In Lord Iddesleigh, the Conservative Party have lost a genuine
Conservative,—to whom Tory Democracy, as distin- guished from Conservatism, was utterly foreign,—a statesman sober in his very essence, whose first high office, the Secretary- ship of State for India, exhibited him as the representative of a policy very different indeed from that into which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Lytton subsequently plunged our Indian Empire in 1878. As a financier, he heartily approved, and, so far as his party would permit, supported the policy of paying off' the National Debt. Even at the height of the Jingo policy, his were probably the surest and soberest of the Conservative counsels; and he gave Mr. Gladstone very powerful and welcome support for one of the most courageous and fortunate of his resolves,—the resolve to come to a friendly understanding with the United States on what were called the 'Alabama' Indemnity Claims, the claims made upon us for allowing the Alabama' and her sister Confederate cruisers to escape out of our ports to prey upon the commerce of the United States. He was a man, too, of culture and imagination, of humour and insight, though he displayed those qualities less in the political tied than in his occasional excursions into the field of literature. In the House of Commons, he gave the impression of being care- worn, of wanting the elasticity needful to emulate his great predecessor in the leadership of the Conservatives. But he was sincerely respected by all parties, and there at least he had the advantage of that great predecessor.
