19 MARCH 1842, Page 14

SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

BrooasPwr, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Michael Thomas Sadler, Esq..M.P., FR. S., &c.

E03NOWICAL Hurronv, &eiey and nu-nside. The Poor-laws, and their Bearing on Society; a Series of Political{ and Historical Essays. By Eric Gustaf Geijer, Professor of History at the University of Upsala. Translated from the Swedish, by E. B. Hale Lewin Hatchard.

POETRY.

Theodore Homer's Lyre and Sward Smith, Edinburgh; Whittaker and Co., London.

MEMOIRS OF MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER.

ALTHOUGH Mr. &mail was very far from being so shining a light as the Ultra-Tories supposed, he was a man of more mark and matter than the Whiglings would allow : indeed, men do not attain even his temporary distinction without a large supply of some popular qualities, though the qualities themselves may not be of a high or enduring nature. SADLER, however, was misplaced. Nature had fitted him for the part of a demagogue, no matter whether lay or clerical ; though of the two, he would perhaps have shone most in heading a superstitious mass against the authority of the state or the corruptions of the hierarchy. For this post all his powers were adapted. He had an ardent mind, and a poetical temperament, (in fact, he wrote some passable poetry,) which gave a seeming of loftiness to his fluent fallacies or commonplaces. He possessed great benevolence of feeling ; which induced him to sympathize with the state of the poor and needy, and roused his indignation against the reasons, sometimes false and sometimes hard, by which self-interest seeks to maintain a profitable abuse. He had also keenness enough to detect the fallacies of his opponents, and a plain, plausible, popular mode of advancing his own ; and though his narrowness of range, and perhaps his temperament, would ever have prevented him from hitting that golden mean where philosophic truth is most likely to be found, he was never troubled with any philosophical scepticism as to his own infallibility. Seeing narrowly and par- tially, he saw clearly, and was firmly convinced there was no truth existent but what he saw. This quality, joined to the benevolent feeling we have spoken of, rendered him indisposed to make allow- ances for opponents or to tolerate any difference of opinion. Op- position to his schemes of politics and philanthropy was a posi- tive crime. In the present day, had he possessed the power, he would have punished Malthusians and manufacturers to the utmost extent that the most excited opinion of the mass would have permitted. In a time of religious phrensy, he would have lit the fires of Smithfield, out of an expansive love of man- kind ; and had his notions tended towards " equality" as causing "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," he would, like Arum:wins Crmars, have supported a reign of terror as " the orator of the human race."

But Fortune was unfavourable to MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER. From his twentieth to his thirty-third year, he was engaged at Leeds in a business which is not mentioned. He then entered into

a partnership in the Irish linen trade : to which, we infer, he•did not pay sufficient attention, in a commercial sense, to have

rendered it profitable, had he alone represented the firm; amusing himself with reading books and writing poetry, founding a literary and philosophical society at Leeds, and giving occasional lectures to its members. When_, in 1828, the Ultras of "the County" party began to suspect PEEL and WELLINGTON upon the Catholic question, our hero made a speech at Leeds, which attracted the attention of the Duke of NEWCASTLE; and MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER, in his forty-ninth year, was by his Grace brought into Parliament to save the British constitution.

It might seem that Fortune had now repented of her unkind- ness ; but such was not the case. SADLER was unfitted to the audience, and to the theme. The bold and fluent assertion, or the plausible -appeal to national and vulgar prejudice, which passes with the mob, is not the kind of stuff which affects the House of Commons : the positive and infallible air that impresses an ex- cited crowd, (as long as the infallibilities do not run counter to its views,) or looks like demonstration in an amateur lecture-room, soon offended the aristocracy of the House, especially from a provincial linendraper ; and the touches of sympathy with poverty that might tell with the mass, fell cold upon the ear of Parliament—SADLElea cant was not their cant. His subject and connexions, too, were unlucky. Had the question been likely to have hung long on hand, SADLER, could have rung the changes on a "truly British" op- position to " Popery" for his lifetime ; but the question only waited for a vote to be done with in the eyes of sensible people. His associates, or patrons, or followers—call them what you will— were also unsuited to him. Squires in politics are like clowns in an army, capital raw material, but powerless per se. They require drill and officers to form them, science to support them, and chiefs to lead them. If they mutiny and refuse to obey, they can readily enough cause a rout, but they themselves suffer more from the enemy than anybody else. Hence, whenever the country gentle- men fall off, it is only for a time : their inherent deficiency prevents them from forming a party of their own ; their prejudices render them more opposed to the persons, politics, and every thing else in the party of the Movement, than in those of their former com- manders; and, after sulking long enough to do themselves irre- trievable harm, they have to sneak back into the camp as best they may. After choosing SADLER for a sort of leader, they repented them of their mutiny within a twelvemonth ; and he was carried along with them into the Conservative camp to oppose the Reform Bill. In a short time, the Ultra County party began to repent of the officer of their choice. He would not tamely submit himself

and his time to their party drudgery and party tactics: his sym- pathies with the masses—with the Irish peasantry—with the English agricultural poor, whose commons had been enclosed, and with the Factory children—were always inconvenient and some- times offensive; and though the dissolution to elect the Reformed Parliament nominally gave him the coup de grace, yet the Duke, who does " what he likes with his own, would soon have made away with his nominee. It is said, indeed, by his biographer, that he was solicited by various constituencies to stand on the Reform election : but he was beaten at his adopted town of Leeds, and soon after his health began to fail. He died in July 1835; and a monument, raised by subscription, was erected to his memory at Leeds.

