Part 3 (1/2)
It was in vain, in order to a.s.sist in removing these scruples, that it was represented to him by others that endowment of a priesthood by the state was a notion somewhat old-fas.h.i.+oned, and opposed to the spirit of the age which a.s.sociated true religious freedom with the full development of the voluntary principle. He listened to these suggestions with distrust, and even with a little contempt. Mr. Canning had been in favour of the endowment of the Irish priesthood--that was sufficient for that particular; and as for the voluntary principle, he looked upon it as priestcraft in disguise; his idea of religious liberty being that all religions should be controlled by the state.
Besides these two prominent objections to accepting the offered post, namely, his unaffected distrust in his parliamentary abilities and his a.s.sumed want of concordance with his followers on a great principle of modern politics, we must also remember that his compliance with the request involved no ordinary sacrifice of much which renders life delightful. He was to relinquish pursuits of n.o.ble excitement to which he was pa.s.sionately attached, and to withdraw in a great degree from a circle of high-spirited friends, many of them of different political connection from himself, by whom he was adored. With all his unrivalled powers of application when under the influence of a great impulse, he was const.i.tutionally indolent and even lethargic. There was nothing, therefore, in his position or his temperature to p.r.i.c.k him on in '46; it was nothing but his strong will acting upon his indignation which sustained him. It is not, therefore, marvellous that he exhibited great reluctance to commit irretrievably his future life. At a subsequent period, indignation had become ambition, and circ.u.mstances of various kinds had made him resolve to succeed or die.
On the adjournment, Lord George had gone down to Newmarket, which he greatly enjoyed after his exhausting campaign. Here some letters on the subject of the leaders.h.i.+p pa.s.sed, but nothing was definitely arranged till some time after the re-a.s.sembling of Parliament. For convenience we mention here the result. The wish of the party was repeatedly and personally urged by the popular and much-esteemed member for Dorsets.h.i.+re, and at last Lord George consented to their wishes, on these conditions: that he should relinquish his post the moment the right man was discovered, who, according to his theory, would ultimately turn up; and secondly, that his responsible post was not to restrict or embarra.s.s him on any questions in which a religious principle was involved.
Before, however, this negotiation was concluded, and while yet at Newmarket, he wrote to a friend, the day before the House met (April 16th).
'I think there is no doubt, but that the Irish will take care of Friday (to-morrow) night. I have not much hope of their keeping up the debate beyond Friday.
'It is quite clear from O'Connell's language at Dublin that we have no hope from the Irish tail.
'I still think myself, that delay affords a great chance of something turning up in our favour; already the rejection of any reciprocity by M. Guizot has provided us with a grand weapon, which, I trust, you drive well home into * * * *'s vitals; a very short delay would probably bring over similar intelligence from the United States and their Congress.
I trust we shall have an important deputation over from Canada, representing that the inevitable results of these free-trade measures in corn and timber will be to alienate the feelings of our Canadian colonists, and to induce them to follow their sordid interests, which will now, undoubtedly, be best consulted and most promoted by annexation to the United States.
'Lord------'s intended tergiversation has been, I believe, some time known; he admits that all farmers without capital, in short, all little men, must be sacrificed. What a barbarous and odious policy, that goes upon the principle that none but capitalists are henceforth to be allowed to live, as farmers at least. We must turn the tables upon Lord------and all such heartless doctrinaires!
'I fear the majority in the Lords will be greater than was expected; I am told that we must endeavour to put ministers in a minority two or three times before the bill gets to its second reading in the Lords, no matter upon what question. I hear there are many peers whose votes depend entirely upon their notions, whether or not Peel can, by hook or by crook, carry on.'
CHAPTER VII.
_Railroads for Ireland_
IF WE take a general view of the career of Lord George Bentinck during the last year--from the time indeed when he was trying to find a lawyer to convey his convictions to the House of Commons until the moment when her Majesty prorogued her Parliament, the results will be found to be very remarkable. So much was never done so unexpectedly by any public man in the same s.p.a.ce of time. He had rallied a great party which seemed hopelessly routed; he had established a parliamentary discipline, in their ranks which old political connections, led by experienced statesmen, have seldom surpa.s.sed; he had brought forward from those ranks, entirely through his discrimination and by his personal encouragement, considerable talents in debate; he had himself proved a master in detail and in argument of all the great questions arising out of the reconstruction of our commercial system; he had made a vindication of the results of the Protective principle as applied to agriculture, which certainly, so far as the materials are concerned, is the most efficient plea that ever was urged in the House of Commons in favour of the abrogated law; he had exhibited similar instances of investigation in considerable statements with respect to the silk trade and other branches of our industry; he had a.s.serted the claims of the productive cla.s.ses in Ireland, and in our timber and sugar producing colonies, with the effect which results from a thorough acquaintance with a subject; he had promulgated distinct principles with regard to our financial as well as to our commercial system; he had maintained the expediency cf relieving the consumer by the repeal of excise in preference to customs' duties, and of establis.h.i.+ng fiscal reciprocity as a condition of mercantile exchange. On subjects of a more occasional but a.n.a.logous nature he had shown prompt.i.tude and knowledge, as in the instances of the urgent condition of Mexico and of our carrying trade with the Spanish colonies, both of which he brought forward in the last hours of the session, but the importance of which motions was recognized by all parties. Finally, he had attracted the notice, and in many instances obtained the confidence, of large bodies of men in the country, who recognized in him a great capacity of labour combined with firmness of character and honesty of purpose.
