To hold what people are content To save the Church and serve the Crown By doing nothing every day; These tasks, these joys, the Fates assign To well-placed Whigs in Thirty-nine. A greater man than Praed or Sydney Smith has traced an indelible record of the impression produced upon himself, and others like him, by the events of that melancholy epoch. Carlyle had shared to the full in the ardor and enthusiasm which hailed the passing of the Great Reform Bill; and he now had rather more than his share of the disappointment and the gloom, which, after seven years' experience of a Reformed House of Commons, led by the Whigs, and thwarted by the Peers, had begun to settle down upon the minds of all who loved their country better than their party. In more than one of his volumes he has told us the story of a "young ardent soul, looking with hope and joy into a world infinitely beautiful to him, though overhung with falsities and foul cobwebs, which were to be swept away amidst heroic joy, and enthusiasm of victory and battle;" and of the discouragement that eclipsed these gallant anticipations, when one session after * The late Lord Stanley, of Alderley, was Treasury whip to the Melbourne Administration. The traditions of the lobby still point to his tenure of office as the culminating epoch in the art of Parliamentary management. another was spent on getting, "with endless jargoning, debating, motioning, and counter-motioning, a settlement effected between the Honorable Mr. This and the Honorable Mr. That as to their respective pretensions to ride the high horse." The time had arrived when to the passion and energy of 1832 had succeeded the unedifying spectacle of "hungry Greek throttling down hungry Greek on the floor of St. Stephen's, until the loser cried, 'Hold! The place is thine." The responsibility for the continuance of this sterile and ignoble political ferment, which for some years had lain at the door of the House of Lords, began to be shared by the Whig Government soon after Macaulay's return from India. From that time forward Lord Melbourne and his brother-ministers could not have failed to perceive, by those signs which are so familiar to veteran politicians, that their popularity was waning; and that, with their popularity, their power for good was disappearing fast. When their measures were mangled and curtailed in the Commons, and quashed in the Peerswhen one election after another told the same tale of general dissatisfaction and distrust-it became incumbent on them to show themselves at least as ready to surrender office as, in 1835, they had been resolute in seizing it. The hour had arrived when statesmen should have caught eagerly at the first opportunity of proving that our unwritten constitution provides a key to that problem on the right solution of which the prosperity, and even the existence, of a free community depends-the problem how rulers, who have for a time lost the favor and confidence of the governed, may for a time be removed from power, without impairing the force and the authority of the Executive Government. Unfortunately there were considerations, honorable in themselves, which deterred the Cabinet from that wise and dignified course; and the month of May, 1839, saw the leaders of the great party, which had marched into office across the steps of a throne, standing feebly at bay behind the petticoats of their wives and sisters. Whether the part which they played was forced upon them by circumstances, or whether it was not, their example was disastrous in its effect upon English public life. Our stand ard of ministerial duty was lower from that day forth; until, in June, 1866, it was raised to a higher point than ever by the refusal of Earl Russell and his colleagues to remain in power, after they had found themselves unable to carry in its integrity the measure of Reform which they had promised to the nation. As soon as the Whigs had made up their minds to solve the Bed-chamber difficulty by resuming office, they were, naturally enough, anxious to bring within the walls of the House of Commons all the ability and eloquence of their party. Times were coming when they were likely to find occasion for as much oratory as they could muster. Toward the end of May the elevation to the peerage of Mr. Abercromby, the Speaker, left a seat at Edinburgh vacant. The ministers did all that could be done in London to get Macaulay accepted as the Liberal candidate, and the constituency gave a willing response. He introduced himself to the electors in a speech that in point of style came up to their expectations, and with the substance of which they were very well contented. He conciliated the Radicals by pledging himself to the ballot; the reminiscences of Lord Melville's despotism were still too fresh in Scotch memories to make it worth while for the Tories even to talk of contesting the representation of the Scotch capital; and the Whigs would have been monsters of ingratitude if they had not declared to a man in favor of one who was a Whig with the same intensity of conviction that Montrose had been a Royalist, or Carnot a Jacobin. "I look with