LORD GRANVILLE'S FUNCTION IN POLITICS.
LORD GRANVILLE'S happy set-down the other day to the City dignitaries who insist on talking so per- sistently during the Ministerial speeches at the Guildhall banquet as to compel Mr. Gladstone to stay away, was a very good illustration of the most characteristic of his political functions. He has a velvet touch, but a sharp claw beneath it, and whenever he is particularly gentle and complimentary there is always a good chance of his drawing a little blood. When he said he had envied Miss Edith Wynne her exquisite voice even more than he had envied the eloquence of his absent chief, any one might have known that there was a sting for some one softly sheathed within the compli- ment; and when it appeared that it was because for a moment her beautiful singing had even silenced "the brilliant con- versation at the other end of the Hall," every one mast have felt that a graceful tribute to Miss Edith Wynne had furnished admirable cover for a very sharp sarcasm on City manners. Lord Granville is exceedingly happy in inflicting punish- ment of that genial and courtly type. In one of his earliest efforts in the House of Lords he tried his neat hand upon Lord Redesdale with the most ample success. In that case also he covered his attack by an indirect compli- ment to women. Lord' Redesdale had objected to the presence of ladies in parts of the House of Lords not assigned to their use, and had said bearishly that it made the House of Lords look just like a Casino, and prevented members of the Opposi- tion who felt the embarrassment of a feminine audience, from speaking. Lord Granville was down on him in the sweetest way at once. He recalled a French farce, in which an English milord objected to ladies at dinner as an embarrassment, and declared that for the first time he had learned that the French author was not drawing freely on his imagination for the traits of British milords, but was justified by Lord Redesdale ; observing further that all their Lordships had not the advantage which his noble friend enjoyed of such familiarity with the Casinos as to enable them to recognise the resemblance of the scene before them to those views of the female sex of which Lord Redesdale dis- approved ; and finishing by expressing the pleasure with which he had received so adequate an excuse as Lord Redesdale had supplied for the very ineffective speaking on the Opposition benches. Nothing could have been neater or more effective as punishment. Lord Redesdale has probably profited by the lesson he received against bearishness on that occasion ever since. And it is charac- teristic of Lord Granville's method that he likes nothing better than to get a hit at others, if he can, through the ap- pearance of a laugh at himself. Some years ago some educa- tonal authorities,—who are apt to include a great many very narrow doctrinaires,—had been silly enough to make light of Lord Granville's educational views, on the ground that, having no children of his own, he had had no practical experience on the subject of education. Soon afterwards a baby was born to him, and the baby was immediately fired off as a political retort. In addressing the University of London he explained the educational disability under which he had been de- clared to labour, but assured his antagonists that "a recent event" had removed it, yet he had not, as a conse- quence, found reason to change a single educational con- viction. So, too, a short time ago, at Shrewsbury, when he wanted to give a hit at the excessive rabbit-preserving which is so injurious to the farmers, he quizzed himself for his pleasure in rabbit shooting, intimated that he was a bad shot and felt some sympathy with a noble friend whose quickness of eye had not increased with age, and who complained that there was but one defect in the rabbit, and that was that the creature was "about three inches too short," but remarked that the fault found by farmers would usually be of an opposite kind, namely, that the creature was some sixteen or seventeen inches too long,
for it was really unjustifiable to preserve rabbits to injure as they did so frightfully both plantations and crops, since this animal was, he believed, "with the exception of hard-worked curates in the Establishment," the most prolific on the face of the earth. Lord Granville likes thus to call to himself marked attention as the mode of best hitting his foes. It is a grace- ful and effective way of getting at his foe, and also gives im- portance to the subject, for Lord Granville is quite conscious of the advantages of his high position and his manifold connec- tions with all the highest aristocracy on both sides of the House of Lords. There is a condescension in any public allusion to his personal position which adds much to the effect of any satiric touch with which he points the subject. When he con- descended to envy Miss Edith Wynne for the power and fascin- ation of her voice, the rudeness of those who would listen to Miss Edith Wynne and not to him, became very plain indeed to all who heard him. The ease and grace of Lord Granville's manner are the ease and grace which come of gentle self- confidence, not of self-forgetfulness. He can play so gracefully with his own presumed deficiencies because he is perfectly well aware that no one. else will presume to play with them at all. These confidences, like the confidences of kings, are sure never to be encroached upon ; and in the meantime they lend a real interest and force to anything he may choose to drop by way of repartee to an opponent.
