George W. E. Russell - Prime Ministers and Some Others

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PRIME MINISTERS

AND SOME OTHERS

A BOOK OF REMINISCENCES BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL

TO
THE EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON,
K.G.,

I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK,
NOT SHARING HIS OPINIONS BUT
PRIZING HIS FRIENDSHIP

NOTE

My cordial thanks for leave to reproduce papers already published
are due to my friend Mr. John Murray, and to the Editors of the
_Cornhill Magazine_, the _Spectator_, the _Daily News_, the _Manchester
Guardian_, the _Church Family Newspaper_, and the _Red Triangle_.

G. W. E. R.

_July_, 1918.

CONTENTS

I.--PRIME MINISTERS

I. LORD PALMERSTON
II. LORD RUSSELL
III. LORD DERBY
IV. BENJAMIN DISRAELI
V. WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE
VI. LORD SALISBURY
VIII. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR
IX. HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN

II.--IN HONOUR OF FRIENDSHIP

I. GLADSTONE--AFTER TWENTY YEARS
II. HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND
III. LORD HALLIFAX
IV. LORD AND LADY RIPON
V. "FREDDY LEVESON"
VI. SAMUEL WHITBREAD
VII. HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER
VIII. BASIL WILBERFORCE
IX. EDITH SICHEL
X. "WILL" GLADSTONE
XI. LORD CHARLES RUSSELL

III.--RELIGION AND THE CHURCH

I. A STRANGE EPIPHANY
II. THE ROMANCE OF RENUNCIATION
III. PAN-ANGLICANISM
IV. LIFE AND LIBERTY
V. LOVE AND PUNISHMENT
VI. HATRED AND LOVE
VII. THE TRIUMPHS OF ENDURANCE
VIII. A SOLEMN FARCE

IV.--POLITICS

I. MIRAGE
II. MIST
III. "DISSOLVING THROES"
IV. INSTITUTIONS AND CHARACTER
V. REVOLUTION--AND RATIONS
VI. "THE INCOMPATIBLES"
VII. FREEDOM'S NEW FRIENDS

V.--EDUCATION

I. EDUCATION AND THE JUDGE
II. THE GOLDEN LADDER
III. OASES
IV. LIFE, LIBERTY, AND JUSTICE
V. THE STATE AND THE BOY
VI. A PLEA FOR INNOCENTS

VI.--MISCELLANEA

I. THE "HUMOROUS STAGE"
II. THE JEWISH REGIMENT
III. INDURATION
IV. FLACCIDITY
V. THE PROMISE OF MAY
VI. PAGEANTRY AND PATRIOTISM

VII.--FACT AND FICTION

I. A FORGOTTEN PANIC
II. A CRIMEAN EPISODE

I

PRIME MINISTERS

PRIME MINISTERS AND SOME OTHERS

I

_LORD PALMERSTON_

I remember ten Prime Ministers, and I know an eleventh. Some have
passed beyond earshot of our criticism; but some remain, pale and
ineffectual ghosts of former greatness, yet still touched by that
human infirmity which prefers praise to blame. It will behove me
to walk warily when I reach the present day; but, in dealing with
figures which are already historical, one's judgments may be
comparatively untrammelled.

I trace my paternal ancestry direct to a Russell who entered the
House of Commons at the General Election of 1441, and since 1538
some of us have always sat in one or other of the two Houses of
Parliament; so I may be fairly said to have the Parliamentary tradition
in my blood. But I cannot profess to have taken any intelligent
interest in political persons or doings before I was six years
old; my retrospect, therefore, shall begin with Lord Palmerston,
whom I can recall in his last Administration, 1859-1865.

I must confess that I chiefly remember his outward characteristics--his
large, dyed, carefully brushed whiskers; his broad-shouldered figure,
which always seemed struggling to be upright; his huge and rather
distorted feet--"each foot, to describe it mathematically, was a
four-sided irregular figure"--his strong and comfortable seat on
the old white hack which carried him daily to the House of Commons.
Lord Granville described him to a nicety: "I saw him the other
night looking very well, but old, and wearing a green shade, which
he afterwards concealed. He looked like a retired old croupier
from Baden."

