BOOKS.
LORD JOIN RUSSELL'S LEFT OF FOX.*
WHEN the member of a great historical family who has passed his life in polities, and filled the highest offices in the state for some- thing like a generation, undertakes to write the life or trace the career of the second founder of his party we are entitled to expect something more than extracts from standard or current political literature—with which the majority of political readers are al- ready familiar, and reflections—which many persons could make for themselves. Yet extracts, not over-full, on some topics, a sort of continuous setting to connect these extracts together, with pass- ing sketches of public men, and reflections on politics and public morals, not very profound in thought, or weighty in expression, constitute The IAle and Times of Charles James Fox by the Right Honourable Lord John Russell, M.P. Personal reminis- cences, at least of a critical kind, were not to be looked for, Fox dying when his biographer was only fourteen ; but Lord John was born and bred among Foxites, and lived among them till the breed died out. Yet there is hardly a line in the volume, which displays the warmth, and colour, and indescribable something, that argue original knowledge. The whole, to speak English, is simply book-making ; done no doubt in the style and with the ideas of a gentleman, rather than a litterateur ; and so far as an object can be traced, written not for money, but for party purposes ; but bookmaking it all is nevertheless. The family of the Foxes were rather a remarkable race ; nor would it be easy to name a house with four such distinguished members in such close succession, as the founder Sir Stephen, his son, the first Lord Holland, his grandson Charles James, and his great-great-grandson the late Lord Holland; though the robustness of the race had dwindled in him—he never could have made his way in the world, like the three first of his house. Of Sir Stephen, and his son the first Lord Holland, celebrated when Mr. Fox, as the opponent of the elder Pitt, there is a good deal to tell ; and some of it that would require to be dealt with by a herald, before it was fitted for eyes polite in modern times. All this, however, is doubled up by Lordlohn in three paragraphs, two of which feria the best bits of composition in the book—close, neat, comprehen- sive, and indicative of the refrain in the comic song, "I knows, what I knows, but I munna tell you." Seven pages dismiss the life of his hero Charles James, from 1749 when he was born, to 1769 [8] when he entered Parliament I. under age. The misguided, or to speak truly, the criminal conduct of the father in the indul- gence of his favourite son, is noted by the biographer—how before the boy was fourteen Lord Holland interrupted his education to launch him on the vicious scenes of Paris and Spa, how this conduct was not only repeated in the following year, but again and again, while "according to family traditions he was indulged in all his youthful passions, and when he showed any signs of boyish mo- desty and shame, was ridiculed for his bashfulness by his inju- dicious and culpable father." All this folly is touched off plainly and glibly by the biographer. But the glibness is superficial though it is in the first twenty years of his life that the inquirer must seek an explanation of the anomalies in the character of Charles James Fox yet let him investigate as closely as he may, he will probably, after all, fail in finding it.
After seating his hero in Parliament, Lord John takes a preli- minary survey of the "state of parties in Great Britain" during the nonage of Fox gives as full an account of the life of Frede- rick Prince of Wales as he has done of his nominal hero and adds sketches of Bute and George the Third ; the whole readable, but with nothing new. The author then goes on to describe, without much comment, the early Parliamentary career of Fox, 1769- 1774 ; than which there is nothing more shameless and unprin- cipled ; though caprice and temper might be the sole motives of his conduct. With the fourth chapter and the forty-first page Lord. John Russell enters upon the American war, at the end of which the volume may be said to close ; for it terminates with the Coalition vote of censure upon the Shelburne Ministry for the clauses of the treaty relating to France. What to call this narra- tive we do not know, or how to describe it. A history of the American war it is not; for though the debates on the subject are full, military matters are treated very slightly, and general affairs often overlooked. It is not a Parliamentary history ; for no de- bates are noticed except those relating to the American war or questions in which Fox bore a prominent part. Yet it cannot be called a history of the political career of Fox ; for though he is prominent, especially in quotation he does not fill a greater space in the reader's mind than Chatham, certainly, or perhaps than Burke, Itockingham North, Shelburne, and others,.elthough he may be more constantly on the stage. The book, in plain fact, is a series of extracts from the Parliamentary debates on questions in which Fox bore a leading part, with quotations from Walpole and other contemporary writers, as well as from the correspond- ence of the time, which quotations describe the characters of pub- lic men, throw some light upon their motives, or illustrate the intrigues—we will not say polities—of the time. These are con- nected, as already intimated, by the settings (for they can scarcely
• The Life anti noses of Charks Tames Fox. By the Bight Honourable Lord John Russell, M.P. Volumel. Published by Bentley.
t Ho- did not begin to make a figure in the House till 1769, but he zeturned for Midhurst in 1768, and, we believe, took his seat that year. Carelessness in drawing this distinction has introduced a wrong chronology through a chapter, and a blunder about Fox's age at page 10.
be termed a narrative,) of Lord John Russell, or the observa- tions he sometimes drops in. These last are as cold as may be unless when something offers for a malicious remark on George the Third, and Lord North, or a panegyric on Washington- though neither the praise nor the censure rises to blood-heat. The political observations are temperate in tone, but dashed with Whiggery —that is Whig principles pervaded by a strong party spirit. Sometimes they take a speculative turn ; as in these re- flections on what might have happened, had a dying man of seventy been restored to life and the vigourof his manhood.