So much for the political character of SADLER. The events of his life, so far as they are told in the volume before us, seem to have been of an uninteresting kind; nor would it be easy to add more to his career than is told by the biographer in his opening passages.

EPOCHS OF SADLER'S EWE.

He was born at Snelston in Derbyshire, in the year 1780: he continued to reside in that village, and in the neighbouring one of Doveridge, until the year 1800, when he removed to Leeds. In 1813, he entered into partnership with the widow of the late Samuel Fenton, Esq., of that place; whose eldest daughter he married in 1816. In March 1829, he was returned to Parliament as one of the representatives for the borough of Newark ; for which place he was re• elected in July 1830. In May 1831, Parliament having been again dissolved, he was returned for the borough of Aldborongh in Yorkshire. Ills connexion with Parliament terminating in December 1832, he removed about a year after- wards to Belfast, in Ireland, where he continued to reside until his death, which occurred in July 1835, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.

Of his manhood and political career there was not much, per- haps, to tell in the way of incident ; but nothing is told in the volume before us, that might not be gathered, and more satisfac- torily, by any one who should be at the trouble of tracking his career in the periodical press. An account of his speeches, with copious quotations—passing compliments from other speakers in debate—copies of the exaggerated eulogies of the Tory press— with an elaborate resume of his work on Population, and an ac- count of the opposition offered to his Factory Bill—form the staple of six or seven hundred ample octavo pages. Of his habits in pri- vate or public life the information is very scanty, and neither graphic nor striking. The best biographical passage is that de- scriptive of his education and early years ; though in the idiosyn- cracy of his character there seems nothing peculiar. To pick out a tune on the piano, and to make childish drawings that may pass for sketches, is not uncommon among quick children.

EARLY YEARS AND EDUCATION OF SADLER.

His faculties seem to have developed themselves at an early age. A taste both for drawing and music, manifested itself before he had reached his fifth year. Specimens of early talent in sketching, made about this period of his childhood, have been preserved in the family ever since; and at the same age, he was accustomed to find out a tune on the harpsichord, after having heard it played or sung, without the assistance of the printed notes. About the sixth year of his age, he was placed under the care of Mr. Harri- son, a schoolmaster of considerable reputation at Doveridge, and with him he remained till his fourteenth or fifteenth year. Here he acquired a competent knowledge of Latin and Greek, a good acquaintance with French, and the ru- diments of Italian and German. But Mr. Harrison's favourite pursuit was that of mathematics, in which he greatly excelled; and to which he naturally directed the ardent mind of his pupil. By the time young Sadler had com- pleted his eleventh year, he had gone through Saunderson's Algebra, calculated eclipses, found logarithms, and become conversant withthe most abstruse prob- lems in pure and practical geometry. At this period he became a correspondent of the thief scientific periodical of that day ; answering most of the mathematical problems proposed through that channel. Such indeed was his proficiency, that at this early age his tutor felt no hesitation in giving him the charge of a pupil of adult years, and who has since gained a distinguished reputation, but who was then passing the college vacations at Doveridge, for the benefit of Mr. Harrison's advice and direction.

At his twelfth year it was his father's intention to have removed him to a public school, with a view to his proceeding from thence to college. But on consulting Mr. Harrison, the tutor's fondness for his pupil caused him to use such persuasions as induced Mr. Sadler to allow him to remain at Doveridge. Thus the whole plan and prospects of his life became deranged, and after remaining with Mr. Harrison till any longer stay appeared useless, lit re- turned home, without any settled plan as to his further education or course of life.

Left now, for two or three years, very much to his own choice of pursuits, it happened, fortunately, that his father possessed a large and well-selected library, which had been bequeathed to him by Mrs. Sadler's relative, the Reverend Henry Wrigley, Tutor of St. John's College, Cambridge. This collection con- tained all the standard English authors, together with the leading Greek and Roman classics; and as Michael hall an insatiable thirst for reading, a year or two spent with these companions, made him familiar with all the beet models, both ancient and modern.

Leisure, and such a course of reading, soon produced one very common re- sult in a mind of an imaginative and' enthusiastic order. He began to indulge in a poetic vein to a considerable extent. He versified many of the Psalms, and produced a poem in Speuserian verse, descriptive of the scenery of the river Dove. He also threw into heroic verse the account of Darius 's feast, given in 1 Esdras, iv. This, with some other pieces, be at one time intended to send to the press ; but discovering that Southey had anticipated him in the subject, he abandoned the intention.

After this, little is to be found of biography proper, till we ap- proach his death and character. From that portion we will take a few traits or anecdotes; which, though not very happily told, have yet personal characteristics.