Having frequented the Gallery of the House of Commons, or the more
privileged seats "under the Gallery," from my days of knickerbockers,
I often heard Palmerston speak. I remember his abrupt, jerky, rather
"bow-wow"-like style, full of "hums" and "hahs"; and the sort of
good-tempered but unyielding banter with which he fobbed off an
inconvenient enquiry, or repressed the simple-minded ardour of
a Radical supporter.

Of course, a boy's attention was attracted rather by appearance and
manner than by the substance of a speech; so, for a frank estimate
of Palmerston's policy at the period which I am discussing, I turn
to Bishop Wilberforce (whom he had just refused to make Archbishop
of York).

"That wretched Pam seems to me to get worse and worse. There is
not a particle of veracity or noble feeling that I have ever been
able to trace in him. He manages the House of Commons by debauching
it, making all parties laugh at one another; the Tories at the
Liberals, by his defeating all Liberal measures; the Liberals at
the Tories, by their consciousness of getting everything that is to
be got in Church and State; and all at one another, by substituting
low ribaldry for argument, bad jokes for principle, and an openly
avowed, vainglorious, imbecile vanity as a panoply to guard himself
from the attacks of all thoughtful men."

But what I remember even more clearly than Palmers ton is appearance
or manner--perhaps because it did not end with his death--is the
estimation in which he was held by that "Sacred Circle of the
Great-Grandmotherhood" to which I myself belong.

In the first place, it was always asserted, with emphasis and even
with acrimony, that he was not a Whig. Gladstone, who did not much
like Whiggery, though he often used Whigs, laid it down that "to be
a Whig a man must be a born Whig," and I believe that the doctrine
is absolutely sound. But Palmerston was born and bred a Tory, and
from 1807 to 1830 held office in Tory Administrations. The remaining
thirty-five years of his life he spent, for the most part, in Whig
Administrations, but a Whig he was not. The one thing in the world
which he loved supremely was power, and, as long as this was secured,
he did not trouble himself much about the political complexion of
his associates. "Palmerston does not care how much dirt he eats,
so long as it is gilded dirt;" and, if gilded dirt be the right
description of office procured by flexible politics, Palmerston
ate, in his long career, an extraordinary amount of it.

Then, again, I remember that the Whigs thought Palmerston very
vulgar. The newspapers always spoke of him as an aristocrat, but
the Whigs knew better. He had been, in all senses of the word, a
man of fashion; he had won the nickname of "Cupid," and had figured,
far beyond the term of youth, in a raffish kind of smart society
which the Whigs regarded with a mixture of contempt and horror.
His bearing towards the Queen, who abhorred him--not without good
reason--was considered to be lamentably lacking in that ceremonious
respect for the Crown which the Whigs always maintained even when
they were dethroning Kings. Disraeli likened his manner to that
of "a favourite footman on easy terms with his mistress," and one
who was in official relations with him wrote: "He left on my
recollection the impression of a strong character, with an intellect
with a coarse vein in it, verging sometimes on brutality, and of a
mind little exercised on subjects of thought beyond the immediate
interests of public and private life, little cultivated, and drawing
its stores, not from reading but from experience, and long and
varied intercourse with men and women."

