BOOKS.
LORD COURTNEY.t
LORD COURTNEY once said of himself that he was " incurably addicted to the Protestant right of private judgment." This very accurate statement is illustrated at length in the interesting and comprehensive memoir which Mr. G. P. Gooch has written. Lord Courtney's insistence on forming and expressing his own opinions in season or out of season and his profound contempt for the British habit of compromise made him a very trying colleague in a party or a Ministry, and, especially in the last twenty years of his long life, brought him much unpopularity. Yet an attentive reader of the biography will conclude that, though Lord Courtney was often mistaken in the views which he urged with so much ability and persistence, he was on the whole a valuable servant of the public. It would not be fair to judge him by his attitude towards the late war. He was eighty-two and blind when the war began, and he died when things looked at their worst in the spring of 1918, so that ho might be excused for failing to understand the situation, though not for despairing of the republic. Nor should his unfortunate opposition to the Boer War be unduly emphasized in a review of his career. He had misread the signs of the times in South • Madams Band. Late of the Duke of York's Theatre. Published by W. Heinemann. [53.] t Life of Lord Courtney. By G. P. Gooch. London: Macmillan. fitis. net.] Africa in 1880, when he urged Gladstone to cancel the annexa- tion of the Transvaal, and he clung to this fatal policy long after its error was manifest to -the vast majority of thinking men. However much we may regret these two grave miscalcu- lations, we cannot but admire the courage with which Lord Courtney made up his mind for himself. The gravest danger which threatens modern society is the reluctance of the ordinary citizen to exercise " the Protestant right of private judgment " and his tendency to be satisfied with catch-words, like " self - determination " or " the worker's right to the produce of his labour," which have been invented by designing men in order to confuse the multitude and lead it astray. Lord Courtney may at times have gone to the opposite extreme of individualism, as a new Athanasius contra .mundum, but we are sure that inde- pendent politicians of his type render a service to the State by 'protesting against the dull tyranny of the " mass-mind." He should be remembered in.particular for his resolute stand against the degradation of the old Liberal Party-by the adoption of a Home Rule policy in which very few of its leaders seriously believed, as well, as for his consistent objection to semi-Socialisticl measures which might win votes but which lowered the moral standard of the community.
Leonard Courtney was born at Penzance as long ago as 1832. At the age of thirteen he became a clerk in the local bank of which his father was the manager. But a friend, observing the boy's talent, encouraged him to pursue his studies at night, with the result that in 1851 Courtney won a sizarship at St. John's, Cambridge, and in 1855 became Second Wrangler and Smith's Prizeman. He was elected a Fellow of his College in 1856 and was called to the Bar in 1858, on the same day as Mr. Frederic Harrison. Despite the vulgar •belief that all barristers earn vast incomes, Courtney, with all his ability, failed to make a living at the Bar. Mr. Stebbing, his oldest surviving friend, declares indeed that he received only one brief. He failed also to obtain a professorship. But he began to write economic pamphlets and, to contribute political articles to a new weekly paper, -the London Review. He protested vigorously in 1861 againstne widespread belief that the detention of the Trent' and the removal of the Confederate envoys on board of her was a violation of our neutrality. Palmerston in a private letter to Delane apparently took the same view as Courtney. In 1864 the briefless barrister was appointed a leader-writer on the staff of the Times, and continued to work under Delane and his successor till 1879. That a man with such a strongly marked individuality as Courtney's could have been kept within the bounds of the editorial policy for so many years is the best proof 'that we know of Delane's tact and judgment. The Times in those days was a' moderate Whig organ, but those who only knew Lord Courtney in his later days would not have supposed him capable of agreeing with, or deferring to, any editor for more than a week. It is piquant to note that Courtney in November, 1870, shocked Delane by a violently bellicose article against Russia, in reference to her repudiation of the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of 1856. The pacificist and the Russophile of later years had to be warned off Russian topics lest he should cause a war with Russia. It was Courtney who induced the Times to protest vigorously against the German annexation of Alsace and Lorraine in 1870-71, despite the heated pro-German arguments of Carlyle. We have all had to bear the consequences of Bismarck's -evil deed. Courtney's work on the Times made •his reputation and enabled him to enter the House -of Commons in 1877 as Liberal member for Liskeard, a small constituency which liked independent men. He sympathised with Gladstone's anti-Turk crusade, and was rewarded when Gladstone formed his Ministry in .1880 by the offer of an Under-Secretaryship. But he refused it on the ground that Gladstone had not annulled