"Had Lord North persisted in his wish to retire, it has been asked, what success would Lord Chatham have had as Prime Minister in preventing the separation of America? Some have thought he would have succeeded, others that Heaven spared hint the anxiety of the attempt, and the mortifi- cation of a failure. Reasoning from the complexion of the times, and the former conduct of Lord Chatham, we may perhaps form a conclusion tole- rably sound. It seems hardly possible that Lord Chatham should have been able to persuade the Americans to relinquish their half-won independence ; and, even had he induced them to treat, there is an obstacle which has al- ways been fatal to similar negotiations. Monarchy and freedom can only exist together on the condition that the monarch act in good faith, and is believed to do so by his subjects. The powers of the executive are naturally so extensive, that, if ill-directed, they are sufficient to overthrow the best- balanced constitution. Hence, when the people have no confidence in their sovereign, they ask for a limitation of the prerogative inconsistent with monarchy, and the King on his aide refuses to part with the means which he deems necessary for the maintenance of his authority. This mutual dis- trust prevented the restoration of peace between Charles I. and his insur- gent subjects ; it would equally have prevented the reestablishment of the authority of George III. in America. Indeed, the slight overtures which had taken place between Lord Chatham and Dr. Franklin three years before showed the nature of the breach. Dr. Franklin fairly asked that the King's troops should not be quartered in America without the consent of the sepa- rate legislatures; Lord Chatham as fairly declined to accede to a condition which, in his own phrase, would have plucked the master feather from the eagle's wing.' We may embrace as undeniable the axiom, that the first condition of free representative monarchy is good faith on the part of the monarch, and confidence on the part of his people.
"We may, therefore, conclude that a Ministry formed at this time by Lord Chatham, although it might have wrung triumphs from France, would have failed in persuading the Americans to forego their independence. Lard Chatham, sinking into the grave, would have been unable to offer securities acceptable to Congress. His death or resignation could not be distant, and where was then to be the guarantee for the terms of union ? Some flashes of glory might indeed have lighted up the darkness of the last months of the war ; and the Americans, if not induced to renew the tie which had been broken, might have parted from Great Britain on more amicable terms, had the voice of Chatham pronounced the sentence of divorce. But a mightier hand was about to cut the thread of all such anticipations."
All this may be true ; but all such speculations are simply idle ; because they deal with only one link in a long chain of causes, and that miraculously. If the Great Commoner in 1770 had possessed the vigour and unshaken intellect of 1764 he might have been able to change the whole course of the war, perhaps to post- pone it ; and this is just as reasonable a supposition as that the worn out man of three score years and ten, should become in 1778 other than what he was.
This volume contains little, perhaps, rigidly speaking, nothing, that is new in foot, or remarkable in reflexion. It furnishes, therefore, no additional guide to a judgment on Fox. The solu- tion of the riddle which has puzzled so many will be found we fancy in an impulaive character, and an infamous education. That he had in him much kindliness of heart and geniality of dis- position, with all those attractive qualities which win men, not only to love, but to overlook or pardon, is placed beyond all doubt by the testimony of contemporaries too strong to be shaken. That he was a man of wonderful abilities is self-evident. That he was utterly without principle whether instinctive, or formed by education and habit, is equally clear. He had, a broad fidelity to his party ; and he took the generous aide in politics, from the generosity of his own nature ; but that feeling gave way before impulse or caprice, as in the case of the useless murder of Louis the Sixteenth : sometimes we fear) his generosity left him from meaner motives, as his later hatred of Pitt. He possessed of course, as all men do, the point of honour of the society in which
he lived ; but he had not its sense of decency and honesty, low as even that then was. Neither do we think he had any settled no- tion of right and wrong, further than the conventional. In no other way can his alternate submission to and bullying of Lord North be accounted for, at the outset of his career. Or that Coa- lition which ruined his prestige for ever and destroyed his publio power and utility for twenty years ; or his conduction the Regency Question ; or on the French Revolution. On all these occasions he set himself not only against the common honesty and conscience but even against the common feeling of his countrymen ; and
seethed all the time to be unconscious of what he was about. Some of his followers dreaded the coalition, not for its disgraceful dis- honesty, but for its probable result with the public. It does not appear that Fox thought it wrong, or was ever brought to feel that it was wrong. He had caught an opportunity as he thought of revenging himself on Shelburne, and morti- fying the king ; and to this course he was impelled. We think
t the closer the conduct of Charles James Fox is looked into, and the stronger the light that is thrown upon it, the less credit- able it will often be found both in itself and in its motives. It may be suspected that his conduct on the French Revolution, which a second time shook the Whig party, arose from is monbid hatred of Pitt. But there was every excuse for him. His passions and his im- pulses were very strong by nature. We have seen how the were encouraged by parental example and training. The yo thus taught, was not likely to be improved by the Con gamblers and demireps to whom his father introduced him ; or the acquaintances he formed at Oxford and London, in those days of all but universal profligacy. His mother appears to have had some misgivings ; but she could not or did not exercise her au- thority to check her son's course. Nor does Charles Fox seem to have had the moral advantages, that may arise from a strict or conscientious preceptor. His tutor at Oxford, Dr. Newcome, who became a Whig bishop, is described by Lord John Russell, as
an able, pious, and charitable divine " ; but he seems to have been an accommodating one. Of an earlier tutor, and a better known name, Lord John says, "He was assisted in his studies by Mr. Francis, the translator of Horace. Mr. Francis was much connected with Lord Holland." Churchill, in less mincing phrase, thus sums up the character and connection of Fox's early preceptor.
"Ripe to betray his Saviour for reward, The Atheist chaplain of an Atheist lord."
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