pride," said Macaulay, "on all that the Whigs have done for the cause of human freedom and of human happiness. I see them now hard pressed, struggling with difficulties, but still fighting the good fight. At their head I see men who have inherited the spirit and the virtues, as well as the blood, of old champions and martyrs of freedom. To those men I propose to attach myself. While one shred of the old banner is flying, by that banner will I, at least, be found. Whether in or out of Parliament-whether speaking with that authority which must always belong to the representative of this great and enlightened community, or expressing the humble sentiments of a private citizen-I will to the last maintain inviolate my fidelity to principles which, though they may be borne down for a time by senseless clamor, are yet strong with the strength, and immortal with the immortality, of truth; and which, however they may be misunderstood or misrepresented by contemporaries, will assuredly find justice from a better age." Such fervor will provoke a smile from those who survey the field of politics with the serene complacency of the literary critic, more readily than from statesmen who have learned the value of party loyalty by frequent and painful experience of its opposite. The first speech which Macaulay made after his re-appearance in Parliament was on Mr. Grote's motion for leave to introduce the Ballot Bill. That annual question (to which the philosophical reasoning and the classical erudition of its champion had long ere this ceased to impart any charm more attractive than respectability), in 1839 had recovered a certain flavor of novelty from the fact that Lord Melbourne's Cabinet, at its wits' end for something that might make it popular, had agreed that the more advanced among the ministers might be at liberty to vote as they pleased. The propriety of this course was, naturally enough, challenged by their opponents. Macaulay had an admirable opportunity of giving the House, which was eager to hear him, a characteristic touch of his quality, as he poured forth a torrent of historical instances to prove that governments which had regard for their own stability, or for the consciences of their individual members, always had recognized, and always must recognize, the necessity of dealing liberally with open questions. "I rejoice," he said, "to see that we are returning to the wise, the honest, the moderate maxims which prevailed in this House in the time of our fathers. If two men are brought up together from their childhood; if they follow the same studies, mix in the same society, and exercise a mutual influence in forming each other's minds, a perfect agreement between them on political subjects can not even then be expected. But governments are constructed in such a manner that forty or fifty gentlemen, some of whom have never seen each other's faces till they are united officially, or have been in hot opposition to each other all the rest of their lives, are brought all at once into intimate connection. Among such men unanimity would be an absolute miracle. "Talk of divided houses!' said Lord Chatham. 6 Why there never was an instance of a united Cabinet! When were the minds of twelve men ever cast in one and the same mold? Within the memory of many persons now living the rule was this, that all questions whatever were open questions in a Cabinet, except those which came under two classes-measures brought forward by the Government as a government, which all the members of the Government were, of course, expected to support; and motions brought forward with the purpose of casting a censure, express or implied, on the Government, or any department of it, which all the members of the Government were, of course, expected to oppose. Let honorable gentlemen," said Macaulay, warming to his theme, "run their minds over the history of Mr. Pitt's administration:" and honorable gentlemen were reminded, or, not impossibly, informed, how, on Parliamentary Reform, Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas had voted against Lord Mulgrave and Lord Grenville; and how, on the question of the slave-trade, Mr. Dundas and Lord Thurlow had voted against Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt; and so on through the law of libel, and the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and the dropping of the impeachment of Warren Hastings, until the names of Mr. Pitt's Cabinet had been presented to the view of honorable gentlemen in every possible variation, and every conceivable combination. "And was this the effect of any extraordinary weakness on the part of the statesman who was then prime minister? No. Mr. Pitt was a man whom even his enemies acknowledged to possess a brave and commanding spirit. And was the effect of his policy to enfeeble his administration, to daunt his adherents, to render them unable to withstand the attacks of the Opposition? On the contrary, never did a ministry present a firmer or more serried front; nor is there the slightest doubt but that their strength was increased in consequence of their giving each member more individual liberty." |