A. H. WE congratulate Lord Edmond Fitztnaurice on the com-
pletion of a book which will interest the general reader and instruct the historian of modern England. Lord Granville played so great a part in our history from 1851 to 1885 that his biographer has naturally been able to throw fresh light on the politics of the time. Even Mr. John Morley has not drawn so full a picture of the unfortunate Cabinet of 1880 as Lord Edmond has been able to supply, and it is certain that no future writer will be able to address himself to this period unless he has thoroughly studied Lord Edmond's volumes. .
Lord Granville began " youngly to serve his country." He entered Parliament as Member for Morpeth before he had taken his degree at Oxford, and he acted under Lord Palmerston as Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office when he was only twenty-five years old. But from the formation of Lord John Russell's Ministry in 1846 to the fall of Mr. Gla,dstone's Administration in 1885 he was almost constantly in office, and on two occasions—in 1859, and again in 1880, in conjunction with Lord Hartington—he was entrusted with the task of forming an Administration. Although on each occasion he was compelled to transfer the duty to other hands, his selection was a proof of the confidence which was rightly felt in him both by the Queen and the public.
It is probable that Lord Granville's taste and temperament inclined him from his first entrance into Parliament to look forward to employment in the Foreign Office. His father had been Ambassador at Paris; be was himself an excellent linguist; his charm of manner made him popular both at home and abroad ; he had served, as we have seen, a. brief apprenticeship as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1840; and he had actually succeeded Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary in 1851. But in the third quarter of the nineteenth century the Liberal party was unusually well pro- vided with men who were either qualified, or thought them- selves qualified, for the Foreign Office. Lord Clarendon was preferred to Lord Granville in 1853 and 1868, Lord John Russell claimed the Foreign Office in 1859, and Lord Gran.- vine had to wait till Lord Clarendon's death in 1870 again opened to him the doors of the Department.
In the interval, indeed, he had exerted a large, and on the whole beneficial, influence on the foreign policy of the country. Lord Palmerston's second Administration of 1859 is remembered for one great success and one great failure. At the commencement of it the moral support which Lord John Russell accorded to the cause of Italy did more to secure Italian unity and independence than Napoleon III.'s victories at Magenta and Solferino. Towards the close of it Lord Palmerston was unable to redeem the pledge which he had unwisely given that Denmark would not be left alone if she were attacked by Austria and Prussia. In both instances the Queen turned to Lord Granville and asked him to help her in resisting her Minister's policy. We have no space to discuss in this article the Constitutional points which might obviously be raised on her Majesty's conduct on these occa- sions. Happily, Lord Granville was not able, on the first of them, to alter the Italian policy which Lord Palmeraon, Lord John Russell, and Mr. Gladstone were bent on pursuing; and in consequence, to the great advantage of mankind, the Piedmont of 1859 grew into the Italy which we know to-day. Still more happily, as we think, Lord Granville, if unable to prevent Lord Palmerston from uttering what Mr. Disraeli called "senseless menaces," was successful in opposing armed intervention in the cause of Denmark, and we were spared the grave misfortune of war with the two Great Powers of Central Europe on a question which was imperfectly under- stood by statesmen, and which was unintelligible to the people at large. During Lord Palmerston's Ministry Lord Granville also led the opposition in the Cabinet to the suggestion, Which the Prime Minister made in the early autumn of 1862, that the time had arrived for attempting mediation between the Northern and Southern States of America. Thus in the later years of the Administration, though not in the Foreign.
