་ In marking blots approves himself acute, And spreads his filth till all the carcass rot. you, and me. Some misform'd reptile we may chance to find, In ancient temple thus a colonnade Enclosed the spot where trembling vows were paid; In matchless sculpture heroes stood on high, So our great critics, hid within their shrine, But let these gods assume their proper names, CHAPTER V. FIRST STRUGGLES for refoRM. THE Parliament of 1812, to which Lord John had been elected in the session of 1813, was dissolved in the summer of 1818. At the general election which then took place, the Whigs succeeded in slightly reducing the majority by which the Tory Government was supported, and the various members of the Russell family again resumed their old places in the House of Commons. Lord Tavistock was returned for Bedfordshire; Lord William for Bedford; Lord John and his uncle, Lord William Russell, for Tavistock. It was computed at the time that the ranks of the regular Opposition were increased by the election from 140 to 173 members. Even thus the Whigs did not command the support of much more than one member out of every four. And a mere statement of these numbers did not reveal the true weakness of their condition. For all practical purposes they were without a leader. They had lost, since the conclusion of the great war, Mr. Ponsonby, Mr. Whitbread, and Mr. Horner. Sir Samuel Romilly died in the interval between the dissolution of 1818 and the meeting of Parliament; and Mr. Tierney, whose ability and experience made him in one sense the leader of the Opposition, did not command either the confidence or the votes of Lord Grenville's friends. This state of things, however injurious to the Whigs as a party, afforded opportunities to Whigs as individuals. Guerilla. warfare-whether in the Senate or the field-is fruitful in opportunities to young men of energy and talent; and Lord John, who was recovering from the weak health which had depressed his energies and restricted his activity in 1817, was VOL. I. 113 H accordingly ready to take a more conspicuous part in the Parliamentary campaign. Hitherto he had rarely spoken in debate, and had been constantly absent from divisions. In 1819 he was a frequent speaker, and constant attendant to his Parliamentary duties. Of the seven occasions on which Lord John spoke during 1819, little need be said. In March he was advocating a reduction in the number of the Lords of the Admiralty; in May he was supporting Mr. Tierney's motion for an inquiry into domestic and foreign policy, and procuring a return of the material part of the indictment on which Sir M. Lopes had been convicted of bribery; in June he was condemning the surrender of Parga to the Turks,1 and attacking the increased excise duties which Mr. Vansittart was proposing; and in July he was pledging the House to take the system of bribery into its consideration at the commencement of the following session. But the speech of most significance made by him during the session was on Sir F. Burdett's motion on Parliamentary Reform in July. In a few sentences he declared that, though he was not opposed to all Reform, he could not accept schemes which were regarded as wild and visionary, or support 1 The town of Parga, on the coast of Epirus, had for centuries maintained municipal independence under the protection of Venice. With the destruction of the Venetian Republic it was occupied by a French garrison, but the inhabitants rose against the French troops, expelled them from their territory, and surrendered the town to the British. In 1815, the British Government ceded the town to the Turks, stipulating, however, that any of the inhabitants who desired to leave should be compensated for their property. The Parguinotes decided on moving as a body to the Ionian Islands; but their claim to compensation for their property, which they estimated as worth £300,000, was gradually cut down to one half that sum. A case of this character-the surrender of a people to a despotic government-was abhorrent to Lord John's whole nature. He protested in 1819 against the cession of the Parguinotes; he drew formal attention to their case in 1820, severely condemning both the policy of the Government and the conduct of Sir T. Maitland, the Governor of the Ionian Islands, who was charged with its execution; and he contributed, through Ugo Foscolo, out of his own purse to the necessities of the Parguinotes. Lord John had made Ugo Foscolo's acquaintance some years before, and Ugo Foscolo had introduced him to a friend at Geneva as 'doué d'une âme noble, et d'un esprit distingué, mais surtout il a une aimabilité que l'on trouve rarement parmi ses concitoyens. Il vous sera cher aussi pour ses opinions, car il a été dans le Parlement l'un des défenseurs de la liberté des honimes.' an inquiry