FACTIONS 399
to them, and established them with renewed strength and renovated vigour.
The constitution of England is again threatened, and at a moment when the nation is more prosperous, more free, and more famous than at any period of its momentous and memorable career. Why is this? What has occasioned these distempered times, which make the loyal tremble and the traitor smile? Why has this dark cloud suddenly gathered in a sky so serene and so splendid? Is there any analogy between this age and that of the first Charles? Are the same causes at work, or is the apparent similarity produced only by designing men, who make use of the perverted past as a passport to present mischief? These are great questions which it may be profitable to discuss and wise to study.
Rapin, a foreigner who wrote our history,1 in the course of his frigid yet accurate pages, indulged in one philosophical observation. Struck at the same time by our greatness and by the fury of our factions, the Huguenot disinclined, ‘ It appears to me that this great society can only be dissolved by the violence of its political parties:’
- What are these parties? Why are they violent? Why should they exist? In resolving these questions, we may obtain an accurate idea of our present political position, and by pondering over the past we may make that past not a prophet, as the disaffected intend, but a salutary lesson by which the loyal may profit.
The two great parties in which England has during the last century and a half been divided originated in the ancient struggle between the Crown and the aristocracy. As long as the Crown possessed or aspired to despotic power, the feeling of the nation supported the aristocracy in their struggles to establish a free government. The aristocracy of England formed the constitution of the Plantagenets; the wars of the Roses destroyed that aristocracy, and the despotism of the Tudors suc
1 Paul de Rapin de Thoyras, whose ‘Histoire d’Angleterre,’ in eight volumes, appeared in 1724.
22
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ceeded. Renovated by more than a century of peace and the spoils of the Papacy, the aristocracy of England attacked the first Stuarts, who succceeded to a despotism which they did not create. When Charles the First, after a series of great concessions which ultimately obtained for him the support of the most illustrious of his early opponents, raised the royal standard, the constitution of the Plantagenets, and more than the constitution of the Plantagenets, had been restored and secured. But a portion of the able party which had succeeded in effecting such a vast and beneficial revolution was not content to part with the extraordinary powers which they had obtained in this memorable struggle. This section of the aristocracy were the origin of the English Whigs, though that title was not invented until the next reign. The primitive Whigs—" Parliament-men,'' as they liked to call themselves, '' Roundheads,'' as they were in time dubbed—aspired to an oligarchy; for a moment they obtained one; but unable to maintain themselves in power against the returning sense and rising spirit of a generous and indignant people, they called to their aid that domestic revolutionary party which exists in all countries, and an anti-national enemy in addition. These were the English Radicals, or Root-and-Branch men, and the Scotch Covenanters. To conciliate the first they sacrificed the Crown; to secure the second they abolished the Church. The constitution of England in Church and State was destroyed, and the Whig oligarchy, in spite of their machinations, were soon merged in the common ruin.
The ignoble tyranny to which this great nation was consequently subject produced that reaction which is in the nature of human affairs. The ancient constitution was in time restored, and the Church and the Crown were invested with greater powers than they had enjoyed previously to their overthrow. So hateful had been the consequences of Whig rule that the people were inclined rather to trust the talons of arbitrary power than to take | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 336.jpg |
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1836] THE VENETIAN CONSTITUTION 331
refuge under the wing of these pretended advocates of popular rights. A worthless monarch and a corrupted Court evaded themselves of the offered opportunity; and when James the Second ascended the throne, the nation was again prepared to second the aristocracy in a struggle for their liberties. But the Whigs had profited by their previous experiment: they revolved upon a revolution, but they determined that that revolution should be brought about by as slight an appeal to popular sympathies as possible. They studiously confined that appeal to the religious feelings of the nation. They hired a foreign prince and enlisted a foreign army in their service. They dethroned James, they established themselves in power without the aid of the mass; and had William the Third been a man of ordinary capacity, the constitution of Venice would have been established in England in 1688. William the Third told the Whigs that he would never consent to be a Doge. Resembling Louis Philippe in his character as well as in his position, that extraordinary Prince baffled the Whigs by his skilful balance of parties; and had Providence accorded him an heir, it is probable that the oligarchical faction would never have revived in England.
The Whigs have ever been opposed to the national institutions because they are adverse to the establishment of an oligarchy. Local institutions, supported by a landed gentry, check them; hence their love of centralisation and their hatred of unpaid magistrates. An independent hierarchy checks them; hence their affected advocacy of toleration and their patronage of the Dissenters. The power of the Crown checks them; therefore they always labour to reduce the sovereign to a nonentity, and by the establishment of the Cabinet they have virtually banished the King from his own councils. But, above all, the Parliament of England checks them, and therefore it may be observed that the Whigs at all times are quarrelling with some portion of those august estates. They despair of destroying the Parliament; by it, and by
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conséquent, peuvent-elles réussir seuls dans leurs entreprises. Corruption pour une part, force pour l'autre alors, est leur devise. En 1640, elles tentèrent de gouverner le pays par la Chambre des communes, parce que l'aristocratie était alors plus puissante dans la Chambre des communes que dans la Chambre des lords, où un Pair, épuisé par les guerres civiles, avait été trop libéralement recruté parmi les courtiers des Tudors et des Stuarts. Lors de la prochaine révolution, lorsque les Whigs s'emparèrent du pouvoir, ils tentèrent de gouverner le pays par la Chambre des lords, où ils étaient prédominants ; et, pour garantir leur pouvoir à jamais, ils introduisirent un Bill pour dépouiller le Roi de son droit britannique de faire plus de pairs. La révolution de 1640 aboutit à l'abolition de la Chambre des lords parce que les Lords s'opposaient à l'oligarchie ; la révolution de 1688 aboutit à la réforme de la Chambre des communes par l'Acte Septennal, parce que la Chambre des communes était alors influencée par les mêmes sentiments que les Lords pendant la grande révolution. L'avènement de la Chambre de Hanovre ranima les espoirs des Whigs, battus par la politique subtile de William, et par les triomphes de Tory d'Anne. La nouvelle dynastie était impopulaire auprès de la masse de la nation, et proportionnellement dépendante de la oligarchie Whig. Ayant une majorité dans la Chambre des lords, les Whigs introduisirent le Bill de Pairie, par lequel la Chambre des lords serait devenue indépendante du trône ; impopulaire avec le pays, les Whigs attaquèrent l'influence de la démocratie populaire, et le moment que, par l'aide de la plus infâme corruption, ils avaient obtenu une majorité temporaire à la Chambre des communes, ils firent passer l'Acte Septennal. Les Whigs du XVIIIe siècle "anéantirent" la Chambre des communes ; les Whigs du XIXe siècle auraient "anéanti" la Chambre des lords. Les Whigs du XVIIIe siècle auraient rendu la Chambre des lords inaltérable ; les Whigs du XIXe siècle remanièrent la Chambre des communes.
Je conclus ici le premier chapitre du "Esprit de | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 338.jpg |
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1886] RULING FAMILIES 333
Whigism"—a little book which I hope may be easily read and easily remembered. The Whig party have always adopted popular cries. In one age it is Liberty, in another Reform; at one period they sound the tocsin against popery, in another they ally themselves with papists. They have many cries, and various modes of conduct; but they have only one object—the establish- ment of an oligarchy in this free and equal land. I do not wish this country to be governed by a small knot of great families, and therefore I oppose the Whigs.
CHAPTER II
AT WAR WITH THE CONSTITUTION
When the Whigs and their public organs favour us with their mysterious hints that the constitution has provided the sovereign with a means to re-establish at all times a legislative sympathy between the two Houses of Parlia- ment, it may be as well to remind them that we are not indebted for this salutary prerogative to the forbearance of their party. Suppose their Peerage Bill had passed into an Act, how would they have carried the Reform Bill of 1832? The Whigs may reply, that if the Peerage Bill had become a law, the Reform Bill would never have been introduced; and I believe them. In that case, the British House of Lords would have been transformed into a Venetian Senate, and the old walls of St. James's might have witnessed scenes of as degrading mortification as the famous ducal palace of the Adriatic.
