THE PRESS.
ESTIMATES OF THE CHARACTER OF MR. RUSKISSON.
MORNING HERALD.—The peculiarly tragic circumstances attending the untimely death of the late Mr. Iluskisson, will not fail to excite uni- versal sympathy for his fate. Though advanced in years to a period usually considered the decline of life, and with health seriously impaired by a long and laborious career of public exertion, we cannot advert to the sudden and awful stroke of calamity, by which he has been in a mo- ment torn away from his friends and country, without being deeply im- pressed with those reflections which awaken the mind to a sense of the perishable tenure of human existence. Ardently devoted to the improve- ment and universal application of machinery, Mr. Huskisson has perished by the power of which he was the greatest admirer—and perished too, in the hour of the triumphal celebration of a favourite project of practical science. One moment the joyous spectator of the supposed accomplish- ment of a gigantic novelty in mechanical enterprise, the next, its bleed- ing victim ! Nor can we fail to be struck by the curious coincidence of this dreadful fate having overtaken him, while attempting to enter the carriage occupied by the Duke of Wellington, with whom, after the death of his distinguished and persecuted friend, Mr. Canning, he formed a coalition that had a fatal influence on his political character and fortunes, and which was suddenly dissolved by his abrupt dis- missal from a Cabinet, of which, with all his imperfections, lie was the greatest ornament. Differing, as we did, in policy from Mr.
Huskisson, we must yet do him justice in his grave. He was a man of no ordinary talents—without those advantages of birth or connexion which confer great advantages upon men, at least in the earlier part of the career of political ambition, he rose to eminence by the force of intellectual powers, which, however erroneously di- rected, gave him a distinguished place in the British Senate, and
considerable influence in the country. He was indeed more of a theorist, or what the French call a doctrinaire than a practical statesman. His principles of free trade, however good in the abstract, he applied to a country whose artificial condition could not admit of their being reduced into practice without being productive of pernicious Consequences. An exact calculator upon paper, lie had not a judgment sufficiently sound to take into consideration the actual effect of his prin- ciples upon the existing circumstances of the country. He did not distill- guish between what was brilliant and what was practicable. He was Captivated himself, and he seduced others by the charm of a name. Be- cause "free trade" was calculated to stimulate the energies, and draw forth the resources of a young and vigorous nation, unincumbered with debt, he thought the removal of established commercial restrictions must confer immense advantages on a people whose productive industry was bent to the earth by the feebleness and decrepitude which financial bur- dens; unexampled in the history of the world, produced. He called upon a people thus shackled and constrained to enter into free competition with nations that laboured under no such difficulties. He might as well have insisted upon a mail whose legs were bound, entering into a competition in swiftness with one who had the elastic use of his free-limbs. Had he first been able to knock off the fetters which the taxation required by the debt and a prodigal expenditure placed upon the industry of the people, he might then have started England in the free rivalry of com- merce against the world, and her energies would have triumphed over all opposition.
TIMES—The death of Mr. Huskisson will he deeply felt throughout this country, as the loss of one who exercised, whether in office or in
opposition, a powerful and protecting authority over one great branch of the national interests of Great Britain. Mr. Huskisson, beyond all con- temporary politicians, deserved the praise of being a practical statesman, —one whose knowledge was conversant with realities,—whose reasonings on matters of political economy and on finance might be taken for a manual by those who desired to render the mercantile intercourse be- tween men and states as productive, and the fiscal regulations as little • oppressive, as the nature of things would allow,—one, moreover, whose industry and sagacity were made available to the kingdom by great bold- ness and steadiness in his measures, and whose good fortune it was to have almost lived down, within the short period of four or five years, the loud, confident, overbearing, and dexterous—though in some cases igno- rant, in others factious—clamours with which the country resounded from end to end, against the introduction of that new system of navigation laws, and of importation duties, which were falsely repre- sented to have for their motive a preference of foreign over British ships and goods, but which are now admitted by ninety-nine out of every hundred well-informed men throughout the empire, to have been dic- tated by an accurate perception in the mind of Mr. Huskisson of what foreign Governments had it in their power to accomplish against Eng. land under her former policy, and of their probable reluctance, as well as certain incapacity, to make war successfully upon her maritime and commercial greatness, should that policy be abandoned or relaxed. Mr. Huskisson has been much calumniated for a Measure by which England appeared to give up her ancient defences against foreign shipping, no longer denying them, by means of prohibitory duties, admission to British ports. The answers of IlIr. Huskisson were two, and both triumphant. He said, that first, many neighbouring Go.. vermnents were on the point of retaliating upon England, by excluding her vessels from their dominions ; second, by his preventing
that retaliatory system, and inviting other states to one of reciprocal hospitality and unrestraint, the shipping interest of England had not merely escaped the severe punishment then in store for them, but that British vessels had positively increased and multiplied through the accommodation afforded here to their mercantile rivals ; which latter had increased likewise, though in a far less proportion. So with the silk trade. Furious and frequent—and now, as the event has proved, quite scandalous—were the reproaches cast in the teeth of Mr. Hus- kisson, for breaking up the close monopoly by which that manu- facture had been retarded, and the policy of England disgraced. The public, it has for some time been acknowledged, have in con- sequence of the relaxation had better goods at lower prices than be- fore. France, instead of furnishing our market with silks, is actually, in some instances, supplied with those of England, made to imitate com- pletely the silks of Lyons ; and the silk-manufacturing establishments of this kingdom, have extended into numerous districts where the article, as a home-made fabric, never was heard of so long as the monopoly ex- isted. We have selected two eases, because they are prominent and im- portant, of Mr. Huskisson's services to the nation in that department of public affairs over which no man of the present age has presided with any thing like equal credit to himself, or solid utility to the public. Looking at the materials from which the vacancy left by this lamented gentleman is to be filled up,—we mean the vacancy in public opinion as to the amplitude of his knowledge and resources,—we cannot anticipate that it will for years be supplied. * * Report says that he, and certain others of the same views on foreign and domestic policy, were soon to have been announced as members of the Duke of Wellington's Cabinet. We neither confirm nor deny that rumour. If it be correct, the truth of it will be speedily ascertained by the destination of Mr. Huskisson's surviving friends, who, if not of equal weight with him on questions within that range to which he principally confined himself, might still be desirable accessions to any (but an Ultra-Tory) Administration. The loss, nevertheless, of such a man, so enlightened in his opinions, and so practised in affairs, must at such a time be irreparable.