which was calculated to throw a slur upon the representation of the country and to fill the minds of the people with vague and indefinite alarms.'1 These few sentences had far more effect than any that Lord John had yet spoken. They elicited a somewhat angry remonstrance from Sir F. Burdett, but they made Lord John the champion of the moderate Reformers. These various Parliamentary speeches illustrated only a portion of his political labours. In the year in which they were made, he published, under the guise of a letter to Lord Holland, an important pamphlet on foreign politics, in which he reviewed the condition of the various States of Europe, condemned the policy of the Holy Alliance, and called upon England 'to keep aloof from meetings of sovereigns and auctions of subjects.' He who has read the foregoing pages cannot be at a loss to discover the causes of the unpopularity of England on the Continent. It was supposed that she was the friend of right, and the patron of the liberal constitution which has been the foundation of her own glory. Instead of this she has been found the follower and the tool of the great Continental monarchs; assisting their spoliations, and confirming their destruction of free governments; violating promises solemnly given, and conditions offered in the plenitude of success; pursuing her course totally regardless of the cries and supplications of Europe. . . It will be said, perhaps, that England was not able, by herself, to protect the rights and independence of nations; but, if so, in God's name, why did she interfere? Why is the name of the English Minister to be affixed to every act of injustice which is perpetrated in Europe? What deadly enemy of England's honourable reputation persuaded Lord Castlereagh that the repose of the world depended on the slavery of Saxony and Genoa? England might have appeared as a member of a confederacy to oppose France without sanctioning any of those acts of pillage by which the deliverance of Europe has been disgraced. If she was not able to prevent those acts, she need not have soiled her fair fame by appearing to countenance them. Throughout the session, therefore, Lord John had been 1 Hansard, xl. 1496. exceptionally busy; and his labours had not been merely great, his influence and weight were increasing. His father wrote to him on June I I have had a good deal of conversation with old Tierney at Cassiobury 1 about you. I felt anxious to know in what way he thought you would be most useful in your senatorial capacity. I find with pleasure that he has a very high opinion of your debating powers; and says, if you will stick to one branch of politics and not range over too desultory a field, you may become eminently useful and conspicuous in the House of Commons. He says your speech on his motion was very good, but his friends were dismayed by the great numerical strength of the line of battle in front of them, and became flat and dispirited, and consequently did not cheer you as they ought to have done. The line I should recommend for your selection would be that of foreign politics, and all home politics bearing on civil and religious liberty-a pretty wide range. I hope you will raise your voice on Thursday against the Attorney-General's odious Bill.2 Lord John was evidently paying increased attention to the business of the House of Commons. At the close of the Parliamentary session, however, the old instinct returned in full force, and he again decided on foreign travel. He had the good fortune to secure, as the principal companion of his tour, a man who was thenceforward to be drawn into close 1 The seat of Lord Essex in Hertfordshire. Writing to Lord John from Cassiobury in 1827, Lord Dudley, who was then Foreign Secretary, said, 'The most singular form of government with which I am acquainted is that which obtains here at Cassiobury. So far as I recollect, it is not mentioned by Aristotle. It is a pure Doulocracy. I have seen some approach to it in other places, but here alone it is quite unmixed-the person who, in a language borrowed from institutions of an opposite nature, is improperly termed the Master of the House, exercising no control over the liveried and salaried depositaries of all lawful authority. These rulers take very little notice of such persons as arrive here under a notion of being his guests; and are evidently displeased with any behaviour on their part that seems to proceed from a misapprehension of the real nature of the institutions established within the walls. It is said, indeed, that there are two or three carpenters and joiners about the place that submit to receive orders from him, but I have no distinct evidence of the anomaly, in which, therefore, I rather disbelieve.' 2 The Foreign Enlistment Bill, on which, however, Lord John did not speak. |