George the Third routed the Whigs, consolidating by half a century of power; but an ordinary monarch would have sunk beneath the Coalition and the India Bill. This scheme was the last desperate effort of the oligarchical party previous to 1830. Not that they were inactive during the great interval that elapsed between the advent of Mr. Pitt and the resurrection of Lord Grey: but, ever | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 339.jpg |
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### 334 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836]
on the watch for a cry to carry them into power, they mistook the yell of Jacobinism for the chorus of an emancipated people, and fancied, in order to take the throne by storm, that nothing was wanting but to hoist the tricolour and to cover their haughty brows with a red cap. This fatal blunder clipped the wings of Whiggism; nor is it possible to conceive a party that had affected so many revolutions and governed a great country for so long a period, more broken, sunk, and shattered, more desolate and disheartened, than these same Whigs at the Peace of Paris. From that period till 1830, the tactics of the Whigs consisted in gently and gradually extricating themselves from their false position as the disciples of Jacobinism, and assuming their ancient post as the hereditary guardians of an hereditary monarchy. To make the transition less difficult than it threatened, they invented Liberalism, a bridge by which they were to regain the lost mainland, and daintily recross on tiptoe the chasm over which they had originally sprung with so much precipitation. A dozen years of “liberal principles” broke up the national party of England, cemented by half a century of prosperity and glory, compared with which all the annals of the realm are dim and lacklustre. Yet so weak intrinsically was the oligarchical faction that their chief, despairing to obtain a monopoly of power for his party, elaborately announced himself as the champion of his patrician order, and attempted to coalesce with the liberalised leader of the Tories. Had that negotiation led to the result which was originally intended by those interested, the Riots of Paris would not have occasioned the Reform of London.
It is a great delusion to believe that revolutions are ever effected by a nation. It is a fact, and generally a small one, that overflows a dynasty or remodels a constitution. A small party, stung by a long exile from power, and desperate of success except by desperate means, invariably has recourse to a coup d'état. An oligarchical party is necessarily not numerous. Its | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 340.jpg |
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### 1836 ] ORIGIN OF THE REFORM BILL 335
members in general attempt, by noble lineage or vast possessions, to compensate for their poverty of numbers. The Whigs, in 1830, found themselves by accident in place, but under very peculiar circumstances. They were in place but not in power. In each estate of the realm a majority was arrayed against them. An appeal to the Commons of England, that constituency which, in its elements, had undergone no alteration since the time of Elizabeth, either by the influence of the legislature or the action of time—that constituency which had elected Pym, and Selden, and Hampden, as well as Somers, Walpole, and Pitt—they disposed; would be fatal to the Whigs, and therefore they determined to reconstruct it. This is the origin of the recent parliamentary reform: the Whigs, in place without being in power, resolved as usual upon a *coup d’etat*, and looked about for a stalking-horse. In general the difficult task had devolved upon them of having to accomplish their concealed purpose while apparently achieving some public object. Thus they had carried the Septennial Act on the plea of preserving England from papery, though their real object was to prolong the existence of the first House of Commons in which they could command a majority.
But in the present instance they became sincerely parliamentary reformers, for by parliamentary reform they could alone subsist; and all their art was dedicated so to contrive, that in this reformation their own interest should secure an irresistible predominance.
But how was an oligarchical party to predominate in popular elections? Here was the difficulty. The Whigs had no resources from their own limited ranks to feed the muster of the popular levies. They were obliged to look about for allies wherewith to form their new popular estate. Any estate of the Commons modelled on any equitable principle, either of property or population, must have been fatal to the Whigs; they, therefore, very dexterously adopted a small minority of the nation, | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 341.jpg |
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consisting of the sectarians, and, inauguating them as the people with a vast and bewildering train of herdous-ivolous ceremonies, invested the Dissenters with political power. By this coup d'état they managed the House of Commons, and having at length obtained a position, they have from that moment laid siege to the House of Lords, with the intention of reducing that great institution and making it surrender at discretion. This is the exact state of English politics during the last five years. The Whigs have been at war with the English constitution. First of all they captured the King; then they vanquished the House of Commons; now they have laid siege to the House of Lords. But here the fallacy of their grand scheme of political mystification begins to develop itself. Had, indeed, their new constituency, as they have long impudently pretended, indeed been "the people," a struggle between such a body and the House of Lords would have been brief but final. The absurdity of supposing that a chamber of two or three hundred individuals have set up their absolute will and pleasure against the decrees of a legislative assembly chosen by a whole nation, is so glaring that the Whigs and their scribes might reasonably suspect that in making such allegations they were assuredly proving too much. But as "the people" of the Whigs is in fact a number of Englishmen not exceeding in amount the population of a third-rate city, the English nation is not of opinion that this arrogant and vaunting moity of a class privileged for the common good, swell though it may be by some jobbing Scots and rebel Irish, shall pass off their petty and selfish schemes of personal aggrandisement as the will of a great people, as mindful of its duty to its posterity as it is grateful for the labours of its ancestors. The English nation, therefore, rallies for rescue from the degrading plots of a profligate clergy, a barbarising sectarianism, and a boroughmonger-generosity round their hereditary leaders—the Peers. The House of Lords, therefore, at this moment represents everything in the realm except
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## 1836] AN OLIGARCHICAL REPUBLIC 337
the Whig oligarchs, their tools—the Dissenters, and their
masters—the Irish priests. In the meantime the Whigs
bawl aloud that there is a “collision.” It is true there
is a collision; but it is not a collision between the Lords
and the People, but between the Ministers and the Con-
stitution.
### CHAPTER III
#### THE REPUBLIC OF THE WHIGS
It may be as well to remind the English nation that a
revolutionary party is not necessarily a liberal one, and
that a republic is not indispensably a democracy. Such is
the disposition of property in England that, were a
republic to be established here to-morrow, it would
partake rather of the oligarchical than of the aristocratic
character. We should be surprised to find in how few
families the power of the State was concentrated. And
although the framers of the new commonwealth would be
too crafty to base it on any arowed and ostensible prin-
ciple of exclusion, but on the contrary would in all prob-
ability ostentatiously inaugurate the novel constitution
by virtue of some abstract plea about as definite and as
prodigal of practical effects as the Rights of Man or the
Sovereignty of the People; nevertheless I should be aston-
ished were we not to find that the great mass of the
nation, as far as any share in the conduct of public affairs
was concerned, were as completely shut out from the
fruition and exercise of power as under that Venetian
policy which has ever been the secret object of Whig
envy and Whig admiration. The Church, under such
circumstances, would probably have again been plun-
dered, and therefore the discharge of ecclesiastical duties
might be spared to the nation; but the people would
assuredly be practically excluded from its services, which
would swarm with the relations and connections of the
senatorial class; for, whether this country be governed | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 343.jpg |
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### THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836]
only by the House of Commons, or only by the House of Lords, the elements of the single chamber will not materially differ: and although in the event of the triumph of the Commons, the ceremony of periodical election may be retained (and we should not forget that the Long Parliament soon spared us that unnecessary form), the selected members will form a Senate as irresponsible as any House of Parliament whose anomalous constitution may now be the object of Whig sneers or Radical anathemas.
The rights and liberties of a nation can only be preserved by institutions. It is not the spread of knowledge or the march of intellect that will be found sufficient sureties for the public welfare in the crisis of a country's freedom. Our interest taints our intelligence, our passions paralyse our reason. Knowledge and capacity are too often the willing tools of a powerful faction or a disastrous adventurer. Life is short, man is imaginative; our means are limited, our passions high.