Having come rather late in life to the chief place in politics,
Palmerston kept it to the end. He was an indomitable fighter, and
had extraordinary health. At the opening of the Session of 1865 he
gave the customary Full-Dress Dinner, and Mr. Speaker Denison,[*]
who sat beside him, made this curious memorandum of his performance
at table: "He ate two plates of turtle soup; he was then served very
amply to cod and oyster sauce; he then took a _pate_; afterwards
he was helped to two very greasy-looking entrees; he then despatched
a plate of roast mutton; there then appeared before him the largest,
and to my mind the hardest, slice of ham that ever figured on the
table of a nobleman, yet it disappeared just in time to answer the
enquiry of the butler, 'Snipe or pheasant, my lord?' He instantly
replied, 'Pheasant,' thus completing his ninth dish of meat at
that meal." A few weeks later the Speaker, in conversation with
Palmerston, expressed a hope that he was taking care of his health,
to which the octogenarian Premier replied: "Oh yes--indeed I am. I
very often take a cab at night, and if you have both windows open
it is almost as good as walking home." "Almost as good!" exclaimed
the valetudinarian Speaker. "A through draught and a north-east
wind! And in a hack cab! What a combination for health!"

[Footnote *: Afterwards Lord Ossington.]

Palmerston fought and won his last election in July, 1865, being
then in his eighty-first year, and he died on the 15th of October
next ensuing. On the 19th the Queen wrote as follows to the statesman
who, as Lord John Russell, had been her Prime Minister twenty years
before, and who, as Earl Russell, had been for the last six years
Foreign Secretary in Palmerston's Administration: "The Queen can
turn to no other than Lord Russell, an old and tried friend of
hers, to undertake the arduous duties of Prime Minister and to carry
on the Government."

It is sometimes said of my good friend Sir George Trevelyan that his
most responsible task in life has been to "live up to the position
of being his uncle's nephew." He has made a much better job of his
task than I have made of mine; and yet I have never been indifferent
to the fact that I was related by so close a tie to the author of
the first Reform Bill, and the chief promoter--as regards this
country--of Italian unity and freedom.

II

_LORD RUSSELL_

Lord John Russell was born in 1792, and became Prime Minister for the
first time in 1846. Soon after, Queen Victoria, naturally interested
in the oncoming generation of statesmen, said to the Premier, "Pray
tell me, Lord John, whom do you consider the most promising young
man in your party?" After due consideration Lord John replied,
"George Byng, ma'am," signifying thereby a youth who eventually
became the third Earl of Strafford.

In 1865 Lord John, who in the meantime had been created Earl Russell,
became, after many vicissitudes in office and opposition, Prime
Minister for the second time. The Queen, apparently hard put to
it for conversation, asked him whom he now considered the most
promising young man in the Liberal party. He replied, without
hesitation, "George Byng, ma'am," thereby eliciting the very natural
rejoinder, "But that's what you told me twenty years ago!"

This fragment of anecdotage, whether true or false, is eminently
characteristic of Lord Russell. In principles, beliefs, opinions,
even in tastes and habits, he was singularly unchanging. He lived
to be close on eighty-six; he spent more than half a century in
active politics; and it would be difficult to detect in all those
years a single deviation from the creed which he professed when,
being not yet twenty-one, he was returned as M.P. for his father's
pocket-borough of Tavistock.

From first to last he was the staunch and unwavering champion of
freedom--civil, intellectual, and religious. At the very outset
of his Parliamentary career he said, "We talk much--and think a
great deal too much--of the wisdom of our ancestors. I wish we
could imitate the courage of our ancestors. They were not ready
to lay their liberties at the foot of the Crown upon every vain or
imaginary alarm." At the close of life he referred to England as
"the country whose freedom I have worshipped, and whose liberties
and prosperity I am not ashamed to say we owe to the providence
of Almighty God."

This faith Lord Russell was prepared to maintain at all times, in
all places, and amid surroundings which have been known to test
the moral fibre of more boisterous politicians. Though profoundly
attached to the Throne and to the Hanoverian succession, he was no
courtier. The year 1688 was his sacred date, and he had a habit
of applying the principles of our English Revolution to the issues
of modern politics.

Actuated, probably, by some playful desire to probe the heart of
Whiggery by putting an extreme case, Queen Victoria once said:
"Is it true, Lord John, that you hold that a subject is justified,
under certain circumstances, in disobeying his Sovereign?" "Well,
ma'am, speaking to a Sovereign of the House of Hanover, I can only
say that I suppose it is!"