This bland humour, together with this ease and grace and unconquerable sense of personal dignity which make Lord Granville quite willing to play with the theme of himself whenever he can make it into a political power, are of great value to the Ministry, who can give telling hits through Lord Granville which they could deliver in no other way, and who must learn from him besides not a little of that calm self- confidence in which some of the leaders are lacking. And they serve him in good stead, too, as Foreign Minister, enabling him with the greatest complacency to correct mistakes which would so have confounded any other Minister as to take away his cunning. Nothing could be more masterly than Lord Gran- ville's atonement last year for the fit of gout which kept him from drawing the American Government's attention at the right time to the extraordinary nature of the Indirect Claims, and for the fit of half-assumed complacency which induced him steadily to maintain that the fit of gout was no misfortune. But it is probable that the gift which makes Lord Granville so strikingly skilful at calmly retrieving his own blunders, is not without its responsibility for some of those blunders. With a tenacious conviction as to what his policy ought to be, to which no one clings more firmly than Lord Granville, he is apt to com- bine a good deal of dangerous carelessness as to details. When he was at the Colonial Office, it is hardly credible that he himself really considered one or two of the needlessly wounding despatches which caused him so much unpopularity in New Zealand and Australia. Since he has been at the Foreign Office it is cer- tain that Lord Granville has passed similar mistakes, no doubt of a less disagreeable, but sometimes also of a still more seriously practical nature. We pointed out last week a blunder in the Commercial Treaty with France, which we do not believe can be shown to be imaginary; and though Lord Granville has promised that the reference in which the San Juan Boundary question was submitted to the Emperor of Germany shall be defended, we are strongly disposed to believe that the unfortunately limited character of that reference was also, to some extent, a result of indifference on these small matters. Lord Granville has a very strong hold on principles, but his appli- cations of them are apt to be a little easy-going and careless. No one gets out of a scrape so well, for he is as persistent as he is gentle ; but then no one falls into one with more ease, through the social ease and vivacity of his politics.
Lord Granville was meant for a Prime Minister with very laborious and conscientious departmentalists under him who would be sure to see that his principles were accurately applied. In such a position his ease would be a power chiefly, and not so considerable a source of weakness also. No one would drive his team with more skill and alacrity, so long as the individuals in it did their hard work without too much looking after. But the very qualities which make him so well adapted for this part make him an uncertain head of a great and difficult department. He does not work, like Lord Palmerston, at the smallest details of the Foreign Office. He has nerve and resolution and perfect equanimity, but he is a little too free from an oppressive sense of responsibility. The aristocratic humour which springs from graceful complacency and suave presence of mind is apt to vary the relative magnitude of events, so as to make light
of important things, as well as to make happy use of small things. We suspect that Lord Granville is inestimable in smooth- ing over the mutual difficulties of members of the Cabinet,—in lubricating the wheels of Cabinet councils. But you may lubricate too much, so that matters slip along too easily, and in all probability a good many matters of detail get out of Lord Granville's hands so easily that only his tact could get them back again into his hands for more accurate treatment. His chief defect as a Prime Minister would be that he has never had the House-of-Commons education in the necessity of leaning on public opinion. Part of his political ease arises from forgetting the popular fioces by which alone a Cabinet can move the country. Here his aristocratic self-confidence sometimes misleads him, till he is pulled up by an unexpected explosion of feeling, as in relation both to the Colonies and to the American Indirect Claims. He made a capital hit some years ago in addressing the University of which he is Chancellor, a propos to the ingratitude shown by University constituencies to their members directly any difference of view occurs to separate them. There was an ingenious invention, he said, which en- abled drivers to detach runaway horses from carriages. It succeeded admirably,—a little too well ; for by the help of it a great many worthy persons were left in "a state of isolated immobility," seated in their carriages in a state of perfectly stable equilibrium in lone parts of the country, while a good many high-spirited horses were sent careering over the country, rather alarmed and excited by being so suddenly relieved from the lumber of the wheels. Lord Granville applied the moral to Universities, which so easily detach their members; but it is not a bad illustration of the mode in which the Foreign Office under his care has not unfrequently almost got rid of a difficulty only by detaching the Ministry from the power of public opinion by which alone it can be carried along. That would be his danger as a Prime Minister. He might, in his easy, insouciant way solve a difficulty by completely detaching his Administration from the public interest in it, and leave himself and his colleagues in a state of "isolated immobility" plants la. He would run some risk of this. In all other respects he would be a most skilful, lubricating Premier, applying admirable good sense and easy knowledge of the world to the guidance,—if he could find such, —of really skilful and diligent departmental chiefs.
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