In seasons of great popular excitement, gold and glory offer strong temptations to needy ability. The demagogues throughout a country, the orators of town- counsels and vestries, and the lecturers of mechanics' institutes, present, doubtless in most cases unconsciously, the ready and fit machinery for the party or the individual that aspires to establish a tyranny. Duly graduating in corruption, the leaders of the mob become the oppressors of the people. Cultivation of intellect and diffusion of knowledge may make the English nation more sensible of the benefits of their social system, and better qualified to discharge the duties with which their institutions have invested them; but they will never render them competent to preserve their liberties without the aid of those institutions. Let us for a moment endeavour to fancy Whiggism in a state of rampant predominance; let us try to contemplate England enjoying all those advantages which our present rulers have not yet granted us, and some of which they have as yet only ventured | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 344.jpg |
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1836]
## THREATENED CHANGES
390
to promise by innuendo. Let us suppose our ancient monarchy abolished, our independent hierarchy reduced to a stipendiary sect, the gentlemen of England deprived of their magisterial functions, and metropolitan prefects and sub-prefects established in the counties and principal towns, commanding a vigorous and vigilant police, and backed by an army under the immediate orders of a single House of Parliament. Why, these are threatened changes—ay, and not one of them that may not be brought about to-morrow, under the plea of the ‘spirit of the age,’ or ‘county reform,’ or ‘cheap government.’ But where then will be the liberties of England? Who will dare disobey London? the enlightened and reformed metropolis! And can we think, if any bold Squire, in whom some of the old blood might still chance to linger, were to dare to murmur against this grinding tyranny, or appeal to the spirit of those neighbours whose predecessors his ancestors had protected, can we flatter ourselves that there would not be judges in Westminster Hall prepared and prompt to inflict on him all the pains and penalties, the dungeon, the fine, the sequestration, which such a troublesome Anti-Reformer would clearly deserve? Can we flatter ourselves that a Parliamentary Star Chamber and a Parliamentary High Commission Court would not be in the background to supply all the deficiencies of the laws of England? When these merry times arrive—the times of extraordinary tribunals and extraordinary taxes—and, if we proceed in our present course, they are much nearer than we imagine—the phrase ‘Anti-Reformer’ will serve as well as that of ‘Malignant,’ and be as valid a plea as the former title for harassing and plundering all those who venture to wince under the crowning mercies of centralisation.
Behold the Republic of the Whigs! Behold the only Republic that can be established in England except by force! And who can doubt the swift and stern termination of institutions introduced by so unnatural and irrational a process. I would address myself to the | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 345.jpg |
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### THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836]
**English Radicals.** I do not mean those fine gentlemen or those vulgar adventurers, who, in this age of quackery, may sail into Parliament by hoisting for the nonce the false colours of the Movement; but I mean that honest and considerable party, too considerate, I fear, for their happiness and the safety of the State—who have a definite object which they distinctly avow—I mean those thoughtful and enthusiastic men who study their unstamped press, and ponder over a millennium of operative amelioration. Not merely that which is just, but that which is also practicable, should be the aim of a sagacious politician. Let the Radicals well consider whether, in attempting to achieve their avowed object, they are not, in fact, only assisting the secret views of a party whose scheme is infinitely more adverse to their own than the existing system, whose genius I believe they entirely misapprehend. The Monarchy of the Tories is more democratic than the Republic of the Whigs. It appeals with a keener sympathy to the passions of the millions; it studies their interests with a more comprehensive solicitude. Admitting for a moment that I have mis-taken the genius of the English constitution, what chance, if our institutions be overthrown, is there of substituting in their stead a more popular polity? This hazard, both for their own happiness and the honour of their country, the English Radicals are bound to calculate nicely. If they do not, they will find themselves, too late, the tools of a selfish faction or the slaves of a stern usurper.
### CHAPTER IV
#### THE ESTATES OF THE REALM
A chapter on the **English constitution** is a natural episode in the spirit of Whiggism. There is this connec-tion between the subjects—that the spirit of Whiggism is hostile to the English constitution. No political institutio | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 346.jpg |
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1836] [ORD JOHN RUSSELL'S ERROR 341
tions ever yet flourished which have been more the topic of discussion among writers of all countries and all parties than our famous establishment of “ King, Lords, and Commons”; and no institutions ever yet flourished, of which the character has been more misrepresented and more misconceived. One fact alone will illustrate the profound ignorance and the perplexed ideas subsisting on this point. The present Whig leader of the House of Commons, a member of a family who piquet themselves on their constitutional reputation, an author who has even written an elaborate treatise on our polity, in one of his speeches, delivered only so late as the last session of Parliament, declared his desire and determination to uphold the present settlement of the “ three estates of the realm, viz.—King, Lords, and Commons.” Now, His Gracious Majesty is no more an estate of the realm than Lord John Russell himself. The three estates of the realm are the estate of the Lords Spiritual, the estate of the Lords Temporal, and the estate of the Commons. An estate is a popular class established into a political order. It is a section of the nation invested for the public and common good with certain powers and privileges. Lord John Russell first writes upon the English constitution, and then reforms it, and yet, even at this moment, is absolutely ignorant of what it consists. A political estate is a complete and independent body. Now, all power that is independent is necessarily irresponsible. The sovereign is responsible because he is not an estate; he is responsible through his Ministers; he is responsible to the estates and to them alone.
When the Whigs obtained power in 1830, they found the three estates of the realm opposed to them, and the Government, therefore, could not proceed. They resolved, therefore, to remodel them. They declared that the House of Commons was the House of the people, and that the people were not properly represented. They consequently enlarged the estate of the Commons; they increased the number of that privileged order who appear
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### THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836]
by their representatives in the Lower House of Parliament. They rendered the estate of the Commons more powerful by this proceeding, because they rendered them more numerous; but they did not render their representatives one jot more the representatives of the people. Throwing the Commons of Ireland out of the question, for we cannot speculate upon a political order so unsettled that it has been thrice remodelled during the present century, some 300,000 individuals sent up, at the last general election, their representatives to Westminster. Well, are these 300,000 persons the people of England? Grant that they are; grant that these members are divided into two equal portions. Well, then, the people of England consist of 150,000 persons. I know that there are well-disposed persons that tremble at this reasoning, because, although they admit its justice, they allege it leads to universal suffrage. We must not show, they assert, that the House of the people is not elected by the people. I admit it; we must not show that the House of Commons is not the House of the people, that it never was intended to be the House of the people, and that, if it be admitted to be so by courtesy, or become so in fact, it is all over with the English constitution.
It is quite impossible that a whole people can be a branch of a legislature. If a whole people have the power of making laws, it is folly to suppose that they will allow an assembly of 300 or 400 individuals, or a solitary being on a throne, to thwart their sovereign will and pleasure. But I deny that a people can govern itself. Self-government is a contradiction in terms. Whatever form a government may assume, power must be exercised by a minority of numbers. I shall, perhaps, be reminded of the ancient republics. I answer, that the ancient republics were as aristocratic communities as any that flourished in the Middle Ages. The Demos of Athens was an oligarchy living upon slaves. There is a great | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 348.jpg |
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slave population even in the United States, if a society of yesterday is to illustrate an argument on our ancient civilisation.
But it is useless to argue the question abstractly. The phrase “the people” is sheer nonsense. It is not a political term. It is a phrase of natural history. A people is a species; a civilised community is a nation. Now, a nation is a work of art and a work of time. A nation is gradually created by a variety of influences—the influence of original organisation, of climate, soil, religion, laws, customs, manners, extraordinary accidents and incidents in their history, and the individual character of their illustrious citizens. These influences create the nation—these form the national mind, and produce in the course of centuries a high degree of civilisation. If you destroy the political institutions which these influences have called into force, and which are the machinery by which they constantly act, you destroy the nation. The nation, in a state of anarchy and dissolution, then becomes a people; and after experiencing all the consequent misery, like a company of bees spoiled of their queen and ridded of their hive, they set to again and establish themselves into a society.
