The Rise of Castlereagh'
BY E. L. WOODWARD THIS book is a full, well-informed, and most interesting account Of the life of Castlereagh .before 1802. At the beginning of this year Castlereagh had not passed his thirty- third birthday; yet he had reached the term Of his. Irish career, and left behind him a record which was astonishing even in an age when young men of good birth could rise quickly to high office in the State. Mr. Hyde has made a thorough examination of Castlereagh's policy and acts in Ireland. The result is one of the most important contri- butions made to Anglo-Irish history during recent years. Mr. Hyde is .a scholar ; he has refused to give way to the Weakness of those modern readers who are prepared to take their hist-0y upon trust. The references to authorities are
not smuggled away in a page or two at the end of the book ; . .
there is no attempt to gain dramatic effect by distortion, omission, or exaggeration. The facts, duly authenticated, are left to speak for themselves. Many of these facts are told for the first tune, and Lathered from sources hitherto unused Or Unavailable. -Mr. Hyde' hoOk has lost nothing in general interest' briti compactness and aceurnte scholarship: It is no legs exciting because it is based upon original authorities. The story is not less easy to follow because the details are vOuChed for in footnotes to each Page. There is room indeed in all genuine historical work for that pleasant, dis- cursive knowledge 'with which a ,good.writer can illustrate his grasp of a subject. Anglo-Irish history, particularly during the later years of the eighteenth century, gives opportunities : for digressions of every kind. For good or evil, mainly, ' perhaps, for evil, -there, was an extravagance, a gusto about the whole Of Society, high and low,. iell-fed and half- . .
starved. . , • • Buck" Whaley, for example, who took bribes to vote for,
• and then to vote against, the Union, had won, some years earlier, a bet of 115,000 that he would walk to Jerusalem, play .handball against the wall of the Temple, and come back to Dublin within two years. His .fellow member of -Parliament, Mr. Beauchamp Bagenal, "had fought a prince, jilteda princess, abducted a -duchess from Madrid, scaled the !Falls of a convent: in Italy, escaped the Inquisition in Lisbon, anctreturned to Ireland to become a county member and shoot . the. Lord,Lieutenant's • Secretary. in Phoenix Park."
Castlereagh himself is a strange figure in this society. His cold, intellectual penetration," his. reserve of manner, even his faithfulness to one woman, do not-belong to the pandemonium -ot Claret and Corruption through Which he moved. Castle- reagh's indifference to opinion may be summed up in his own hope that "those who don't like me Will at least leave me alone.". The hope was unfulfilled. No man of his time was
• more Savagely attacked by great master's: of invective. Yet, in 182-1, when he was hated by the mob in England almost as violently ashe had been hated in Ireland twenty years earlier, ciatlereagh-was cheered on -a visit to Dublin with the son of George III. His .comment was like the- man. ." I Sam grown - its popular in 1821 as unpopular formerly, and with as little merit,- and of the two unpopularity is the more convenient and "gentlemanlike."
The hostile judgements of contemporaries upon this Cato Of victorious -causes were generally accepted by posterity for nearly- a 'Century. Professor Webster's 'Massive ilio'oks. have already made clear the services of Castlereagh in later life to England- and Europe ; Mr. Hyde has. Shown that Castle-
..
• - *The Rise -of Castlereagh. By PI: M.Hl7tlo. With". alerewerd' by the Most Hon. the Marquess of Londonderry. (Macmillan. 21s.)
reagh in Ireland was not the man of blood, the agent provo- cateur, caring only for the interests of a gang and the privileges of a class. Curiously enough, one cannot avoid thinking of Mathiez' interpretation of the policy of Robespierre. No two men could differ more in character and outlook than Castle- reagh differed from Robespierre ; yet each saw, narrowly and ruthlessly, beyond the selfish aims of those with whom he worked. Neither can escape the ignominy of associations, forced upon him by circumstances, which other men, less cold- blooded and less confident of the exclusive rightness of their cause, might have rejected with horror. If the France of the nineteenth century was not the France for which Robespierre was prepared to sacrifice a generation of Frenchmen, the goal of Castlereagh's policy in Ireland was never reached. The Union was to Castlereagh a beginning and not an end. !` The Union has removed a :great impediment to a better system ; but the Union will do little in itself unless it be followed up." A new era of Anglo-Irish relations would begin with the grant of Catholic -Emancipation, the commutation, of tithes, and the State endowment of Catholic and dissenting clergy. For the failure of these hopes George III and, to some extent, Mr. Pitt were responsible ; yet it would be cruel- to blame the quickly darkening mind of the King, and it is only fair to remember that Mr. Pitt was himself in a dangerous state of health, and harassed with trouble of war and danger at home.
- Through this mate of rebellion and treachery, assassinations and reprisals, crimes of public and private ferdeity, Mr. Hyde keeps steadily to the work of explaining Castlereagh's motives and actions. If it is not his task to give an account of the rebellion of 1798 from the side of the rebels, he conceals nothing of the selfishness of the governing class, the particular corruption of the Castle clique, the sodden brutality of Men like Fitzgibbon. Here and there his pages are bound to be controversial, but it may be said that he does far more than absolve Castlereagh from the worst charges made against him by those who have torn sentences from their context. Castlereagh rarely expressed himself Well, and took no more Care to defend himself against posterity than against his contemporaries. Yet in these speeches, letters, and despatches whiehhave little of the finer qualities of English prose, there is always an impression of' intellectual power. In this context it is interesting to notice Castlereagh's own comment on the fluency of the French orators to whom he listened 'in Paris in 1791. "They never besitlite; having the idea it seems to 'clothe itself in 'expression. ' Perhaps the 'nature of their language may account for this. It is a language of phrases. There are scarcely two ways of expressing the same idea with equal propriety. The man who speaks correctly has little room to choose. Habit makes the phrase present itself with the turn of expression, and instead of casting about as we do for language, the moment he thinks it offers itself spontane- ously."
At the end one's mind, perhaps, is still divided.- On the one hand there- • comes to the memory -Guizot's • judgement -upon the Emperor Napoleon. "It was after :I had actually taken-part in the government of men that I learned to be just towards the Emperor Napoleon." Mr.- Hyde's excellent book teaches- this wide justice. Nevertheless, in thinking of the policy of Castlereagh in Ireland one cannot forget the history of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and`Theobald Wolfe Tone. There is also the old Latin -saying about those. who put -power and imperial -aims- before -generosity aiid -openness • of heart. Solitudinern faciunt, parent appellant.
Previous page
