Domestic happiness, however, only formed one part of Lord John's social life. During these years of comparative freedom from Parliamentary and official toil, he found new pleasure in meeting friends and opponents at Grillion's; and in August 1857 his excellent social qualities procured his election to the Club,' his proposer being Lord Lansdowne, his seconder Lord Stanhope, and his election being announced to him by the chairman of the evening, Dr. Hawtrey, the Provost of Eton.

While Lord John was enjoying the pleasures of home and the relaxations of society, his growing family was imposing on him new expenses. It has been already related that he had never been in debt till he was Prime Minister. His defeat in 1852 did not afford him pecuniary relief. He had to maintain the position and incur the expenses of a leader of the Opposition on an income which many country gentlemen would consider slender. Nor did the formation of Lord Aberdeen's Government improve the case. Throughout 1853, and till June 1854, he laboured in the service of the public without fee or reward, and his income proved unequal to the many calls upon his purse. The debts which he incurred during those months very nearly reached £4000. From June 1854 he occupied a slightly better position as President of the Council; while for a few months in 1855 he drew the salary of a Secretary of State. But from the summer of that year he was again thrown on his own moderate resources, and incurred the anxiety of meeting an expenditure which he could not easily reduce with an inadequate income.

People, whose pecuniary position saved them from the difficulty which Lord John thus incurred, were always ready to complain that he should have insisted on leading the House of Commons in 1853 without office, or that he should have taken the Presidency of the Council and £2000 instead of the Colonial Department with its £5000 a year. They had not the generosity to reflect that both decisions exposed Lord John to pecuniary embarrassment, and that men do not wilfully refuse themselves some thousands a year without good

VOL. II.

T

reasons or reasons which they think good. After Lord John's final retirement in 1855, the pressure became too great to be any longer neglected. It compelled him in 1857 to let his London house. But, even with the additional income which he thus obtained, his expenditure exceeded his receipts by many hundreds of pounds. It was technically competent for Lord John to have terminated this embarrasment by applying for the pension to which Ministers of the Crown are entitled under certain conditions after certain service. But it would have been little short of a scandal if the brother of a Duke of Bedford had availed himself of a provision intended for poor men. He was saved from the difficulty by the Duke in 1857 taking a step which ordinary persons-recollecting his own. wealth and his brother's eminence-will think that he might have taken before. Instead of doling out assistance from time to time, in a manner which must have been both distasteful and unsatisfactory to Lord John,1 he settled on him, once for all, an adequate annuity. Thenceforward, though Lord John was never a rich man, he was in comfortable and easy circumstances.

If Lord John had been influenced by pecuniary motives, he would probably, both in 1856 and in 1857, have sought some opportunity for rejoining his old colleagues, and securing the emoluments which usually accompany power. His accession would have been eagerly welcomed. But from 1856 to 1859 he had no desire for office, preferring to give an independent support to Lord Palmerston's Administration. His doing so was made the easier in 1856 from his being thoroughly in accord with the Government in concluding peace at Paris. Some men, indeed, there were who told him-though not quite accurately-that the terms which were agreed to at Paris did not materially differ from those which he had

1 Mr. Greville has some strong remarks on this. But, in the Duke's behalf, it should be recollected that he had inherited an embarrassed estate, and that he had retrieved himself from his difficulties by his own careful management, aided, no doubt, by the prodigious growth of the London property. Nothing is so common as for a man, who has practised economy when it was a duty, to go on practising it when it is unnecessary.

brought home from Vienna; while he would have been justified by the event in contending that his own proposal promised to be more durable than that to which Lord Clarendon agreed. In his satisfaction, however, at the conclusion of the war, he felt no jealousy at Lord Clarendon's He wrote of Lord Clarendon's mission-

success.

He goes to make a peace, of which few people will be proud, but most people will be glad.

He said afterwards in debate

I believe that the conditions of peace are honourable to her Majesty's crown, and that they fully accomplish the great objects for which the war was undertaken.

