MR. TREVELYAN. T HERE is some satisfaction in hearing of the
admission of Mr. Trevelyan to the Cabinet. He has proved, as no other of the younger statesmen have yet proved, that he can "endure hardness" as a true soldier of the State. Every one was grateful to him when he accepted the position which had just cost one noble-minded man his life, and had im-- perilled the life and embittered the heart of another during two- terrible years. Mr. Trevelyan knew that the post he accepted in 1882 was the post of a political St. Sebastian, and, pro- bably enough, even of a martyr who might have to seal his suffer- ing with his blood. He knew that however his administration might end, it was not within the range of political possibilities that it would end in breaking the evil spell of Ireland's destiny. Many lives must be spent in labour and sorrow, many adminis- trations must reap the whirlwinds which have been so carefully sown for generation after generation, before any Irish Secretary can hope to retire with anything like the consciousness of success. If ever in modern times there has been a spirit of true chivalry shown, it was when Mr. Trevelyan stepped into the post which cost Mr. Forster no small part of the just glory which his Education Measure had won for him, and which had ended in sudden tragedy the career of the most generous, genial, and popular member of a generous, genial, and popular house. Mr. Trevelyan undertook a task like that of the hero in the Arabian tale, who, if he would disenchant an enchanted castle, and break the talisman which keeps all its inmates in a charmed sleep, must utterly ignore the shrieks and entreaties of a hundred grotesque and monstrous forms, and press straight on through perils which bewilder and affright the imagination, as well as perils that menace the life. And he had to do this without the least hope that he could break the talisman by which all these sights and sounds were caused. He knew that causes over which he could exert but the most infinitesimal control,. had cast this spell on Irish patriots ; and that when he had done all that it was in his power to do, he would resign office, if he lived to resign it, amidst the malignant mockery of multitudes who could hardly be held responsible for their hatred and contempt. All this he has not only endured, but endured with a noble courage and cheerfulness. Hardly more. than once or twice during his Secretaryship has he flinched for a moment under the voluntary and involuntary insults which were showered upon him. He leaves the state of Ireland materially much better, and we hope, morally, some- what better, than he found it ; and in such a condition as that of Ireland material improvement must come before moral improvement, and form the stock on which moral improvement can be grafted. He enters the Cabinet, therefore, with a reputa- tion for earnestness, self-restraint, disinterestedness, and chivalry such as it is not easy among the younger men to match. In Great Britain no one doubts that he feels as deep a sympathy for Ireland now as he felt on the day when he first bared hie breast to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and with a great deal more knowledge of the evils with which it is the duty of the Government to cope. That which would have soured ninety-nine men out of a hundred, has not soured him. That which would have driven ninety-nine men out of a hundred to utter despair, has not made him desperate. And one who, under such circumstances, has saved his own hope- fulness has the right, as he will have the power, to impart that hopefulness to the nation over whose counsels he will for the future find secured to him a permanent and important influence.
We recognise Mr. Trevelyan's achievements all the more gladly that he began his public career with what seemed to us a . blunder. When Mr. Trevelyan resigned a subordinate position in Mr. Gladstone's first Government, solely because he did not approve of aiding the denominational schools by grants from the State, we thought that he not only took a wrong view of the point of policy involved, but took an utterly im- practicable view of the responsibility of junior Members of an Administration. The Education Measure was so mighty a result in itself, and it was so important that none of the educa- tional agencies already in active work should be discouraged, that we felt something like astonishment that a political student of Mr. Trevelyan's calibre should strain at such a gnat as the grant to denominational schools, even if he did not eagerly welcome it. But, further, that the junior members of any Administration should regard themselves as bound to resign because they disapprove of one of the details in a great legis- lative measure, looked to us like the fastidiousness either of vanity or of a doctrinaire conscience. In this case, it was neither the one nor the other. In Mr. Trevelyan's subsequent career there has not been a trace of vanity, nor a trace of that im- practicable conscience which breaks up organisation into its separate units, and renders common action simply impossible. We suspect that to a literary man who had looked at the Parliamentary struggles of the past through the eyes of an idealising imagination, the burden of minor office appeared at first so intolerably tedious that on the first occasion when a disinterested scruple occurred to him, his inclinations magnified the excuse for that "Quixotism and squeamishness" of which he was himself at the time half-conscious, almost as the solar microscope magnifies the animalcules in putrid water. At all events, the mistake has never been repeated. Mr. Trevelyan has since done a good deal both out of office and in it, and never has he shown the slightest disposition to make his own tastes and fancies the standard of obligation for his colleagues. He has spoken often and well, but always without the smallest egotism and self-consciousness. His many speeches on the ex- tension of household suffrage to the counties, no less than his great speech on Purchase in the Army, have been marked by thorough singleness of purpose and a rare terseness of expression which allowed no scope for literary discursiveness. If there are in the House of Commons a few men against whom the taunt is justly made that they yield readily to a mere popular cry, no one who knows Mr. Trevelyan's speeches on the county suffrage could himself cast that reproach at him. It is impossible to read those speeches without seeing that few strokes even of private and personal good fortune would rejoice him as much as the inclusion of the agricultural labourers in our electorate will rejoice him. He has the deep sympathy for them which a philanthropist feels, as well as the strong political sympathy for them which a politician feels. He believes—what, indeed, is becoming more and more the belief of wise men, in spite of Carlyle's clumsy ridicule — that no good-will on the part of statesmen is enough effectually to fix the attention of the Legislature on the miseries of the unrepresented,—that adequate representation does a great deal more to bring to light what is evil in the condition of the people, than any amount of right-mindedness that is not reinforced by the stimulus of political power. This con- viction breathes through all Mr. Trevelyan's speeches on the county suffrage; and it is evident in them that the reform now proposed has not merely his political adhesion, but his passionate moral sympathy. And that a brilliant writer, whose greatest pleasure it evidently is to revivify for himself the history of the past, should have felt this deep sympathy with the least articulate of all classes, was a good omen that he would feel the same sympathy with the still deeper miseries of the Irish people. He has now shown us that he did feel it, and feel it with a force that enabled him to suppress himself during the incessant storm of insult which he has had to undergo. We believe that we have in him one of those rarely disinterested statesmen who are worth more to us than any amount of mere intellectual strength, and that in him, moreover, we have this disinterestedness combined with no small share of intellectual strength. What he has said of Charles James Fox might be applied with the most perfect justice to himself,—that "those who looked at him as the future servant of his country, noticed in all that he said and did, the unmistakeable tokens of an ingrained disinterestedness."
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