THE WORK OF LORD BROUGHAM.

37

did not become even a sound partizan, much less a high statesman.

By being made Lord Chancellor, Lord Brougham was loaded with work, diverted from some of the many subjects of discussion which he had tried to make his own. Having to answer letters at the rate of two hundred a day, and study the science of equity whilst despatching cases so fast that he closed his Court for lack of business twice in five months, he had not much time for drawing up statutes.. But he might have been fairly expected to press a Bill for the creation of County Judges, which he laid at once on the Lords' table. By resolutely insisting on it he might have given the people simple and cheap justice in Courts that sat near their houses. Other advocates and judges have been so learned in the law that they have shrunk not unnaturally from proposals of improvement which threatened to make their learning less useful; Lord Brougham had not this excuse for being a lukewarm law reformer. The four years of his Chancellorship were years of legislative exertions made by Parliaments, whether unreformed or reformed, so great as to seem at first sight more than sufficient. But on looking closer it seems that the House of Lords was for the greater part of some sessions quite at leisure for digesting projects of law whilst waiting till the Commons had tired themselves out in the main disputes of the two parties, and that some measures for the improvement of jurisdiction and procedure, some settlement of the doubts on which lawyers fattened and clients wore out their

38 ACTUAL ACHIEVEMENTS OF LORD BROUGHAM.

substance, some adoption of doctrines approved by the civilians of France and Scotland, some anticipation of the codes of British India, might have been proposed by the occupant of the woolsack, shaped by the Lords Lyndhurst, Plunket, and Tenterden, and accepted without much delay by Lord Althorp, by Sir Robert Peel, and by their troops of publicspirited followers.

The actual achievements of the Whig Chancellor, when separated from projects, seem to amount to no more than three. He persuaded Parliament, in spite of Lord Eldon's peevish resistance, to abolish thirteen salaries paid to useless officers of Chancery. He made the Privy Council somewhat more efficient in jurisdiction. He took one step towards an object which has eluded his ablest successors, the contrivance of a process by which the goods of an insolvent trader might be discovered, realised, and so distributed amongst his creditors as not to stick too much to the fingers of the distributors; but all that he effected was the substitution of permanent for temporary Commissioners of Bankruptcy; his Commissioners were without the energy or mastery that were needed for the clearing of accounts. It appears that the progress of legal wisdom, sustained as it is by growth of judicial virtue, and stimulated by the multiplying of critical agencies in the press, cannot keep up with the parallel growth of that ingenuity which directs the fall of a commercial estate and that which wraps it, when prostrate, in fungus.

In after days, when Lord Brougham was a bitter

GREY MINISTRY A MODEL OF POLITICAL ART. 39

enemy of the Whigs, a book was published to set forth his achievements in the improvement of laws and procedure. Judging of it from the unmixed eulogy bestowed on it by the Quarterly Review,' one would venture to say that it did not prove him to have fulfilled the hopes raised by his famous speech on the subject which he delivered in the House of Commons. But he certainly encouraged others, who were competent to work out schemes. He was as one who travels for a manufacturing firm and shows samples.

XXVI.

THE Ministry which took its name and character from Lord Grey survived its founder a few months. It flourished for three whole years; in the fourth year it showed some weakness. It was as nearly faultless as any Ministry in any country ever has been. By examining its structure and conduct the student of the political art may learn the best of all lessons. These four years are more worthy of minute observation than any other period of English history. To foreigners they supply the most fruitful knowledge; to British patriots they open a fountain of joy.

Lord Grey did not attempt to alter the method, which he found established, of governing Ireland by a deputy. In those days the Lord-Lieutenant of

The title 'Deputy' was applied to the person who governed Ireland

40

MR, STANLEY AS IRISH SECRETARY.

Ireland was not sufficiently under the control of the Home Office, and he was more the master of the Irish Secretary than he should have been But the Irish Secretary of the Whigs was Mr. Stanley; and he at once assumed more power than any of his predecessors had held.1 He was then remarkable for promptitude, intrepidity, and plain dealing; and he had that eloquence which is the drapery of virtue in motion. Therefore he was fit for the inevitable conflict with the spurious patriotism of malcontents. Nominally he was under Lord Anglesey. For Lord Grey had, with some weakness and in questionable taste, allowed the Lord-Lieutenancy to be restored to the person whom the Duke of Wellington had deposed. If Lord Anglesey had been recalled for being too much the friend of the Catholics, it would have been reasonable to send him back to Dublin; but he had in fact lost his place for not being prudent enough, for not keeping at arm's length certain gentlemen who were inclined to make mischief and seemed to be disloyal not to the Tory Government in

for the English sovereign at the time when the New Testament began to be read generally in the English version. Ireland was then the only 'province' of the English kingdom; and the English translation of the book, which gives, incidentally, the best notion of the Roman Empire, called the Roman ruler of the province Achaia by the name of 'Deputy.' It may be regretted that this title is no longer applied to a ruler of a colony or dependency.

1 Mr. Stanley was thirty-two years old; six years before, he had made a strong speech in the House of Commons to defend the Irish Church Establishment. His grandfather, the Earl of Derby, was a Whig and an owner of landed estate in Ireland. Mr. Stanley was a pure Whig in principle and breeding; he was not a pliant politician in the best years of his life; but it is a mistake to suppose that he was more Conservative than a Whig had a right to be.

DISAPPOINTMENT FOR IRELAND.

41

particular, but to the British Government generally. It was no doubt hard to find a good Lord-Lieutenant; for a Peer at once dignified and clever would not care, unless he were in want of a salary or of patronage for his kinsfolk, to hold an office in which there was so little power and so much useless trouble.

The presence of Lord Anglesey in Dublin seemed to encourage the Catholic politicians, in so far as he had seemed to wish to be their friend. Their disappointment was embittered when they found that the Secretary, not the Lord-Lieutenant, was to determine every question except, perhaps, the less important questions of patronage and of military dispositions. For Mr. Stanley was the most unlikely man amongst the Whigs to concede anything to the leader of the Catholics, Mr. O'Connell. In fact he dealt with him as with a barking cur, who is watched, but with a scornful eye.

Attempts at conciliation, or bargainings with the demagogue, might have been by some ingenious politicians designed and vaunted; by some fastidious but easy-tempered politicians, tolerated and faintly excused. It seems now and then feasible, and not shameful, to buy off a loud opponent, or to absorb him in a Ministry. There are stages in a pushing man's progress at which he can be saved from error and the State from trouble by making a proselyte of him. In Mr. O'Connell's case the doubt is whether he had in December 1830 overshot the point at which the most high-minded of British statesmen could