Although all society is artificial, the most artificial society in the world is unquestionably the English nation. Our insular situation and our foreign empire, our immense accumulated wealth and our industrious character, our peculiar religious state, which secures alike orthodoxy and toleration, our church and our sects, our agriculture and our manufactures, our military services, our statute law and supplementary equity, our adventurous commerce, landed tenure, and unprecedented system of credit, form, among many others, such a variety of interests, and apparently so conflicting, that I do not think even the Abbé Sieyès himself could devise a scheme by which this nation could be absolutely and definitely represented.
The framers of the English constitution were fortunately not of the school of Abbé Sieyès. Their first object | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 349.jpg |
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### THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM
#### [1836]
was to make us free; their next to keep us so. While, therefore, they selected equality as the basis of their social order, they took care to blend every man's ambition with the perpetuity of the State. Unlike the levelling and destructive equality of modern days, the ancient equality of England elevates and creates. Learned in human nature, the English constitution holds out privilege to every subject as the inducement to do his duty. As it has secured freedom, justice, and even property to the humblest of the commonwealth, so, pursuing the same system of privileges, it has confided the legislature of the realm to two orders of the subjects—orders, however, in which every English citizen may be constitutionally enrolled—the Lords and the Commons. The two estates of the Peers are personally summoned to meet in their chamber: the more extensive and single estate of the Commons meets by its representatives. Both are political orders, complete in their character, independent in their authority, legally irresponsible for the exercise of their power. But they are the trustees of the nation, not its masters; and there is a High Court of Chancery in the public opinion of the nation at large, which exercises a vigilant control over these privileged classes of the community, and to which they are equitably and morally amenable. Esteemating, therefore, the moral responsibility of our political estates, it may fairly be maintained that, instead of being irresponsible, the responsibility of the Lords exceeds that of the Commons. The House of Commons itself not being an estate of the realm, but only the representatives of an estate, owes to the nation a responsibility neither legal nor moral. The House of Commons is responsible only to that privileged order who are its constituents. Between the Lords and the Commons themselves there is this prime difference—that the Lords are known, and seen, and marked; the Commons are unknown, invisible, and unobserved. The Lords meet in a particular spot; the Commons are scattered over the kingdom. The eye of the nation rests upon the Lords, few in number, and | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 350.jpg |
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1836] TWO PROPOSITIONS 345
notable in position; the eye of the nation wanders in vain for the Commons, far more numerous, but far less remarkable. As a substitute the nation appeals to the House of Commons, but sometimes appeals in vain; for if the majority of the Commons choose to support their representatives in a course of conduct adverse to the opinion of the nation, the House of Commons will set the nation at defiance. They have done so once; may they never repeat that destructive career! Such are our two Houses of Parliament—the most illustrious assemblies since the Roman Senate and Grecian Areopagus; neither of them is the “House of the People,” but both alike represent the “Nation.”1
CHAPTER V
A DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION
THERE are two propositions, which, however at the first glance they may appear to contradict the popular opinions of the day, are nevertheless, as I believe, just and true. And they are these:—
First. That there is no probability of ever establishing a more democratic form of government than the present English constitution.
Second. That the recent political changes of the Whigs are, in fact, a departure from the democratic spirit of that constitution.
Whatever form a government may assume, its spirit must be determined by the laws which regulate the property of the country. You may have a Senate and Consuls, you may have no hereditary titles, and you may dub each householder or inhabitant a citizen; but if the spirit of your laws preserves masses of property in a particular class, the government of the country will
1 The argument of this chapter, and indeed the language, may be found in the Morning Post articles (Chapters V., VI., XIII.), and in the “Vindication” (Chapter XXIII.). | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 351.jpg |
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346 THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836
follow the disposition of the property. So also you may have an apparent despotism without any formal popular control, and with no aristocracy, either natural or artificial, and the spirit of the government may nevertheless be republican. Thus the ancient polity of Rome, in its best days, was an aristocracy, and the government of Constantinople is the nearest approach to a democracy on a great scale, and maintained during a great period, that history offers. The constitution of France during the last half century has been fast approaching that of the Turks. The barbarous Jacobins blended modern equality with the refined civilisation of ancient France; the barbarous Ottomans blended their equality with the refined civilisation of ancient Rome. Paris secured to the Jacobins those luxuries that their system never could have produced: Byzantium served the same purpose to the Turks. Both the French and their turbaned prototypes commenced their system with popular enthusiasm, and terminated it with general subjection. Napoleon and Louis Philippe are playing the same part as the Solimans and the Mahmouds. The Chambers are but a second-rate Divan; the Prefects but inferior Pachas; a solitary being rules alike in the Seraglio and the Tuileries, and the whole nation bows to his despotism on condition that they have no other master save himself.
The disposition of property in England throws the government of the country into the hands of its natural aristocracy. I do not believe that any scheme of the suffrage, or any method of election, could divert that power into other quarters. It is the necessary consequence of our present social state. I believe, the wider the popular suffrage, the more powerful would be the natural aristocracy. This seems to me an inevitable consequence; but I admit this proposition on the clear understanding that such an extension should be established on a fair, and not a fanciful, basis. Here then, arises the question of the ballot, into the merits of which I shall take another opportunity of entering, recording
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1836J INDUSTRY, LIBERTY AND ORDER 347
only now my opinion that, in the present arrangement of the constituencies, even the ballot would favour the power of the natural aristocracy, and that, if the ballot were simultaneously introduced with a fair and not a factious extension of the suffrage, it would produce no difference whatever in the ultimate result.
Quitting, then, these considerations, let us arrive at the important point. Is there any probability of a different disposition of property in England—which disposition of property which, by producing a very general similarity of condition, would throw the government of the country into the hands of any individuals whom the popular esteem or fancy might select?
It appears to me that this question can only be decided by ascertaining the genius of the English nation. What is the prime characteristic of the English mind? I apprehend I may safely decide upon its being industry. Taking a general but not a superficial survey of the English character since the Reformation, a thousand circumstances convince me that the salient point in our national psychology is the passion of accumulating wealth, of which industry is the instrument. We value our freedom principally because it leaves us unrestrained in our pursuits; and that reverence for law and all that is established, which also eminently distinguishes the English nation, is occasioned by the conviction that, next to liberty, order is the most efficacious assistant of industry.
And thus we see that those great revolutions which must occur in the history of all nations, when they happen here produce no permanent effects upon our social state. Our revolutions are brought about by the passions of creative minds taking advantage, for their own aggrandisement, of peculiar circumstances in our national progress. They are never called for by the great body of the nation. Churches are plundered, long rebellions maintained, dynasties changed, parliaments abolished; but when the storm is passed, the features of the social landscape remain unimpaired; there are no traces of the hurricane, the
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### THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM
### [1886]
earthquake, or the volcano; it has been but a tumult of the atmosphere, that has neither toppled down our old spires and palaces nor swallowed up our cities and seats of learning, nor blasted our ancient woods, nor swept away our ports and harbours. The English nation ever recurs to its ancient institutions—the institutions that have alike secured freedom and order; and after all their ebullitions, we find them, when the sky is clear, again at work, and toiling on at their eternal task of accumulation. There is this difference between the revolutions of England and the revolutions of the Continent—the European revolution is a struggle against privilege; an English revolution is a struggle for it. If a new class rises in the state, it becomes uneasy to take its place in the natural aristocracy of the land: a desperate faction or a wilful leader takes advantage of this desire, and a revolution is the consequence. Thus the Whigs in the present day have risen to power on the shoulders of the manufacturing interest. To secure themselves in their posts, the Whigs have given the new interest an undue preponderance; but the new interest, having obtained its object, is content. The manufacturer, like every other Englishman, is as aristocratic as the landlord. The manufacturer begins to lack in movement. Under Walpole the Whigs played the same game with the commercial interest; a century has passed, and the commercial interest are all as devoted to the constitution as the manufacturers soon will be. Having no genuine party, the Whigs seek for succour from the Irish papists; Lord John Russell, however, is only imitating Pym under the same circumstances. In 1640, when the English movement was satisfied, and the constitutional party, headed by such men as Falkland and Hyde, were about to attain power, Pym and his friends, in despair at their declining influence and the close divisions in their once unanimous Parliament, fled to the Scotch Covenanters, and entered into “a close compact” for the destruction of the Church of England as the price of their assistance. So events repeat them- | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 354.jpg |
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1836] PROPERTY AND WEALTH 349
selves; but if the study of history is really to profit us, the
nation at the present day will take care that the same
results do not always occur from the same events.
