TOPICS OF THE DAY.
• • LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S FAREWELL.
IT is not given to every man as it has been to Lord John Russell to deliver a funeral sermon on himself; and we may well pardon even a veteran the oratorical failure' in- • evitable from a position so novel and so perplexing. Yet even with this allowance, the speeoli in which Lord John Russell on Tuesday bade farewell to his constituents at Guildhall leaves a feeling of disappointment. It was such a grand opportunity, and it was so imperfectly seized. The speech is good enough in its way, clear, consistent, and full of reference to those triumphs of freedom, which the speaker has spent a life in the sustained effort to assure. Lord John Russell's weakness is stronger than many men's strength, and of those who heard him at the Guildhall, scarcely one but will feel surprised that critics should strive to diminish his perfect satisfaction. But to those who only read the farewell, there is an evident want, a lack of that fire which has too seldom burst through the crust of an aristocratic training, but which has never appeared without melting the national heart, and moulding the national Surely on this occasion if ever, the habitual coldness of the statesman might have been laid aside, and have given way to that enthusiasm under which alone, and so seldom, our "lan- guid Johnny glows to glorious John." Even a burst of hearty pride would not in English opinion have misbeseemed the retiring victor of forty- years. In its place we have a cold though not humble description of the reforms introduced since London elected a Premier as its representative, an eulogy of the Free-trade movement in which Lord John was not the first, the inevitable reference to 1831, and a measured hope that the speaker—who would command the fleet now, as far as his confidence is concerned—may prove of some further use.
The truth is, Lord John was embarrassed by his position. He was dimly sensible that he was, as he said, "attending • at his own obsequies," yet quite unable to realize that it is not with an eye to the future that the mourner praises the dead. The autobiography in which be might have indulged had he been retiring from public life seemed absurd in a man who to-morrow might be defending Sardinia from the grasp of France and yet he felt instinctively that one chapter, at least, of life was closing on him for ever. Earl Russell may be a great statesman still, but he will not be the Lord John Russell of popular admiration and respect. It is not as the author of twenty reforms that England regards Lord John Russell with a respect which has extorted acknowledgment from his foes at the moment they are striving to fill up his place. Nor is it as the chief author of a revolution which so renewed the vitality of the British constitution that, after thirty years of full trial, the people frown down the most hesitating innovations, that he is now regarded. Sir James Graham was equally with him the author of the Reform Bill, and the popular love for Sir James Graham is an impossible quantity. Lord Brougham did more for internal reform than even his whilom colleague, and though the public favour exists for Lord Brougham, still it does not include perceptible political trust. Lord John Russell, on the contrary, might be Premier to-morrow, land confidence in his character, if not in his policy, would be as per- fect now as in 1831. The respect of the nation is due to this, that for forty years Lord John Russell—himself an aristocrat by birth, training, and temperament—has stood steadfastly forward in the vanguard of human freedom. At home, the wildest Chartist has never accused him of betraying • the liberties of the people. Abroad, every just cause save one has found in him a bold and outspoken defender. An inveterate conviction, which seems welded into the brains of the English aristocracy, that Europe without Austria is im- possible, has prevented him from doing justice to the merits and sufferings of those continental Whigs the nobles of Hun- gary. But with that exception, Lord John has never swerved from the one great principle of his life, from the sentiment which in England his efforts have helped to make so trium- phant that its mere utterance is an annoying platitude. From the West Indian slave or the Tuscan Protestant, to the Sultan nf Turkey and Victor Emanuel, every oppressed man has found in him a defender, sometimes strangely cold, but always effi- cient, brave, and determined. How brave and how determined, • it will be for the memoir writer thirty years hence to show. The civil courage which faces a clique or defies a favourite, 'breaks with an aristocratic connexion, or risks position to front the first onset of a political mob, is seldom appreciated by outsiders. What Lord John Russell must have borne from his own class when he defied them in 1831, or when he conquered them in 1845, only to see the reward snatched from his grasp by a deserter from the enemy, seems light to us who have seen his foresight justified by success. But all men remember times of national danger. Time after time has the national heart, depressed by forebodings or wearied by incompetence, been roused and fortified by the calm bearing and unflinching resolution of the statesman who, having lived through the war of giants, could never fear a continental menace. His last outburst, the confident ac- ceptance of war with Russia, did as much to destroy- the popular belief in Russian invincibility as the events of the war itself. The mere fact that we had at least one Minister who, understanding fully the magnitude of the struggle never shrank from the risk, cheered the public mind, then gloomy not from a sense of fear but a doubt of the energy of its rulers. Even now, if England were at war, there is not a man in the nation, not one even of those who sneer at a statesman grown grey in their service as effete, who would not feel that the last man to agree to a treaty less than triumphant would be the man who now recommences active life under new cir- cumstances in a new scene. It is remembrances such as these, the influences of character rather than of acts, which have brought to Lord John Russell honour among all Eng- lishmen, and this was the one thing to which, even in his exceptional attitude as chief mourner by his own corpse, Lord John could not possibly allude. And this also was the cause why his audience, whose minds supplied the hiatus his speech had unavoidably left, quitted the Guildhall full of regrets and praise.
The regret is not the less because his mantle descends on no successor. Lord John Russell founded no school. He has left behind him no pupils. No man when he is gone, will be proud of the nickname of Russellite, nor will any statesman quote his half-formed ideas as proof positive that his successor is treading in the right track. His large public following believe in him as few men are believed in in these degenerate days, but they will not adopt his name, nor, while defending the principles he advocated, will they justify them as his. The total want of disciples may be due, in part, to defects of personal character, though not to the degree the public is apt to imagine. Not his, indeed, "The wealth to some large natures lent, Divinely lavish, though so oft misspent ;" but he is at least as genial as Sir Robert Peel. It may be too, that he is infected with the disease of many Whigs— the want of sympathy for youth. It is certain that he has brought none forward, that he has supported to the extent of his power that singplar exclusiveness which is fast turning the grandest of our historic parties into a close borough, open only to men above fifty, who in a long past age married into Whig houses. Even the Whig traditions have in this re- spect been outdone, and the crumbs have of late been refused to all outside the pale. The party, as such, has not only no heirs but no great hangers on. Burke is poorly replaced by heirs, and Sheridan would recognize in the Member for Liskeard only wit and audacity equal to his own.
But the true reason for Lord John's isolation, the cause stronger than coldness or exclusiveness, is, we believe, to be found in this. He taught no special creed, and had no special creed to teach. If a follower could retain every principle he ever professed, and and apply them to every conceivable variety of circumstances, he would still not be a Russellite. He would be only a Whig, for that, in fact, is all Lord John Russell has ever been. The purity of his party principles has completely swamped his individuality. He is the last of a great race, of the men who governed England, not in obedience to individual theories, or even to individual convictions, but to certain traditionary principles which fitted every circumstance and provided for almost every contingency. Such men have followers, but it is the party, not they, who gain disciples. It is too late now ot discuss the comparative usefulness of such a system as com- pared with personal leadership. An impartial historian will probably one day decide that for an emergency a leader per- forms best the services which during centuries only an ever young party can perform. Whatever the decision, it is, we believe, from this cause that Lord John Russell quits the House of Commons with the regrets of all England, bat without one disciple.
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