When Italy was struggling towards unity and freedom, the Queen was
extremely anxious that Lord John, then Foreign Secretary, should
not encourage the revolutionary party. He promptly referred Her
Majesty to "the doctrines of the Revolution of 1688," and informed
her that, "according to those doctrines, all power held by Sovereigns
may be forfeited by misconduct, and each nation is the judge of
its own internal government."

The love of justice was as strongly marked in Lord John Russell as
the love of freedom. He could make no terms with what he thought
one-sided or oppressive. When the starving labourers of Dorset
combined in an association which they did not know to be illegal,
he urged that incendiaries in high places, such as the Duke of
Cumberland and Lord Wynford, were "far more guilty than the labourers,
but the law does not reach them, I fear."

When a necessary reform of the Judicature resisted on the ground
of expense, he said:

"If you cannot afford to do justice speedily and well, you may
as well shut up the Exchequer and confess that you have no right
to raise taxes for the protection of the subject, for justice is
the first and primary end of all government."

Those are the echoes of a remote past. My own recollections of
my uncle begin when he was Foreign Secretary in Lord Palmerston's
Government, and I can see him now, walled round with despatch-boxes,
in his pleasant library looking out on the lawn of Pembroke Lodge--the
prettiest villa in Richmond Park. In appearance he was very much
what _Punch_ always represented him--very short, with a head and
shoulders which might have belonged to a much larger frame. When
sitting he might have been taken for a man of average height, and
it was only when he rose to his feet that his diminutive stature
became apparent.

One of his most characteristic traits was his voice, which had
what, in the satirical writings of the last century, used to be
called "an aristocratic drawl," and his pronunciation was archaic.
Like other high-bred people of his time, he talked of "cowcumbers"
and "laylocks"; called a woman an "oo'man," and was much "obleeged"
where a degenerate race is content to be "obliged."

The frigidity of his address and the seeming stiffness of his manner
were really due to an innate and incurable shyness, but they produced,
even among people who ought to have known him better, a totally
erroneous impression of his character and temperament.

In the small social arts, which are so valuable an equipment for
a political leader, he was indeed deficient. He had no memory for
faces, and was painfully apt to ignore his political supporters
when he met them outside the walls of Parliament; and this inability
to remember faces was allied with a curious artlessness which made
it impossible for him to feign a cordiality he did not feel. In
his last illness he said: "I have seemed cold to my friends, but
it was not in my heart." The friends needed no such assurance, for
in private life he was not only gentle, affectionate, and tender
to an unusual degree, but full of fun and playfulness, a genial
host and an admirable talker. The great Lord Dufferin, a consummate
judge of such matters, said: "His conversation was too delightful,
full of anecdote; but then his anecdotes were not like those told
by the ordinary raconteur, and were simply reminiscences of his
own personal experience and intercourse with other distinguished
men."

When Lord Palmerston died, _The Times_ was in its zenith, and its
editor, J. T. Delane, had long been used to "shape the whispers"
of Downing Street. Lord Russell resented journalistic dictation.
"I know," he said, "that Mr. Delane is very angry because I did not
kiss his hand instead of the Queen's" _The Times_ became hostile,
and a competent critic remarked:"

"There have been Ministers who knew the springs of that public
opinion which is delivered ready digested to the nation every morning,
and who have not scrupled to work them for their own diurnal
glorification, even although the recoil might injure their colleagues.
But Lord Russell has never bowed the knee to the potentates of
the Press; he has offered no sacrifice of invitations to social
editors; and social editors have accordingly failed to discover
the merits of a statesman who so little appreciated them, until
they have almost made the nation forget the services that Lord
Russell has so faithfully and courageously rendered."