When passions have a little subsided, the industrious
ten-pounder, who has struggled into the privileged order
of the Commons, proud of having obtained the first step
of aristocracy, will be the last man to assist in destroying
the other gradations of the scale which he or his posterity
may yet ascend; the new member of a manufacturing
district has his eye already upon a neighbouring park,
avails himself of his political position to become a county
magistrate, meditates upon a baronetcy, and dreams of a
coroneted descendant.
The nation that esteems wealth as the great object of
existence will submit to no laws that do not secure the
enjoyment of wealth. Now, we deprive wealth of its
greatest source of enjoyment, as well as of its best security,
if we deprive it of power. The English nation, therefore,
insists that property shall be the qualification for power,
and the whole scope of its laws and customs is to promote
and favour the accumulation of wealth and the perpetua-
Ition of property. We cannot alter, therefore, the dis-
position of property in this country without we change
the national character. Far from the present age being
hostile to the supremacy of property, there has been no
period of our history where property has been more
esteemed, because there has been no period when the
nation has been so industrious.
Believing, therefore, that no change will occur in the
disposition of property in this country, I cannot com-
prehend how our government can become more demo-
cratic. The consequence of our wealth is an aristocratic
constitution; the consequence of our love of liberty is an
aristocratic constitution founded on an equality of civil
rights. And who can deny that an aristocratic constitu-
tion resting on such a basis, where the legislative, and
even the executive office may be obtained by every
subject of the realm, is, in fact, a noble democracy? The
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### THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM [1836]
English constitution, faithfully representing the national character, secures to all the enjoyment of property and the delights of freedom. Its honours are a perpetual reward of industry; every Englishman is toiling to obtain them; and this is the constitution to which every Englishman will always be devoted, except he is a Whig.
In the next chapter I shall discuss the second proposition.
### CHAPTER VI
### RECENT POLITICAL CHANGES
The Tories assert that the whole property of the country is on their side; and the Whigs, wringing their hands over lost elections and bellowing about “intimidation,” seem to confess the soft impleachment. Their prime organ also assures us that every man with £500 per annum is opposed to them. Yet the Whig-Radical writers have recently published, by way of consolation to their penniless proselytes, a list of some twenty Dukes, and Marquises, who, they assure us, are devoted to “Liberal” principles, and whose revenues, in a paradoxym of economical rhodomitade, they assert, could buy up the whole income of the rest of the hereditary Peerage. The Whig-Radical writers seem puzzled to reconcile this anomalous circumstance with the indisputably forlorn finances of their faction in general. Now, this little tract on the “Spirit of Whiggism” may perhaps throw some light upon this perplexing state of affairs. For myself, I see in it only a fresh illustration of the principles which I have demonstrated, from the whole current of our history, to form the basis of Whig policy. This union of oligarchical wealth and mob poverty is the very essence of the “Spirit of Whiggism.”
The English constitution, which, from the tithe-man to the Peer of Parliament, has thrown the whole government of the country into the hands of those who are | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 356.jpg |
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1836! ASPIIRING OLIGARCHS 351
qualified by property to perform the duties of their
respective offices, has secured that diffused and general
freedom, without which the national industry would
neither have its fair play nor its just reward, by a variety
of institutions, which, while they prevent those who have
no property from invading the social commonwealth, in
whose classes every industrious citizen has a right to
register himself, offer also an equally powerful check to
the ambitious fancies of those great families, over whose
liberal principles and huge incomes the Whig-Radical
writers gloat with the self-complacency of lackeys at the
equipages and establishments of their masters. There is
ever an union in a perverted sense between those who are
beneath power and those who wish to be above it; and
oligarchies and despotisms are usually established by the
agency of a deluded multitude. The Crown, with its con-
stitutional influence over the military services; a Parlia-
ment of two houses, watching each other's proceedings
with constitutional jealousy; an independent hierarchy,
and, not least, an independent magistracy, are serious
obstacles in the progressive establishment of that scheme
of government which a small knot of great families, these
Dukes and Marquises, whose revenues, according to the
Government organ, could buy up the income of the whole
peereage, naturally wish to introduce. We find, therefore,
throughout the whole period of our more modern history, a
powerful section of the great nobles ever at war with the
national institutions; checking the Crown; attacking the
independence of that House of Parliament in which they
happen to be in a minority, no matter which; patronising
sects to reduce the influence of the Church; and playing
town against country to overcome the authority of the
gentry.
It is evident that these aspiring oligarchs, as a party,
can have little essential strength; they can count upon
nothing but their mere retainers. To secure the triumph of
their cause, therefore, they are forced to manoeuvre with
a pretext, and while they aim at oligarchical rule, they
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apparently advocate popular rights. They hold out, consequently, an inducement to all the uneasy portion of the nation to enlist under their standard; they play their discontented minority against the prosperous majority, and, dubbing their partisans “the people,” they flatter themselves that their projects are irresistible. The attack is unexpected, brisk, and dashing, well matured, dexterously mystified. Before the nation is roused to its danger, the oligarchical object is often obtained; and then the oligarchy, entrenched in power, count upon the nation to defend them from their original and revolutionary allies. If they succeed, a dynasty is changed, or a Parliament reformed, and the movement is stopped; if the Tories or the Conservatives cannot arrest the fatal career which the Whigs have originally impelled, then away go the national institutions; the crown falls from the King’s brow; the erosin is snapped in twain; one House of Parliament is sure to disappear, and the gentlemen of England, dexterously dubbed Malignants, or Anti-Reformers, or any other phrase in fashion, the dregs of the nation, sequester their estates and set themselves in their halls; and “liberal principles” having thus gloriously triumphed, after a due course of plunder, bloodshed, imprecision, and ignoble tyranny, the people of England, sighing once more to be the English nation, secure order by submitting to a despot, and in time, when they have got rid of their despot, combine their ancient freedom with their newly-regained security by re-establishing the English constitution.
The Whigs of the present day have made their assault upon the nation with their usual spirit. They have already succeeded in controlling the sovereign and in remodelling the House of Commons. They have menaced the House of Lords, violently assailed the Church, and reconstructed the Corporations. I shall take the two most comprehensive measures which they have succeeded in carrying, and which at the time certainly were popular, and apparently of a very democratic | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 358.jpg |
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1836] EFFECT OF WHIG REFORMS 353
character—their reform of the House of Commons, and their reconstruction of the municipal corporations. Let us see whether these great measures have, in fact, increased the democratic character of our constitution or not—whether they veil an oligarchical project, or are, in fact, popular concessions inevitably offered by the Whigs in their oligarchical career.
The result of the Whig remodelling of the order of the Commons has been this—that it has placed the nomination of the Government in the hands of the popish priesthood. Is that a great advance of public intelligence and popular liberty? Are the parliamentary nominees of M'Hale and Keogh more german to the feelings of the English nation, more adapted to represent their interests, than the parliamentary nominees of a Howard or a Percy? This papist majority, again, is the superstructure of a basis formed by some Scotch Presbyterians and some English Dissenters, in general returned by the small constituencies of small towns—classes whose number and influence, intelligence and wealth, have been grossly exaggerated for factionous purposes, but classes avowedly opposed to the maintenance of the English constitution. I do not see that the cause of popular power has much risen, even with the addition of this leaven. If the suffragies of the Commons of England were polled together, the hustings-books of the last general election will prove that a very considerable majority of their numbers is opposed to the present Government, and that therefore, under this new democratic scheme, this great body of the nation are, by some hocus-pocus tactics or other, obliged to submit to the minority. The truth is, that the new constituency has been so arranged that an unnatural preponderance has been given to a small class, and one hostile to the interests of the great body. Is this more democratic? The apparent majority in the House of Commons is produced by a minority of the Commons themselves; so that a small and favoured class command a majority in the House of Commons, and the sway of | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 359.jpg |
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# THE SPIRIT OF WHIGGISM 1838
the administration, as far as that House is concerned, is regulated by a smaller number of individuals than those who governed it previous to its reform.
