Lord John Russell - Stuart J. Reid (recommended reading txt) 📗
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Lord Russell then held resolutely to the view that her Majesty’s Government had steadily endeavoured to maintain a policy of strict neutrality, and so long as he was in power at the Foreign Office, or at the Treasury, the demands of the United States for compensation were ignored. Meanwhile, there arose a mighty famine in Lancashire through the failure of the cotton supply, and 800,000 operatives were thrown, through no fault of their own, on the charity of the nation, which rose splendidly to meet the occasion. All classes of the community were bound more closely together in the gentle task of philanthropy, as well as in admiration of the uncomplaining heroism with which privation was met by the suffering workpeople.
[39] The Liberation of Italy, 1815-1870, by the Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesaresco (Seeley and Co. 1895), p. 252.
[40] Second edition, 1892, chap. xcii.
CHAPTER XVISECOND PREMIERSHIP
1865-1866
The Polish Revolt—Bismarck’s bid for power—The Schleswig-Holstein difficulty—Death of Lord Palmerston—The Queen summons Lord John—The second Russell Administration—Lord John’s tribute to Palmerston—Mr. Gladstone introduces Reform—The ‘Cave of Adullam’—Defeat of the Russell Government—The people accept Lowe’s challenge—The feeling in the country.
Lord John, in his conduct of foreign affairs, acted with generosity towards Italy and with mingled firmness and patience towards America. It was a fortunate circumstance, for the great interests at stake on both sides of the Atlantic, that a man of so much judgment and right feeling was in power at a moment when prejudice was strong and passion ran high. Grote, who was by no means consumed with enthusiasm for the Palmerston Government, did not conceal his admiration of Lord John’s sagacity at this crisis. ‘The perfect neutrality of England in the destructive civil war now raging in America appears to me almost a phenomenon in political history. No such forbearance has been shown during the political history of the last two centuries. It is the single case in which the English Government and public, generally so meddlesome, have displayed most prudent and commendable forbearance in spite of great temptations to the contrary.’ Lord John had opinions, and the courage of them; but at the same time he showed himself fully alive to the fact that no greater calamity could possibly overtake the English-speaking race than a war between England and the United States.
Europe was filled at the beginning of 1863 with tidings of a renewed Polish revolt. Russia provoked the outbreak by the stern measures which had been taken in the previous year to repress the growing discontent of the people. The conspiracy was too widespread and too deep-rooted for Alexander II. to deal with, except by concessions to national sentiment, which he was not prepared to make, and, therefore, he fell back on despotic use of power. All able-bodied men suspected of revolutionary tendencies were marked out for service in the Russian army, and in this way, in Lord John’s words, the ‘so-called conscription was turned into a proscription.’ The lot was made to fall on all political suspects, who were to be condemned for life to follow the hated Russian flag. The result was not merely armed resistance, but civil war. Poland, in her struggle for liberty, was joined by Lithuania; but Prussia came to the help of the Czar, and the protests of England, France, and Austria were of no avail. Before the year ended the dreams of self-government in Poland, after months of bloodshed and cruelty, were again ruthlessly dispelled.
One diplomatic difficulty followed another in quick succession. Bismarck was beginning to move the pawns on the chess-board of Europe. He had conciliated Russia by taking sides with her against the Poles in spite of the attitude of London, Paris, and Vienna. He feared the spirit of insurrection would spread to the Poles in Prussia, and had no sympathy with the aspirations of oppressed nationalities. His policy was to make Prussia strong—if need be by ‘blood and iron’—so that she might become mistress of Germany. The death of Frederick VII. of Denmark provoked a fresh crisis and revived in an acute form the question of succession to the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. The Treaty of London in 1852 was supposed to have settled the question, and its terms had been accepted by Austria and Prussia. The integrity of Denmark was recognised, and Prince Christian of Glucksburg was accepted as heir-presumptive of the reigning king. The German Diet did not regard this arrangement as binding, and the feeling in the duchies themselves, especially in Holstein, was against the claims of Denmark. But the Hereditary Prince Frederick of Augustenburg disputed the right of Christian IX. to the Duchies, and Bismarck induced Austria to join Prussia in the occupation of the disputed territory.