the annexation of the Transvaal. When Gladstone—unfortunately for South Africa and for Great Britain—changed his mind later in the year and reversed our Transvaal policy, -Courtney accepted the post of Under-Secretary at the Home Office, with the odd stipulation that he should be free to abstain from voting on any Transvaal question. Ho was transferred to the Treasury in 1882, in suc- cession to Lord Frederick Cavendish, who had accepted the Irish office which cost him his life. Courtney seemed certain of attaining Cabinet rank when in December, 1884, he suddenly resigned because the Government would not include Propor- tional Representation in their Redistribution Bill. Whether Courtney was right in resigning is a nice question. Gladstone thought that he acted prematurely, to say the least. Courtney, with Fawcett and Sir Charles Dilke, had already annoyed his colleagues by declining to vote against a woman's suffrage amendment to the Reform Bill. Chamberlain had warned him not to be too outspoken ; " he should not unnecessarily empha- size the differences which separate us." An unnamed friend had said, " What a pity that Courtney should never see more of the great tide of democracy than can be got up into a table- spoon at Liskeard ! " On the other hand, Courtney had long been conscious of the vital importance of " P. R." ass protection of the rights of minorities, especially in Ireland, and he rightly predicted the evil consequences that would follow when swollen majorities became tyrannical and under-represented minorities ceased to have faith in our Parliamentary institutions. The O'Conor Don, in a letter of December, 1884, to Courtney, fore- saw the effect of the Reform Bill in extinguishing the Irish Liberals and leaving the Ulstermen and -the Nationalists-face to face, while a large minority in the South would be " wholly unrepresented." Courtney's resignation on the question of " P. R." served at least to illustrate the true significance of a reform which now at last is gaining ground.
When Gladstone, for the sake of :power, yielded to the Irish tempter in the winter of 1885-86, Courtney naturally declined to follow him. He had not the supple mind of, say, Sir William Harcourt, who on December 23rd, 1885, was, as Lady Courtney noted in her diary, " at present brave against Home Rule," but who swallowed his principles a few weeks later. Courtney disapproved of Home Rule not so much because it would harm Great Britain as because it would be ruinous to Ireland herself, and he maintained his opinion to the end. He did not admire or trust Gladstone. In a private letter of 1903 to Lord Morley, on his Life of Gladstone, he wrote :- " I find it a very interesting study but I am not more draws. to the man. One or two episodes do indeed compel my sym- pathy, but on the whole he provokes me and I sometimes feel drawn to some strong internal expressions of condemnation. Perhaps his greatest glory was that, starting with a load of false principles, he kept on shedding them almost to the last, while his great deficiency is that this shedding never compelled him to probe things to the bottom."
As Lord Fitzmaurice puts it, " Courtney's mind, in fact, trained not in the casuistries of Oxford theology but essentially con- ditioned by the hard if somewhat narrow school of Cambridge studies, was the exact opposite of the clerical mind." Courtney was freed from the necessity of taking an active part in the Home Rule debates by being appointed early in 1886 Chairman of Committees—a post which he filled most admirably until 1892. The Gladstone Government would have made him Speaker in 1895, but the Unionist leaders would not agree to the choice and Courtney declined to face a contest then or in the next Parlia- ment. However, in his speeches to his constituents through the years up to '1892 and afterwards in the House he did valuable work for the Union, while maintaining his liberal creed. Lord Hobhonse used to say that Courtney was the only man who could rightfully call himself a Liberal Unionist, but that was an exag- geration. Unhappily, Courtney could not prevail upon Glad- stone's followers to put principle before personal loyalty. His outspoken dislike of undertaking any responsibilities abroad in Egypt or the Sudan, South Africa, or elsewhere, widened the gulf between him and the Unionists, while his disbelief in-Social- istic measures kept him apart from the modern Radicals. Thus he came to plough a lonely furrow. But there was sound sense in his old-fashioned individualism. Courtney's remark in a letter of 1887—" I am always disposed to demur to anything that may betray hasty readers to think that a permanent radical change in the condition of the people can be made by a change of laws without a change of character "—is profoundly true and constitutes the 'fundamental and conclusive objection to Social- ism, Syndicalism, Bolahevism, •or any other supposed short cut to a Golden Age. He lost his seat in the Boer War election of 1900 and was raised to the House of Lords in 1906. Though he was an uncompromising politician, Lord Courtney, as Mr. Gooch. and other friends testify, was well liked in private life by men of different parties for his courtesy and his readiness to hear all sides. Mr. Gooch's biography, though marred by several bad misprints like " the great Llama," is a competent and judicious portrait and an instructive contribution to contemporary history.
Previous page