But this is not the whole evil: this new class, with its unnatural preponderance, is a class hostile to the institutions of the country, hostile to the union of Church and State, hostile to the House of Lords, to the constitutional power of the Crown, to the existing system of provincial judicature. It is, therefore, a class fit and willing to support the Whigs in their favourite scheme of centralisation, without which the Whigs can never long maintain themselves in power. Now, centralisation is the death-blow of public freedom; it is the citadel of the oligarchs from which, if once erected, it will be impossible to dislodge them.
But can that party be aiming at centralised government which has reformed the municipal corporations? We will see. The reform of the municipal corporations of England is a covert attack on the authority of the English gentry—that great body which perhaps forms the most substantial existing obstacle to the perpetuation of Whig-ism in power. By this apparently democratic Act the county magistrate is driven from the towns where he before exercised a just influence, while an elective magistrate from the towns jostles him on the bench at quarter sessions, and presents in his peculiar position an anomaly in the constitution of the bench, flattering to the passions, however fatal to the interests, of the giddy million. Here is a lever to raise the question of county reform whenever an obstinate shire may venture to elect a representative in Parliament hostile to the liberal oligarchs. Let us admit, for the moment, that the Whigs ultimately succeed in subverting the ancient and hereditary power of the English gentry. Will the municipal corporations substitute themselves as an equivalent check on a centralising Government? Whence springs their influence? From property? Not half a dozen have estates. Their influence springs from the faintitious power with which the | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 360.jpg |
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1836] CONCLUSIONS 355
reforming Government has invested them, and of which the same Government will deprive them in a session, the moment they cease to be corresponding committees of the reforming majority in the House of Commons. They will either be swept away altogether, or their functions will be limited to raising the local taxes which will discharge their expenses of the detachment of the metropolitan police, or the local judge or governor, whom Downing Street may send down to preside over their constituents. With one or two exceptions, the English corporations do not possess more substantial and durable elements of power than the municipalities of France. What check are they on Paris? These corporations have neither prescription in their favour, nor property. Their influence is maintained neither by tradition nor substance. They have no indirect authority over the minds of their townsmen; they have only their modest charters to appeal to, and the newly engrossed letter of the law. They have no great endowments of whose public benefits they are the official distributors; they do not stand on the vantage-ground on which we recognise the trustees of the public interests; they neither administer to the soul nor the body; they neither feed the poor nor educate the young; they have no hold on the national mind; they have not sprung from the national character; they were born by faction, and they will live by faction. Such bodies must speedily become corrupt; they will ultimately be found dangerous instruments in the hands of a faction. The members of the country corporations will play the game of a London party, to secure their facetious local importance and obtain the consequent results of their opportune services.
I think I have now established the two propositions with which I commenced my last chapter: and I will close this concluding one of the “Spirit of Whiggism” with their recapitulation, and the inferences which I draw from them. If there be slight probability of ever establishing in this country a more democratic govern- | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 361.jpg |
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ment than the English constitution, it will be as well, I conceive, for those who love their rights to maintain that constitution; and if the recent measures of the Whigs, however plausible their first aspect, have, in fact, been a departure from the democratic character of that constitution, it will be as well for the English nation to oppose, with all their heart, and all their soul, and all their strength, the machinations of the Whigs and the “Spirit of Whiggism.”
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# OPEN LETTERS
[THE OPEN LETTERS represent a selection from Disraeli's fugitive contributions to the *Times*. Among them are two Runymede Letters, written after the publication of the others in book form, and never since reprinted. The Letters signed "Le 언어" are in similar vein. Probably most interest attaches to that " To the Queen," written at Lord Lyndhurst's request, in support of Sir Robert Peel in his contention with Queen Victoria over the Ladies of the Bedchamber. It is a curious fact that sixty years later the Queen said, " I was very young then, and perhaps I should act differently if it was all to be done again :" while Disraeli, on the other hand, veered round to the view that Sir Robert had made an error in his treatment of the young Sovereign. The " Letter to the Queen," caused a stir at the time, and was in some quarters attributed to Brougham. Thus Disraeli, writing to his sister:[^1]
> " B. denies the letter to the Queen. Croker, ostensibly writing to him on some literary point, but really to extract some opinion from him on the subject of the letter, put in a postscript:
>
> " Have you seen *the Letter to the Queen?* They give it to you."
>
> Brougham answered, in a postscript also:
>
> " I have seen *the Letter to the Queen*. It was lent to me."
The Atticus Letter to the Duke of Wellington has also a value of its own. In 1862 it fell to Disraeli, in his first period of office, to deliver as a funeral oration in the House of Commons a fuller estimate of the Great Duke. The manuscript from which the oration was delivered was handed to the Press, and is now to be seen in the Manuscript Room of the British Museum.]
[^1]: Additional Manuscripts, British Museum. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 363.jpg |
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358 OPEN LETTERS [1837]
To His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland.
My LORD,—Allow me to congratulate your Excellency
to use the revolutionary jargon of the day, “on carrying
out” by so unforeseen a method the great measure of
Roman Catholic Emancipation. It was a bright idea,
that of emptying the gaols of the Barataria<sup>2</sup> over whose
destinies your Excellency so shrewdly presides; and it
is interesting to witness the philosophical civilisation of
the nineteenth century, in triumphant defiance of ancient
prejudice, communicating with so much effect the rude
yet prophetic conceptions of a Jack Cade. Fortunate
island, that an O'Connells supplies with justice, and a
Mulgrave with mercy; the severer quality typified by a
murdered Protestant, the gentler attribute only by the
release of a Papist convict.
Your Excellency has by this time doubtless digested
the Parliamentary bulletin of the grand encounter of last
week. The annals of political warfare do not record an
instance of a more arrogant attack, or of a defeat more
disastrous.
The recent debates are valuable for weightier reasons
than the illustrations they richly afford of your Lordship’s
character, in itself, however, no uninteresting topic when
its spirit may affect the destinies of an empire. Vain,
volatile, and flimsy, headstrong without being courageous,
imperious rather than dignified, and restless rather than
energetic, but always theatrical, with a morbid love of
mob popularity and a maudlin flux of claptrap sensibility,
his anger a stage scowl, his courtesy a simper; every
glance directed to the lamps, every movement arranged
into an attitude; now frowning on an Orange functionality,
<sup>1</sup> Constantine Henry Phipps, Earl of Mulgrave, and afterwards
Marquis of Normanby, was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ire-
land in 1835, and held the position until 1839. His administra-
tion was much criticised on account of his leniency to political
prisoners.
<sup>2</sup> Sancho Panza's island city.
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1837] FATAL FOLLY
359
now releasing a criminal with a sympathetic sigh: behold
the fluttering and tinsel thing of shreds and patches,
the tawdry-property man, whom the discrimination of the
Whigs has selected at this crisis to wrestle with the
genius of the Papacy in its favourite stronghold.
It is not, however, because the recent debates have
furnished me with the traits with which I sketched your
Excellency's portrait, and the English nation with ex-
perience to appreciate its resemblance, that they are
principally valuable; these debates, my Lord, have
demonstrated to the satisfaction of every clear-headed
Briton the identity of the Irish Government and the
"National Association." In that case the Irish Govern-
ment cannot be in worse hands, nor Ireland under a sway
at the same time more disastrous and more dishonest;
and I much mistake the character of the English nation
if they will for a moment submit with humiliating patience
to a system which enables an imputent assembly of self-
delegated adventurers, pledged to the eradication of
every English institution and every English feeling, to
meet under the shadow of the Viceregal castle, and,
arrogating to themselves a title so comprehensive and
corrupt, launch their destructive decrees with the
avowed or implied ratification of the King's repre-
sentative.