llionsmco CHRONICLE—We have always calculated on the return of Mr. Huskisson to office, from the helplessness of the Cabinet at the pre. sent moment. We have little doubt that the death of this able man must have materially deranged the plans of his Grace. We have often thought that he did not advocate the principles of free trade very skil- fully. He used to endeavour to show, that in the advanced state of our industry free trade could not be injurious to us : but these arguments had a tendency to impress other nations, that as they were less advanced in industry than ourselves, the restrictive system would be more bene. ficial for them. He did not advocate the system on the true principle, that it never can be advantageous to a nation, whatever the character of its industry, to impose restrictions on trade.
STANDARD—If the later politics of Mr. Huskisson's life contradicted his own earlier views, as well as opposing the best interests of the coun- try, (we allude particularly to his support of the Popish Bill and the free trade system,) the inconsistency, though indefensible upon public grounds, was, in his case, capable of great extenuation. Though a man far superior in powers of mind to the Earl of Liverpool or Mr. Can- ning, Mr. Huskisson wanted the noble rank and court favour of the one, and the ready elocution of the other, to raise. him to the station of a political leader ; he was, therefore, being committed to politics as a trade, compelled to adopt the views of one or both, and to follow-them in their deviations ; he took in consequence his Popery from Mr. Can. ning, and much more adopted than inculcated the wild commercial no• tions of the Earl of Liverpool. Nor must we disregard the lights let in by the events of the last,two years upon the mysteries of British states. manship, or withhold our recantation of the injustice which we have unconsciously committed in the cases of Mr. Canning and Mr. Huskis- son, who, without having made any extraordinary pretension to honesty, now prove to have been incomparably more honest men than most of their late political opponents. Mr. Canning and Mr. Huskisson knew these opponents, whom the people of England were weak enough to regard as upright statesmen, and they acted upon the knowledge; they knew that, with all Sir Robert Peel's affected zeal for the Protestant constitution, be was only awaiting his opportunity to betray it to advantage; they knew the same of the Duke of Wel- lington; they knew also that his Grace's assumed antipathy to the doctrine of free trade, and his pretended anxiety for the safety of the landed interest, would all give way the very first moment they became inconvenient. If, therefore, they believed in Popery and Free Trade, they were impelled to urge them, as well by • the plea- sure of thwarting impostors as by the natural wish that their opi- nions should triumph ; and even though they regarded these nostrums as indifferent things, they were justified, according to the moral code of statesmanship, in treating them as important and beneficial, for the purpose of overthrowing those who held place by maintaining the oppo- site doctrine-doctrine which, whether true or false in the abstract, was falsely and fraudulently held by these maintainers. The difference be- tween the antagonist parties is this-Mr. Canning and Mr. II uskisson pursued a system which we think wrong, but which they may have thought right, and they pursued it in an honourable manner. The Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel pursued two contradictory sys- tems-one to get into place, the other to keep it : they pursued, there- fore, one line of policy, which ever it was, that they knew to be wrong ; and they pursued it by means which their fawning parasites dare not defend, and which we dare not characterize. The conduct of their suc- cessors in office does not, indeed, foro conscientim justify the political errors of Mr. Canning and Mr. Huskisson ; but it throws over them the palliation that, according to the canon of modern statesmanship, they were made necessary-that is, necessary to the chances of obtaining office. But let us close the political retrospect, and mourn, as we may without reserve, the able, kind-hearted, and honourable gentleman- who would be now the useful statesman :
"Mourn talents high, untimely lost When best employed and wanted most."
Previous page