His pleasure at the conclusion of peace increased his anxiety to support the Government which had concluded it : and throughout 1856 the Administration could rely on his loyal assistance. The part which he played in Parliament during that year need not be minutely related. In the course of it, however, he brought forward one motion of great importance. The cause of education owed already more to Lord John than to any living statesman. As member of the Government which had authorised the first grants for the purpose, as leader of the House of Commons which had sanctioned the proposals of 1839, as the Prime Minister who had devised and expounded the policy of 1847, he had shown, in every stage of his career, his sense of the importance of the work. He recommended in 1856 a much more extensive policy. There were in the country-so he estimated— 4,000,000 children of school age; exactly one-half of whom, or 2,000,000, were borne on the books of some school. But only one-fourth of them, or 500,000, were at schools under inspection; while the remainder were at schools where the teaching was so inefficient that the master of one of them on being asked whether he could read replied, 'Yes, I can summat.'1 To

1 Lord John said that there were 8000 Church of England schools whose masters did not receive more than £28 a year, or 11s. a week, and a great many schools where the teachers only received £21 a year, or 8s, a week.

remedy this state of things Lord John wished to largely increase the inspecting staff; to empower the inspectors to inquire into the available means of education in each district; and, when the Privy Council, on the report of the inspector, declared a district inadequately supplied with the means of education, to authorise the magistrates in quarter sessions to supply the deficiency by a compulsory school-rate. Lord John desired to evade the religious difficulty by allowing the committee of the school to make provision for religious instruction; and by exempting all children from receiving it whose parents or guardians conscientiously objected to it.

This scheme, which was formulated by Lord John in a long series of resolutions, contemplated of course a great advance on any arrangements which had been hitherto sanctioned; and the result showed it went beyond anything to which Parliament was, at that time, willing to agree. The House, after much debate, defeated Lord John by a decisive majority; and his resolutions are now chiefly worth recollecting because they afford proof that at sixty-four, as at twenty-four, he was in front of his age.

Lord John took a much more active part in the session of 1857 than in that of 1856. Though he only landed in England, after his long absence in Switzerland and Italy, on February 3, he was in his place in the House of Commons that evening and took part in the debate on the Address. The speech from the throne had alluded, among other things, to the war which had broken out with Persia; to the acts of violence to the British flag which had led to hostilities in China; and to the suspension of diplomatic negotiations with the Government of the Two Sicilies. The first of these allusions enabled Lord John to indicate a strong opinion that 'it was the constitutional duty of the Government'-on deciding on war— to call Parliament together, and to lay before it the circumstances justifying its inception. The last of them enabled. him, while expressing his regret that a firmer policy had not been pursued towards Sicily, to dwell on the whole Italian question, to praise the Government of Piedmont, to denounce

the occupation of the Roman States by Austria, and to state his conviction that it would be easy, in conjunction with France, and without risk of war, to procure the withdrawal of Austria into her own provinces of Lombardy and Venice.

It was evident from these remarks that Lord John was no longer in that perfect accord with the Government which he had displayed in 1856. But at the same time he showed no desire to withdraw from Ministers that general independent support which he made it his business to give them. And though, on February 19, he both spoke and voted for Mr. Locke King's motion for the reduction of the county franchise, and carried with him the bulk of the unofficial Liberals into the lobby,1 on February 23 he warmly supported Sir G. Lewis's Budget-writing two days afterwards, in reply to Sir George's thanks

February 25, 1857.

DEAR G. LEWIS,-I was very happy to give such support as I could to your very honest Budget, when it was unfairly and unscrupulously attacked. My speech ought to have been much more effective, but, if it tended to steady the House, I am satisfied. I have my misgivings about the feasibility of paying off so early as the law provides a large portion of our war debt; but it is a noble and generous attempt, and ought not to be relinquished till retrenchment has been tried to the utmost practicable extent. Your task is not an easy one, and I shall be sorry to add to your difficulties by any course I may find it my duty to pursue. Yours sincerely, J. RUSSELL.

On the day after that on which this letter was written, Mr. Cobden brought forward the motion which procured Lord Palmerston's defeat, and resulted in the dissolution of 1857. The circumstances on which the motion was made were as follows:-'The Chinese had boarded the Arrow, and rescued twelve of their countrymen detained on it on a charge of piracy. The British Consul, Sir John Bowring, remonstrated on the ground that malfeasants on a British ship 1 Lord Palmerston only defeated the motion by 192 votes to 179, and the 192 were chiefly office-holders or Conservatives.