Well said the elegant and patriotic Member for
Cumberland,1 on passing in review the terrible array of
your fatal folly, that the question of this mischievous
identity might be decided by a single instance—the
appointment of Mr. Pigot.12 It is in the bosom of the
rebel Association that the loyal Lord Lieutenant seeks
his confidential adviser. I also would observe that your
connection with a single individual is conclusive as to
this disgraceful union of the power of the Crown and
the plots of those who are conspiring against its dignity—
1 Sir James Graham.
2 David Richard Pigot, law adviser to the Lord Lieutenant
and subsequently Chief Baron of Exchequer in Ireland.
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this monstrous partnership of authority and insurrections. I take the case of a man who is the avowed and acknowledged founder of the 'National Association.' I listen to him in that assembly venting the most revolutionary doctrines and seditious menaces; I trace him afterwards on a provisional tour of treason, fresh from these halls of initiative outrage, stirring up the multitude even to mass-sacre in language unparalleled for its spirit of profligate persecution. I hear of this man, at a blasphemous banquet of his followers still calling for blood, announced by a Bishop of his Church with sacerdotal unction as the messenger of the Divinity; I am informed that the gentry of the county where he made these terrific appeals assembled together to invoke your protection, as the King's representative, against the consequence of his sanguinary machinations. And what do you do? By what means does your Excellency testify your disapprobation of his career of infamous tumult? By an invitation to dinner. Notwithstanding all that had occurred, and the strongly expressed disapprobation of your Sovereign of this man ever appearing at your table, he is nevertheless your cherished guest. Why, courtesy to this man is no longer a question of party politics; it is a question of civilisation. After such conduct on your part, who can doubt your sanction of the system he had been pursuing? I, for one, cannot hesitate, as to the perfect identity of your government and the will of this man, even if I had not witnessed him the other night in the House of Commons, at the conclusion of your delegated defence, grasp the trembling palm of your noble champion with that subtle and savage paw that can alike rifle the pocket of a Raphael or hurl a dead dog into the grave of a Kavanagh.
Observe the gradations of official sympathy with Irish treason. The Association, repudiated by Lord Melbourne,
1 The King, in a letter to Lord Melbourne, had protested against O'Connell being received at the table of the Lord Lieutenant.
2 A charge of misrepresentation made against O'Connell by Mr. Raphael, M.P. for Carlow, and disproved. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 366.jpg |
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1837] RUNNYMEDE AND LORD MELBOURNE 361
is apologised for by Lord John Russell and justified by
Lord Morpeth. What, then, remains? The Viceregal
panegyric. Lord Grey retired from the helm because he
detected that some of his colleagues had secretly carried
on a disgraceful intrigue with your Excellency's guest.
How will Lord Melbourne act now that he discovers that
the very association he denounced is, in fact, the govern-
ment of Ireland? His Lordship is at least a man of
spirit. There is nothing base in his composition, though
much that is reckless. He might be induced to become
a desperate leader, but he will never submit to being made
the cat's-paw of his own followers. I believe that Lord
Melbourne will follow the example of Lord Grey; the lion
stalked off with majestic grandeur; the wolf may yet
effect his retreat with sullen dignity. The rapacious
band of modern Whigs must seek for a new leader in a
more ignoble beast of prey. But they need not despair,
my Lord. The Government need not break up. It has
at least my ardent aspirations for its continuance. After
all its transmutations, I wish it to assume its last phasis
of contentment. Your Excellency is now skilled in govern-
ment. Come, then, my Lord, and rule us! Come and
insult our gentry and open our prisons! Be the last
leader of the Reformed Parliament and the Reform
Ministry. Come, my Lord, and make revolution at length
ridiculous.
RUNNYMEDE.
_February_ 11, 1837.
To LORD VISCOUNT MELBOURNE
MY LORD.—It has sometimes been my humble but
salutary office to attend your triumph, and remind you
in a whisper that you are mortal. Amid the blaze of
glory that at present surrounds you, it may be advisable
for me to resume this wholesome function, lest in the
intoxication of success your Lordship may for a moment
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362 OPEN LETTERS [1837]
forget that, although still a Minister, you are yet only a man.1 I willingly admit, however, that the qualities both of your Lordship and your colleagues are far from being identical with those of ordinary mortals. If I cannot venture to acknowledge them as supernatural, I make your Lordship a present of a new word, the introduction of which into our language the fact of your admonition will amply authorise with our future lexicographers. No one can deny that the abilities of your- self and of your colleagues are superhuman.
You and your partners appear to me at present to be very much in the situation of a firm of speculative country bankers who have been generously stimulating the prosperity of their neighbourhood by a frank issue of their peculiar currency. Whether Ireland required justice, or Spain only freedom—whether the sectaries were anxious to subvert the Establishment, or the Papists merely to plunder it—they were sure of being accommodated at your counter. But your notes are now returned, and it seems you lack bullion; and ere long it may be expected that you will figure in the Gazette, resigning your seals and your salaries, as a bank- rupt delivers up to his creditors his watch and his purse.
When the Right Hon. Baronet the Member for Tam- worth,2 who in all probability will be the official assignee of your abortive projects and your disastrous schemes, recently seized the happy opportunity of criticising your balance-sheet, it appears that his comments called a smile to the serene visage of the noble Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Our intimate relations with France, the triumph of our countrymen in the Peninsula, and the profound consideration which Russia seizes every occasion of testifying for our flag, might justify the complacent ebullition of this fortunate functionary. But why
1 "A Minister, but still a Man" (Pope's "Epistle to James Craggs, Esq., Secretary of State").
2 Sir Robert Peel,
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1837] NATIONAL INTERESTS DISORDERED 363
should smiles be confined to my Lord Palmerston ? Why should
" Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,
Nods and becks, and wreathed smiles, "
deck merely that debonair countenance ? Could not the
successful consciousness of his hereditary hostility to a
Church summon one simpler to the pensioned cheek of Lord
John ? Could not Mr. Rice screw his features into
hilarity ? He might have remembered the quotation from Liverpool. Was the state of Manchester forgotten
by Mr. Thomson that he was so grave ? Or was the
reminiscence of his Indian majority by Sir John Hob-
house " too ponderous for a joke" ? I think, my Lord,
if this scene had been performed in the Upper House,
your Colonial Secretary, the sleeping partner, by-the-by,
of your confederacy, might have laughed outright at
some Canadian vision. And you, my Lord, you were
wont once to be a hearty and jocose man enough: I
really think the mirth of Lord Melbourne at this
moment might rank with the fiddling of Nero.
The state of the realm is indeed unparalleled. Each
division of the national interests is in like disorder.
Commerce, manufactures, public credit, our colonial and
Continental relations—the same confusion pervades every
section of our policy. There is not a department that is
not in a condition of feeble tumult. You cannot rally,
you have nothing to fall back upon. Like your famous
General, you have no reserve. You are all in a state of
distraction, and all running away at the same time. We
have before this had unpopular, and feeble, and mis-
chievous Cabinets. One Minister has been accused of
sacrificing our foreign influence to our domestic repute,
another of preferring distant fame to internal prosperity.
One has been said to mismanage the colonies, another
suspected of unconstitutional designs upon India. A
successful expedition has been counterbalanced by an
improvident loan, or social order has been maintained
" L'Allegro." | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 369.jpg |
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at the cost of despotic enactments. Some department, perhaps, of every Ministry has supplied the people with a safety-valve of grumbling; but your administration, my Lord, is the first that has failed in every department of the State, and covered every member of the Cabinet with equal odium. It has failed in everything, both at home and abroad. Beneath its malevolent genius our glory has been sullied and our purses thinned; our colonies have rebelled, and our allies have deserted us; our soldiers are runagates, and our merchants bankrupts.