It is impossible to enter here into the merits of the quarrel, much less to describe the course of the struggle or the complicated diplomatic negotiations which grew out of it. Denmark undoubtedly imagined that the energetic protest of the English Government against her dismemberment would not end in mere words. The language used by both Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell was of a kind to encourage the idea of the adoption, in the last extremity, of another policy than that of non-intervention. Bismarck, on the other hand, it has been said with truth, had taken up the cause of Schleswig-Holstein, not in the interest of its inhabitants, but in the interests of Germany, and by Germany he meant the Government of Berlin and the House of Hohenzollern. He represented not merely other ideas, but other methods than those which prevailed with statesmen who were old enough to recall the wars of Napoleon and the partition of Europe to which they gave rise. It must be admitted that England did not show to advantage in the Schleswig-Holstein difficulty, in spite of the soundness of her counsels; and Bismarck’s triumph in the affair was as complete as the policy on which it was based was bold and adroit. Lord Palmerston and Lord John were embarrassed on the one hand by the apathy of Russia and France and on the other by the cautious, not to say timid, attitude of their own colleagues. ‘As to Cabinets,’ wrote Lord Palmerston, with dry humour, in reply to a note in which Lord John hinted that if the Prime Minister and himself had been given a free hand they could have kept Austria from war with Denmark, ‘if we had had colleagues like those who sat in Pitt’s Cabinet, such as Westmoreland and others, or such men as those who were with Peel, like Goulburn and Hardinge, you and I might have had our own way in most things. But when, as is now the case, able men fill every department, such men will have opinions and hold to them. Unfortunately, they are often too busy with their own department to follow up foreign questions so as to be fully masters of them, and their conclusions are generally on the timid side of what might be the best.’[41]
Lord John wrote to Foreign Courts—was Mr. Bagehot’s shrewd criticism—much in the same manner as he was accustomed to speak in the House of Commons. In other words, he used great plainness of speech, and, because of the very desire to make his meaning clear, he, was occasionally indiscreetly explicit and even brusque. Sometimes it happened that the intelligent foreigner grew critical at Lord John’s expense. Count Vitzthum, for example, laid stress on the fact that Lord John ‘looked on the British Constitution as an inimitable masterpiece,’ which less-favoured nations ought not only to admire but adopt, if they wished to advance and go forward in the direction of liberty, prosperity, and peace. There was just enough truth in such assertions to render them amusing, though not enough to give them a sting. There were times when Lord John was the ‘stormy petrel’ of foreign politics, but there never was a time when he ceased to labour in season and out for what he believed to be the honour of England. ‘I do not believe that any English foreign statesman, who does his duty faithfully by his own countrymen in difficult circumstances, can escape the blame of foreign statesmen,’ were his own words, and he assuredly came in for his full share of abuse in Europe. One of Lord John Russell’s subordinates at the Foreign Office, well known and distinguished in the political life of to-day, declares that Lord John, like Lord Clarendon, was accustomed to write many drafts of despatches with his own hand, but as a rule did not go with equal minuteness into the detail of the work. It sometimes happened that he would take sudden resolutions without adequate consideration of the points involved; but he would always listen patiently to objections, and when convinced that he was wrong was perfectly willing to modify his opinion. In most cases, however, Lord John did not make up his mind without due reflection, and under such circumstances he showed no vacillation. No tidings from abroad, however startling or unpleasant, seemed able to disturb his equanimity. He was an extremely considerate chief, but, though always willing to listen to his subordinates, kept his own counsel and seldom took them much into his confidence.
The year 1865 was rendered memorable both in England and America by the death of statesmen of the first rank. In the spring, that great master of reason and economic reform, Richard Cobden, died in London, after a few days’ illness, in the prime of life; and almost before the nation realised the greatness of such a loss, tidings came across the Atlantic that President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated at Washington, in the hour of triumph, by a cowardly fanatic. The summer in England was made restless by a General Election. Though Bright denounced Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Gladstone lost his seat at Oxford, to stand ‘unmuzzled’ a few days later before the electors of South-West Lancashire, the predicted Conservative reaction was not an accomplished fact. Lord Palmerston’s ascendency in the country, though diminished, was still great, and the magic of his name carried the election. ‘It is clear,’ wrote Lord John to the plucky octogenarian Premier, when the latter, some time before the contest, made a fighting speech in the country, ‘that your popularity is a plant of hardy growth and deep roots.’ Quite suddenly, in the spring of 1865, Lord Palmerston began to look as old as his years, and as the summer slipped past, it became apparent that the buoyant elasticity of temperament had vanished. On October 18 the great Minister died in harness, and Lord John Russell, who was only eight years younger, was called to the helm.
The two men, more than once in mid-career, had serious misunderstandings, and envious lips had done their best to widen their differences. It is pleasant to think now that Palmerston and Russell were on cordial and intimate terms during the critical six years, when the former held for the last time the post of First Minister of the Crown, and the latter was responsible for Foreign Affairs. It is true that they were not of one mind on the question of Parliamentary Reform; but Lord John, after 1860 at least, was content to waive that question, for he saw that the nation, as well as the Prime Minister, was opposed to a forward movement in that direction, and the strain of war abroad and famine at home hindered the calm discussion of constitutional problems. Lord Lyttelton used to say that Palmerston was regarded as a Whig because he belonged to Lord Grey’s
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