At the close of the session (August 28), Cord George visited Norfolk, where he received an entertainment from his const.i.tuents at King's Lynn, proud of their member, and to whom he vindicated the course which he had taken, and offered his views generally as to the relations which should subsist between the legislation of the country and its industry.
From Norfolk he repaired to Belvoir Castle, on a visit to the Duke of Rutland, and was present at a banquet given by the agriculturists of Leicesters.h.i.+re to his friend and supporter the Marquis of Granby. After this he returned to Welbeck, where he seems to have enjoyed a little repose. Thus he writes to a friend from that place on the 22nd September:
'Thanks for your advice, which I am following, having got Lord Malmesbury's Diary; but I am relapsing into my natural dawdling, lazy, and somnolent habits, and can with difficulty get through the leaders even of the ”Times.”
* * * * 'The vehemence of the farmers is personal against Peel; it is quite clear that the rising price of wheat has cured their alarm. The railway expenditure must keep up prices and prosperity, both of which would have been far greater without free trade; but in face of high prices, railway prosperity, and potato famine, depend upon it we shall have an uphill game to fight.
'O'Connell talks of Parliament meeting in November, to mend the Irish Labour-rate Act. Do you believe this?'
The Labour-rate Act, pa.s.sed at the end of the session ('46), was one by which the Lord Lieutenant was enabled to require special barony sessions to meet in order to make presentments for public works for the employment of the people, the whole of the money requisite for their construction to be supplied by the imperial treasury, though to be afterwards repaid. The machinery of this act did not work satisfactorily, but the government ultimately made the necessary alterations on their own responsibility, and obtained an indemnity from Parliament when it met in '47. The early session, therefore, talked of by Mr. O'Connell, became unnecessary. As the only object of this Labour-rate Act was to employ the people, and as it was supposed there were no public works of a reproductive nature which could be undertaken on a sufficient scale to ensure that employment, the Irish people were occupied, towards the end of the autumn of '46, mainly in making roads, which, as afterwards described by the first minister, 'were not wanted.'
In the month of September more than thirty thousand persons were thus employed; but when the harvest was over, and it was ascertained that its terrible deficiency had converted pauperism into famine, the numbers on the public works became greatly increased, so that at the end of November the amount of persons engaged was four hundred thousand, receiving wages at the rate of nearly five millions sterling per annum.
These immense amounts went on increasing every week, and when Parliament met in February, 1847, five hundred thousand persons were employed on these public works, which could bring no possible public advantage, at an expense to the country of between 700,000 and 800,000 per month.
No Board of Works could efficiently superintend such a mult.i.tude, or prevent flagrant imposition, though the dimensions of that department appeared almost proportionably to have expanded. What with commissioners, chief clerks, check clerks, and pay clerks, the establishment of the Board of Works in Ireland, at the end of '46, consisted of more than eleven thousand persons.
Always intent upon Ireland, this condition of affairs early and earnestly attracted the attention of Lord George Bentinck. So vast an expenditure in unproductive labour dismayed him. He would not easily a.s.sent to the conclusion that profitable enterprise under the circ.u.mstances was impossible. Such a conclusion seemed to him unnatural, and that an occasion where we commenced with despair justified a bold and venturesome course. The field is legitimately open to speculation where all agree that all is hopeless. The construction of harbours, the development of fisheries, the redemption of waste lands, were resources which had been often canva.s.sed, and whatever their recommendations, with the exception of the last, they were necessarily very limited; and the last, though it might afford prompt, could hardly secure profitable, employment. Prompt and profitable employment was the object which Lord George wished to accomplish. Where millions were to be expended by the state, something more advantageous to the community should accrue than the temporary subsistence of the mult.i.tude.
Lord George had always been a great supporter of railway enterprise in England, on the ground that, irrespective of all the peculiar advantages of those undertakings, the money was spent in the country; and that if our surplus capital were not directed to such channels, it would go, as it had gone before, to foreign mines and foreign loans, from which in a great degree no return would arrive. When millions were avowedly to be laid out in useless and unprofitable undertakings, it became a question whether it were not wiser even somewhat to antic.i.p.ate the time when the necessities of Ireland would require railways on a considerable scale; and whether by embarking in such enterprises, we might not only find prompt and profitable employment for the people, but by giving a new character to the country and increasing its social relations and the combinations of its industry, might not greatly advance the period when such modes of communication would be absolutely requisite.
Full of these views, Lord George, in the course of the autumn, consulted in confidence some gentlemen very competent to a.s.sist him in such an inquiry, and especially Mr. Robert Stephenson, Mr. Hudson, and Mr.
Laing. With their advice and at their suggestion, two engineers of great ability, Mr. Bidder and Mr. Smith, were despatched to Ireland, personally to investigate the whole question of railroads in that country.
Meditating over the condition of Ireland, a subject very frequently in his thoughts, and of the means to combat its vast and inveterate pauperism, Lord George was frequently in the habit of reverting to the years '41-42 in England, when there were fifteen hundred thousand persons on the parish rates; eighty-three thousand able-bodied men, actually confined within the walls of the workhouse, and more than four hundred thousand able-bodied men receiving out-door relief. What changed all this and restored England in a very brief s.p.a.ce to a condition of affluence hardly before known in her annals? Not certainly the alterations in the tariff which were made by Sir Robert Peel at the commencement of his government, prudent and salutary as they were. No one would pretend that the abolition of the slight duty (five-sixteenths of a penny) on the raw material of the cotton manufacturer, or the free introduction of some twenty-seven thousand head of foreign cattle, or even the admission of foreign timber at reduced duties, could have effected this. Unquestionably it was the railway enterprise which then began to prevail that was the cause of this national renovation.