Of Lord Russell's political consistency I have already spoken; and
it was most conspicuously displayed in his lifelong zeal for the
extension of the suffrage. He had begun his political activities
by a successful attack on the rottenest of rotten boroughs; the
enfranchisement of the Middle Class was the triumph of his middle
life. As years advanced his zeal showed no abatement; again and
again he returned to the charge, though amidst the most discouraging
circumstances; and when, in his old age, he became Prime Minister
for the second time, the first task to which he set his hand was
so to extend the suffrage as to include "the best of the working
classes."

In spite of this generous aspiration, it must be confessed that
the Reform Bill of 1866 was not a very exciting measure. It lowered
the qualification for the county franchise to L14 and that for
the boroughs to L7; and this, together with the enfranchisement
of lodgers, was expected to add 400,000 new voters to the list.

The Bill fell flat. It was not sweeping enough to arouse enthusiasm.
Liberals accepted it as an instalment; but Whigs thought it
revolutionary, and made common cause with the Tories to defeat
it. As it was introduced into the House of Commons, Lord Russell
had no chance of speaking on it; but Gladstone's speeches for it
and Lowe's against it remain to this day among the masterpieces
of political oratory, and eventually it was lost, on an amendment
moved in committee, by a majority of eleven. Lord Russell of course
resigned. The Queen received his decision with regret. It was evident
that Prussia and Austria were on the brink of war, and Her Majesty
considered it a most unfortunate moment for a change in her Government.
She thought that the Ministry had better accept the amendment and
go on with the Bill. But Lord Russell stood his ground, and that
ground was the highest. "He considers that vacillation on such a
question weakens the authority of the Crown, promotes distrust
of public men, and inflames the animosity of parties."

On the 26th of June, 1866, it was announced in Parliament that
the Ministers had resigned, and that the Queen had sent for Lord
Derby. Lord Russell retained the Liberal leadership till Christmas,
1867, and then definitely retired from public life, though his
interest in political events continued unabated to the end.

Of course, I am old enough to remember very well the tumults and
commotions which attended the defeat of the Reform Bill of 1866.
They contrasted strangely with the apathy and indifference which
had prevailed while the Bill was in progress; but the fact was that
a new force had appeared. The Liberal party had discovered Gladstone;
and were eagerly awaiting the much more democratic measure which
they thought he was destined to carry in the very near future.
That it was really carried by Disraeli is one of the ironies of
our political history.

During the years of my uncle's retirement was much more in his
company than had been possible when I was a schoolboy and he was
Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister. Pembroke Lodge became to me
a second home; and I have no happier memory than of hours spent
there by the side of one who had played bat, trap and ball with
Charles Fox; had been the travelling companion of Lord Holland;
had corresponded with Tom Moore, debated with Francis Jeffrey, and
dined with Dr. Parr; had visited Melrose Abbey in the company of
Sir Walter Scott, and criticized the acting of Mrs. Siddons; had
conversed with Napoleon in his seclusion at Elba, and had ridden
with the Duke of Wellington along the lines of Torres Vedras. It was
not without reason that Lord Russell, when reviewing his career,
epitomized it in Dryden couplet:

"Not heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been has been, and I have had my hour."

III

_LORD DERBY_

My opportunities of observing Lord Derby at close quarters, were
comparatively scanty. When, in June, 1866, he kissed hands as Prime
Minister for the third time, I was a boy of thirteen, and I was only
sixteen when he died. I had known Lord Palmerston in the House of
Commons and Lord Russell in private life; but my infant footsteps
were seldom guided towards the House of Lords, and it was only
there that "the Rupert of debate" could at that time be heard.

The Whigs, among whom I was reared, detested Derby with the peculiar
detestation which partisans always feel for a renegade. In 1836
Charles Dickens, in his capacity of Parliamentary reporter, had
conversed with an ancient M.P. who allowed that Lord Stanley--who
became Lord Derby in 1851--might do something one of these days,
but "he's too young, sir--too young." The active politicians of
the sixties did not forget that this too-young Stanley, heir of a
great Whig house, had flung himself with ardour into the popular
cause, and, when the Lords threw out the first Reform Bill, had
jumped on to the table at Brooks's and had proclaimed the great
constitutional truth--reaffirmed over the Parliament Bill in 1911--that
"His Majesty can clap coronets on the heads of a whole company of
his Foot Guards."