* The Life of Granville Giorge Liveson-Gower; Second Earl Granville. 18145 to 1891. By Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. With Portraits. 2 vols. London : Longmans and Co. 00s. ;wt../
Office, he did much to shape the foreign policy of the nation ; and on Lord Clarendon's death in 1870 he was almost unanimously designated as the only member of the Liberal party competent to be entrusted with the management of our 'diplomacy. The time was one of exceptional difficulty, for the great duel between France and Prussia commenced almost at the moment of Lord Granville's appointment to the Foreign Office ; and the duty of maintaining an impartial neutrality between the combatants, and at the same time of preventing the spread of the war, and of preserving the independence of Belgium, tested Lord Granville's capacity. The progress of the war, and the embarrassments which it caused, moreover, suggested to Prince Gortchalcoff that the time had arrived for denouncing the arrangements relating to the neutrality of the Black Sea which had been forced on Russia at Paris in 1856; and the consequent prospect of serious complications in Europe increased the anxiety of the Ministry to remove a cause of grave friction with the United States by a settlement of the • Alabama' claims. Hence arose the Conference in London at which Russia secured her ends, and the Conference at Washington which led to the con- troversy about the indirect claims and arbitration at Geneva. In its ultimate results the policy which led to these Con- ferences was beneficial. It improved our relations with St. Petersburg, and it paved the way for a happy under- standing between the United States and ourselves. But, if we approve the results, we may criticise the methods by which they were obtained. Great nations cannot afford to make—almost simultaneously—two such con- cessions as Lord Granville made to Russia and the United States in 1871. The irritation which they caused prepared the way for the wave of " Jingoism " which brought us to the verge of war a few years later under Lord Beacons- field ; and the impression was created that neither Lord Granville nor the Liberal party could be entrusted to conduct delicate and difficult negotiations with adequate firmness.
When Lord Granville returned to the Foreign Office in 1880 he unfortunately failed to remove the impression which he had created nine years before. The country lost confidence in a Ministry which—rightly or wrongly—took no steps to retrieve the disaster of Majuba Hill, and which resorted to no adequate means to rescue General Gordon at Khartoum. It had not, moreover, the satisfaction of reflecting that a tame and spiritless foreign policy was gaming us friends in Europe. On the contrary, the Egyptian policy of the Cabinet alienated us from France ; Colonial questions in Africa and New Guinea deprived us of Prince Bismarck's friendship; and complications on the frontier of Afghanistan very nearly led to war with Russia. We are afraid that Lord Granville must be held responsible for these results. He was hardly strong enough or bard enough for the troublous time in which his lot was cast. His nature might have made him the best of Foreign Ministers in a season of calm, but it did not fit him to"ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm."
If Lord Granville cannot be included in the rare company of great Foreign Ministers, his "wise and sagacious counsel" made him an excellent adviser, and his tact and temper an admirable party leader. Lord Kimberley said of him after his death, with perfect truth : "As a leader of this House, or as a leader of the Opposition, he possessed the remarkable gift of expressing his views without compromise, yet never with any offence to those who were opposed to him. He had many opponents in the House, but even among those opponents he had many friends." The influence which he thus acquired—and which enabled him to induce the Peers, during the Administration of 1868, to accept measures so obnoxious to most of them as the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, the abolition of purchase in the Army, and the adoption of the ballot—was due, in the first instance, to his unfailing tact and temper. But it was increased by the knowledge that, if he had the opinions of a Radical, he had the tastes and instincts of a country gentleman. As Lord Edmond says, the most prejudiced Tory Peer could not deny that Granville the Polite could ride to hounds and knew how to bring down a pheasant. In even happier language, Lord Granville once described himself as "a Radical who happened to like good society."
If Lord Granville shone in his place in Parliament, he proved himself in council the most capable of men. The same admirable qualities which made him in society the most genial of companions made him in the Cabinet the best of colleagues. Under Lord Palmerston, when Ministers were on terms of easy intimacy and spoke of one another by familiar nicknames—of Lord Palmerston as Cupid, of Lord Panmum as Mars, of Sir Charles Wood as the Spider, of Lord Stanley of Alderley as Ben, of Lord Granville himself as Pussy— Lord Granville's help to smooth difficulties was not often required. But under Mr. Gladstone's sterner rule—when we no longer read of nicknames—and especially in the Government of 1880, Lord Granville was the peacemaker without whose constant intervention the machinery of government must have stopped altogether. We cannot, however, enter into the difficulties which beset the Cabinet of 1880 from its formation to its close, and which Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice has done so much to make clear. Here we have only attempted to indicate some of the qualities of a statesman who, if sometimes timid in action, was almost always wise in counsel; who strove—as few men have striven—for reform at home and peace abroad ; and who, though he was destined to see his party shattered and its leader discredited, so bore himself, in calm and storm, that he lived and died without an enemy.
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