Man of principle
CHARLES STUART
Charles James Fox, A Man for the People Loren Reid (Longmans 65s)
It is a sad reflection on the study of English political history of the late eighteenth cen- tury that no large-scale professional bio- graphy of Fox has yet been attempted. A hundred years ago Pitt and Fox received equal attention; Lord Stanhope's four volumes on the one were balanced by Lord John Russell's vast corpus on the other. But whereas, fifty years later, Holland Rose had subjected Pitt to massive reassessment, Foxite studies remained pickled in the stage of hagiography as illustrated by the work of G. 0. Trevelyan.
Between the wars, Fox was the subject of several elegant and literary, if somewhat slight, biographies; but in the last thirty years nothing more has appeared. Scholars have been content to wait and see who would attempt the forbidding task and. in so doing, run the gauntlet of the Namierite reviewers. Now, with abundant common sense and considerable learning. Professor Loren Reid from the University of Missouri has stepped into the ring. He does not claim or try to fill the gap in full. But he uses his special knowledge as a professor of rhetoric and public speaking to view Fox's career as an orator. This is an original approach and it has yielded a worthy book.
Of course there are some drawbacks. In spite of careful study, Professor Reid does not appear to be wholly at home in the political world of the late eighteenth cen- tury. Towards the end of his book he abandons all effort to explain the complex events of 1804-6 with the engaging instruc- tion . . . let those who will inspect the evi- dence'. Along with many of his countrymen he can say nothing good of George III; 'the sceptre', he says with a suitable rhetorical flourish, 'was able to halt the onward thrust of history'. There are also occasional slips of detail which induce a tremor of uncer- tainty. For example. Carteret did not head a government under George in, and the Act of Settlement was not passed in 1689.
But these are small blemishes in a large book and they do not affect its main theme. Here, as his sub-title suggests, Professor Reid sees Fox from the 'liberal' stand-point. For him, Fox's main contribution was 'to light the torch and to hold the banner' for civil and religious liberty. Acknowledging the disadvantages of Fox's youthful ex- cesses which 'did not form a stout moral base for a lecture to others'; admitting, in creditable contrast to many of Fox's ad- mirers, the 'negligible results' he achieved in office and the 'sentimental grounds' on which he rested his case in respect of India, he sees, nonetheless, 'behind the political oppor- tunisms and personal differences . . . a bed- rock of principle'. This means that he places in the forefront of his study Fox's liberal stand on America, on France. on Ireland and on India. In his judgment Fox's blunders 'became inconsequential', while his 'better ideas weathered the centuries'.
There are two difficulties in taking such a high-minded view and making Fox appear more virtuous than he was or claimed to be. The first is that it suppresses as a continu- ous thread in Fox's public life his struggle with the crown, which stemmed as much from personal resentment towards George in as from high democratic grip- ciple. Fox pinned his hopes in 1782 to 'a good stout blow to the influence of the crown'; ten years later he feared 'what Hume calls the Euthanasia of absolute monarchy'; finally in 1804-6 he rejoiced at the 'lowering of the cause of Royalism', and urged his friends not to take office until they were sure of being 'quite and entirely masters' over the King. Here is a bedrock of principle too, neither democratic nor liberal, but aristocratic and anti-Hanoverian.
The second difficulty is that this view of Fox makes him appear more prescient than he was. It requires the brilliant advocacy of Mr Alan Taylor, that artistic exponent of the dogmatic paradox, to present Fox's pleas for negotiations with France in the 1790s as practicable or realistic. Fox argued from the assumption that the successive re- voutionary government in France wanted peace without conquests. This was seldom the case. The Lille negotiations of 1797, which Professor Reid ignores because Fox had by then seceded from Parliament, came to nothing because the more bellicose faction within the French government triumphed. Napoleon's peace letter of Christmas 1799, which Fox welcomed, was as insincere as much later Napoleonic diplo- macy. It was Napoleon's ultimate defeat which made possible the later application of Fox's generous conceptions in respect of France. Without that defeat his policy could only lead to abject surrender, as he learned in 1807.
In his treatment of Fox as a speaker, Professor Reid shows insight and sympathy. He divides Fox's speeches into three cate- gories, the debating speeches, the emotional outbursts and the 'better reasoned and more reasonable "overview" speeches', and he shows how it is on the last that Fox's reputation rests. He shows, too, how in all cases Fox spoke extempore, allowing words and sentences to tumble out; Fox did not believe in preliminary polish or prepared periods. As he said himself, 'no man's speech would bear printing as it fell from his lips'. But this readiness to speak for the moment, this lack of calculation, often left him the victim of his own excitement; as Professor Reid puts it, 'he was impaled upon the vigour of his own expression'.
Fox's importance does not lie in the sub- stance of his views, which were often exag- gerated, nor in his political conduct, which was often ill-judged, nor even in his liberal flag-waving, but in his generous instincts and feelings applied to public life. He rightly said of himself on one occasion that he entertained 'a kind of instinctive repug- nance' to any reduction of personal liberty. The nobility of these instincts excuses his political follies.
Previous page