Those who know you cannot easily be persuaded that you have a serious design on the existence of the empire, and some may even question whether you have a serious design of any kind. You began in a careless vein, and you will terminate in a tragic one. The country was swinging itself very prosperously in its easy-chair, when, half in mirth and half in mischief, you kicked over the unconscious victim, and now, frightened out of your wits, in a paroxysm of nervous desperation you are going to hack and hew in detail, and add mutilation to murder.
But never mind, my Lord; Bobadil, though beaten, was still a captain, and Lord Melbourne, in spite of all his blunders, is still a Reformer. What though Russia captures our ships, and Englishmen are saved from Spanish bayonets only by their heels, no one can deny that the seals of the Foreign Office are entrusted to a sincere Reformer. What though Ireland be ruled by the Romish priesthood, is not our Home Secretary as ardent a Reformer as M'Hale and Cardwell? Let Canada boast her Papineau, we have as tried a Reformer in our Glenelg. And though we may be on the verge of national bankruptcy, 'tis some consolation that a most trustworthy Reformer presides over our Exchequer. For six years the talismanic cry of reform has reconciled the English nation to every vice, that can annoy or mortify the fortunes and spirit of a people. Soothed by its lullaby, we have endured domestic convulsions and foreign disgrace. Your Lordship therefore is safe; for who for a moment | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 370.jpg |
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1889] LORD J. RUSSELL AND REFORM 365
can suppose that the nation will so stultify itself as to suspect, at the tenth hour, that there may be an indis- soluble connection between Reform and ruin ?
Rymnyme
April 15, 1837.
To Lord John Russell
My LORD—T I have read your letter to your constitu- tents.1 I like it. It lacks, perhaps, something of the racy and epigrammatic vigour which characterised the memorable epistle in defence of the corn laws. It is somewhat too prodigal, perhaps, of images which are not very novel and which are occasionally rather confused; but it is thoughtful and determined, and worthy of one who, from his lineage, ambition, and career, will occupy no mean space in the future history of our country.
Your Lordship in this document, which will not easily be forgotten, figures in a new, a strange, and an impor- tant character. You appear as the great Conservative Precursor, heralding the advent of a Tory Administra- tion, and expounding the rationale of reaction.
Little more than eight years have elapsed since the project of the Reform Act, but they are eight years replete with events. Wise men compute time, not by the almanacks, but their impressions,2 and with reference to political instruction the experience of eight such years is worth the results of half a century of undisturbed prescription.
It is only by this mode of estimating the progress of time that I can Philosophically account for the changes in your Lordship's opinions, and for the revolution of your political temper. The former champion of representa- tion instead of nomination in the House of Commons has
1 "Letter to the electors of Stroud on the Principles of the Reform Act." The letter ran through seven editions.
2 "Count them by sensation, and not by calendars," wrote Disraeli in "Sybil" of the race for the Derby in 1837, "and each moment is a day, and the race a life."
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at length discovered that we may have election without representation; and the denoucer of the constitutional decision of the House of Lords as “the whisper of a faction,” now delicately intimates to his astonished followers that “the moral influence” of that assembly is alike indisputable and irresistible, and that its members are in general superior to the Reformed House in every statesmanlike quality.
The necessity which compels the father of the Reform Act to enter, only six years after its passing, into a defence of that measure, leads me to reflect upon the nature of parties under the new Parliamentary scheme, which is threatened never to become old.
It is, perhaps, a feculent theory of the physicians who hold that man is born with the seeds of the disease which terminates his life. Undoubtedly, however, these are the exact circumstances which must inevitably attend the birth of every “Movement” Administration. The causes of their dissolution accompany their nativity. They have attained power by agitation. Their success is at the same time a precedent and an encouragement for continued disturbance. The original innovators, having no inclination for further progress, take refuge in “finality.” Three parties then appear in the State—their original opponents, who are conservative of institutions; themselves, who are administrative of institutions; and their new adversaries, who are aggressive against institutions. The first party may count the nation in their ranks; the last may appeal successfully to the mob; but for the middle party only remain the population of the offices—those who enjoy and those who expect.
The result, as far as the Government is concerned, cannot be doubtful. After having protracted the catastrophe by every expedient consistent with their determination not to make any substantial concession, they take refuge in those conservative opinions of which your Lordship has just developed the philosophy; and, retiring from public life with the consolation they have enjoyed their fair share
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### 1839] VIOLENT ALTERATIVES 307
of official power, or, to use language sentimental, that “they have had their dream,” they gratify their spleen as well as exemplify their patriotism by crushing the nascent efforts of the party that has outbid them in popular overtures, and surpassed them in popular favour.
The fate of the Whig party has indeed been hurried. Truly the elements of the famous Reform Ministry seemed never to have been settled. After two years of initiatory tumult, your first session of affairs was distinguished by the sullen, yet significant, retirement of Lord Durham. Twelve months more, and a Secretary of State, a First Lord of the Admiralty, and two of their colleagues abruptly quit your counsels; and before the public mind has recovered from the uneasiness which such events naturally occasion, a conspiracy explodes, and we are startled by the overthrow of Lord Grey and the resignation of Lord Althorp. In a few months the vamped-up Cabinet quits and returns to power. You throw over your Lord Chancellor—you affect to justify the catastrophe. But was Lord Glenelg an intriguer and traitor? The Whigs are said to be bitter opponents; for my part, I should shrink from their friendship.
Eight members of the Reform Ministry betrayed by their own party in eight years !—on an average a victim for every session. Yet, with all these violent alternatives, the original disease has worked its irresistible course, and after having immortalated your Constitutional colleagues, the picture is completed by your Lordship publishing, on the same day, a loyal proclamation against the Chartists,1 and a Conservative manifesto against the Radicals. The history of reform should be written in epigrams.
The march of events has indeed been rapid. It is only five years ago since the staple subject of Whig journalism was a jest against reaction. In another year the jest became a controversy; and now, only six years after the passing of the Reform Act, the wealth and the irresistible
1 A proclamation in the London Gazette forbidding unlawful assemblies for the purpose of drilling persons to the use of arms. | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 373.jpg |
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power, the numbers and the high character, of the Tory party are sketched by an individual no less celebrated and no less free from any imputation of partiality than the nobleman who commenced his literary career by defending close boroughs, and his political one by destroying them.
Your Lordship will retire from public life with dignity, for you have prepared the way for your great rival. He has deserved this service, for he has been a generous antagonist; and if you adorn your solitude by writing the memoirs of your administration—a task which you would perform admirably—I have such confidence in that nobility of sentiment which is inseparable from genius that I do not doubt you will do justice to his consummate abilities.
Far, however, is it from my desire that you should relinquish the power which you are prepared to exercise so much to the satisfaction of every lover of our institutions. You really seem to me to be the fair ideal of a Conservative statesman. They tell me that you are in somewhat of a scrape at present about Jamaica. Trust to your natural allies, the Tories, to extricate you from it. Although not your friend, I am so much your admirer that I will present you with a specific for this colonial embarrassment. 'Tis simple—take it. Let Lord Normanby return to the first scene of his administrative talents. With his peculiar practice of policy I should hardly think there would be the present want of accommodation in the Jamaica prisons.
zebulon,
May 4, 1839.
To the Queen
MADAM,—That freedom happily secured to us by the settlement of your Royal race on the throne of this island permits me to address your Majesty on an occasion inter-
1 This letter was written by Disraeli at Lord Lyndhurst's request (see "Life of Disraeli," by W. F. Monypenny, vol. ii., p. 58). In "Sybil" (1845) Disraeli gave his more mature | in.ernet.dli.2015.117/2015.117.Whigs-And-Whiggism.tar | 374.jpg |
Subsets and Splits