CHANGE OF APPROACHING DEATH.

His sole occupation during all this period was of a character suited to his circumstances. The Scriptures were seldom out of his hand ; his conversation was filled with the one topic; and earnest and vehement prayer absorbed him day and night- That his petitions were indeed beard and answered, became apparent to his afflicted relatives by several unequivocal signs. Among these we may specify- 1. A perfect calmness, and indifference to things which bad for many years past almost monopolized his thoughts. As one instance of this, may be men- tioned, a fresh and very earnest application for permission to use his name as it candidate for a large borough in a midland county of England. The applica- tion was not only declined on the instant—which, indeed, was a matter of course, but it with put aside without a single sigh, or so much as a quicken- ing of the pulse. 2. Having always been of an impetuous and irritable temperament, the silent endurance of pain had never been a feature in his character in former years. Now, however, although ease wholly forsook him, and his sufferings were constant and unremitting, his patient endurance was quite remarkable, and his mind seemed swallowed up by a feeling that all his pains were infi- nitely less than his deservings; and by an intense desire to realise that interest in the greater and truly availing sufferings of the Saviour, which might enable him to exclaim, with the Apostle's exulting confidence, " Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."

3. Another most evident and remarkable change took place in him. When in health, the confidence he felt in the truth of his own principles, and the vehemence with which he maintained them, constantly led him to speak of his opponents, especially of those who had written "against the poor," in terms of unsparing severity. It was not any personal feeling which prompted this; he merely adopted too dogmatically the language applied in holy writ to the op- pressors of the poor and the needy. But now a total change took place in this respect. The greatest meekness and gentleness displayed itself whenever opposing controversialists were alluded to ; and he was quite as ready to find an exculpatory plea or charitable supposition, as he had formerly been to hurl anathemas at" the enemies of the poor."

MACKINTOSH ON SADLER.

The main drawback to his acceptability and usefulness, then, was one which arose out of the circumstances in which he had been placed for the first five- and-forty years of his life : it was well indicated by one of the most accurate observers in the old House of Commons, Sir James Mackintosh. In the spring of 1829, when the eclat of Mr. Sadler's first appearance in that assembly brought his name and pretensions into daily discussion in every society, Mr. Zachary Macaulay, happening to meet this veteran critic and orator, imme- diately put the question, "This Mr. Sadler, whom all men are talking about, what sort of a man is he, Sir James ?—What is your opinion of him?" " Why," replied Sir James, "there is no doubt that he is a great man; but he appears to me to have been used to alavourable auditory." Sir James had here, with an intuitive sagacity, both hinted at the defects in Mr. Sadler's mode of address, and had suggested most truly their real cause and origin. Unlike such men as Canning, and Brougham, and Peel, who were brought, as youths, upon the noblest arena in the world, and forced to train themselves, cautiously, and step by step, in the presence of the Nestor! of the senate, until all exuberances were pruned away, all weaknesses remedied, and a style formed by practice, exactly suited to the place and the auditory ; unlike, we repeat, these happier competitors, Mr. Sadler dwelt and moved, until ma, ture age, amidst the society of men who were, almost universally, his inferion both in mental powers and acquirements. It was impossible that this circum- stance should fail to produce an injurious effect. Ile became accustomed, as a matter of right and of course, to declaim, to lecture, to expatiate. On every side he grew accustomed to meet the gaze of admiring and delighted auditors; but scarcely ever had he the advantage of grappling with an equal.

Besides the defect we have noted in these Memoirs, of being very much less a life of SADLER than an account of and commen- tary on his speeches and writings, the volume is throughout too eulogistic. Stopping short of the burlesque character of Dr. CastrBELL's panegyric on the Missionary WILLiaxis, the work has still a Capuchin-like tendency to rate SADLER as the great saint. As Mr. BUCKINGHAM "hooks on" to every growing question, and then attributes its increase to himself, so of all the questions which were ripening in SADLER'S time, and which he spoke or wrote upon, the praise and glory are given to SADLER. Of the chief of these, Irish Poor-laws, Population, and the Factory question, the last alone owes any thing to SADLER; and it is a question not yet ap- proaching to settlement, and which, indeed, legislation cannot settle. The difference between what may be called the humane and the mathematical principle of Mayrnus, thousands had adopted, including the philosopher himself to some extent. But so far from Saimaa having "overthrown" the theory, it is in it- self founded in the widest experience, that population, if unchecked by war, vice, or pestilence—the great preventive checks of bar- barous ages—has a constant tendency to outrun subsistence. The practical deductions from this theory have been embodied in the New Poor-law, so far as the good feeling of the country operating against its own pecuniary interest would permit ; and they are spontaneously shown in the disposition to emigration ; whilst as far as mere abuse of MALTHUS or denial of his principles goes, SADLER was neither the first nor the fiercest assailant. To say that he gave Poor-laws to Ireland, is ridiculous. The hold the subject had obtained on the public mind long before he mooted the matter, is shown by the rapidity with which the subject gained ground in Parliament, notwithstanding the interests arrayed against it.