The question of the influences which had changed Stanley from a
Whig to a Tory lies outside the purview of a sketch like this. For
my present purpose it must suffice to say that, as he had absolutely
nothing to gain by the change, we may fairly assume that it was due
to conviction. But whether it was due to conviction, or to ambition,
or to temper, or to anything else, it made the Whigs who remained
Whigs, very sore. Lord Clarendon, a typical Whig placeman, said
that Stanley was "a great aristocrat, proud of family and wealth,
but had no generosity for friend or foe, and never acknowledged
help." Some allowance must be made for the ruffled feelings of
a party which sees its most brilliant recruit absorbed into the
opposing ranks, and certainly Stanley was such a recruit as any
party would have been thankful to claim.

He was the future head of one of the few English families which
the exacting genealogists of the Continent recognize as noble. To
pedigree he added great possessions, and wealth which the industrial
development of Lancashire was increasing every day. He was a graceful
and tasteful scholar, who won the Chanceller's prize for Latin
verse at Oxford, and translated the Iliad into fluent hexameters.
Good as a scholar, he was, as became the grandson of the founder
of "The Derby," even better as a sportsman; and in private life
he was the best companion in the world, playful and reckless, as
a schoolboy, and never letting prudence or propriety stand between
him and his jest. "Oh, Johnny, what fun we shall have!" was his
characteristic greeting to Lord John Russell, when that ancient
rival entered the House of Lords.

Furthermore, Stanley had, in richest abundance, the great natural
gift of oratory, with an audacity in debate which won him the nickname
of "Rupert," and a voice which would have stirred his hearers if
he had only been reciting Bradshaw. For a brilliant sketch of his
social aspect we may consult Lord Beaumaris in Lord Beaconsfield's
_Endymion_; and of what he was in Parliament we have the same great
man's account, reported by Matthew Arnold: "Full of nerve, dash,
fire, and resource, he carried the House irresistibly along with
him."

In the Parliament of 1859-1865 (with which my political recollections
begin) Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister and Lord Derby Leader
of the Opposition, with Disraeli as his lieutenant in the House
of Commons. If, as Lord Randolph Churchill said in later years,
the business of an Opposition is to oppose, it must be admitted
that Derby and Disraeli were extremely remiss. It was suspected at
the time, and has since been made known through Lord Malmesbury's
_Memoirs_, that there was something like an "understanding" between
Palmerston and Derby. As long as Palmerston kept his Liberal colleagues
in order, and chaffed his Radical supporters out of all the reforms
on which their hearts were set, Derby was not to turn him out of
office, though the Conservative minority in the House of Commons
was very large, and there were frequent openings for harassing
attack.

Palmerston's death, of course, dissolved this compact; and, though
the General Election of 1865 had again yielded a Liberal majority,
the change in the Premiership had transformed the aspect of political
affairs. The new Prime Minister was in the House of Lords, seventy-three
years old, and not a strong man for his age. His lieutenant in the
House of Commons was Gladstone, fifty-five years old, and in the
fullest vigour of body and mind. Had any difference of opinion
arisen between the two men, it was obvious that Gladstone was in a
position to make his will prevail; but on the immediate business of
the new Parliament they were absolutely at one, and that business
was exactly what Palmerston had for the last six years successfully
opposed--the extension of the franchise to the working man. When
no one is enthusiastic about a Bill, and its opponents hate it,
there is not much difficulty in defeating it, and Derby and Disraeli
were not the men to let the opportunity slide. With the aid of the
malcontent Whigs they defeated the Reform Bill, and Derby became
Prime Minister, with Disraeli as Leader of the House of Commons. It
was a conjuncture fraught with consequences vastly more important
than anyone foresaw.

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