LAST MAN TO BE IMPEACHED

Evening Star, Issue 21619, 15 January 1934, Page 2

LAST MAN TO BE IMPEACHED

CAREER OF HENRY DUNDAS : : 'f ,\ r . , ~ ... i FIRST MINISTER FOR INDIA Democratic and Liberal historians have- not been. kind to, Henry Dundas. He figures in : their''writings- as'the evil genius of the younger Pitt; indeed, they have- constructed a highly dramatic picture of the years between 1784 and 4806;-as a-kind of., duel, between 'Dundas:and \Vilberforce,for Pitt’s soul.; • That thefp was such a du’el Wilberforcfe’ himself would»have agreed; nor can we deny that of the two contestants Dundas "follcjwed the less noble ideals. But ■ he was very dar . from 'being the ;demon king of a pantomime; it is possible to 1 make out a strong political case for him; and Mr Cyril Matheson's conscien- ; tious and solid volume goes a long’way ; towards' making it (‘ The Life of Henry Dundasy 'First Viscount Melville, J -says '.‘John o’ London’s Weekly’). It is true that the, personality of Dundfis does not help' a ’biographer seeking--to—present- him-- as - -anything more than a‘ worthy public servant. He had neither the luminous social brilli- ■ once nor the saintliness of Wilberforce. -He was a strong-minded,,wether,coarse-: fibred Scotch lawyer (he himself seems to have preferrfe<L,t}i§. to “ Scot,” like Burns and others of his respected fellowi-nounttymen);; and; we: ;may suspect that he was inclined to be heavy. DUTCH COURAGE

!: He was a hard drinker,* even by the’ standards of a hard drinking age; it was said that he had to take two extra bottles of claret before he could propose marriage to his second wife, Lady'Jane Hope—whom he married for her money, after: his “first had eloped i ' and been divorced. ■ Nevertheless, “he had-a*hard good• fellowship .that was attractive, to, loan v men and more women; among the latter he was credited with taking full advantage of his popularity. A contemporary lampoon contains the’ lines:

■What various tastes divide tho fickle town! ■ One likes the fair, and one admires the brown; i The stately, Queensb’ry; Hinchinbrook the small; thurlow loves servant maids; Dundas loves all.

He was. however, a professional politician above all; and after he had . unsuccessfully offered his heart to Lady Anne Lindsay, with full enumeration of ' “ His ambitions and prospects.” she wrote in her memoir: 0 that Diindas convinced me that he loved me, instead of depositing his political secrets with me!" ' A NEW WORD. The career of Dundas covers the transition from eighteenth to nineteenth century political habits. He was one of the first of that long line of Scotch- ■ men who since the Union have crossed the Tweed to govern, the English; though in his first session of'Parliament he enriched the English language .with a new word, “ starvation,” he remained to’the end of his days obstinately Scotch in his accent and intonation, which indeed he deliberately emphasised and even exaggerated, joy of the cartoonists of the day. "He was the first Minister for India (that is, he was the working member of the new Board of Control set up to supervise the doings of the East India Company) and the first Secretary of Stateifor War. Unhappily his work at the War Office was a failure, and Mr Matheson can do little more than make excuses for it; and his work for India, which 1 occupied him for seventeen years, bulked so largely in his life thirt Mr Matheson decides to exclude it from his book as requiring separate investigation. -In contrast with .these various beginnings, he represents in one respect a historic termination. He is, and seems likely to remain, the last person to be impeached by the House of Commons at the bar of the Lords. , HID HE INFLUENCE PITTP The gravamen of the Liberal historians’ charge against Dundas is that he made Pitt a repressionist. In their hearts they believe that the openminded 24-year-old Prime Minister of 1784 would have developed into a democrat had not Dundas stood at his elbow -awd- Urged-lutH -to eiiyba rhpnrthe-policy: of f'—ciblc stifling of popular unrest which characterised the home legisla-

tion of the last decade of the eighteenth century. Now, it is true that Pitt went that way, and Dundas very willingly went with him; though whether Dundas can be said to have led is another question. At any rate, it is indisputable that Dundas’s administration of the Home Office during the period of the French .Revolution culminated in the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Mr Matheson is -not concerned to deny the facts; he prefers to defend them, and he does so very ably. Dundas did not believe in democracy, and there was no reason why he should believe it. .England was an oligarchy; and,:EnglandAwas a success. Under the existing ‘order" 11 the nation had become the : most prosperous 'country in the world/ Against the new ideals from France, which seemed only to be drenching that country with blood, he could set. not only the practical happiness achieved* under the English system, .but native' ideals to which that happiness might'be related. “While France gave the modern world democracy, Britain gave it political liberty.’’ ‘ B USPENDED LIBERTIES. ' Dundas went "to war against the revolutionary not ra the name of tyranny, but in that of liberty, which, he would certainly have maintained was diametrically opposed to democracy. Faced with an agitation up and down the country, which from time to time issued in riots, and for aught contemporaries" could tell, might lead on to the bloody horrors of the French .ihem'whoV were.''its avowed preceptors, and-not haying any faith in the “ voice of- the people ” as the inspiration oi government, he very naturally used the militia;;-and suspended some liberties for. a time; in order that liberty itself might be preserved to posterity. That' he was himself illiberal in Ins political ideas cannot be asserted. Cautious and conservative as he was, his voice was, generally in favour of reforms that increased freedom. Lie helped to abolish serfdom in the Scotch mines;: he (.worked for the repeal of the Test Acts;«and Tie shares with Pitt the singular distinction among British Ministers of having resigned office rather than break faith with Ireland, when George. UE personally retused to allow his Prime Minister to redeem his pledge of Catholic,emancipation..

; THE impeachment. The,,two.;chapters mrwhich, Mr Matheson tells the-story of Melville’s impeachment are lucid and fair, though they contain little that is new. The charge was one of financial malpractice while Treasurer of thq' Navy. Under the curious system in vogue at “the "time the whole parliamentary vote was handed over to the Treasurer, who, by custom’, had nothing to do but keep it in his account and dole it out to the 'Paymaster its it was wanted. Melville had allowed the Paymaster, Trotter, to draw heavily upon him without supervision; and in fact Trotter had indulged hr heavy speculations. Happily he was a good financier, made his own fortune) and put back the money before it was wanted; so the nation lost nothing. -; *

But it was a shady transaction alf •the same;; and Melville’s obvious responsibility was, quite enough to justify the -Whigs in clamouring for his trial. Their success, on the Speaker’s casting vote, ended Melville’s political career; for though he was subsequently acquitted iby the Lords, it took two years to end the matter, and meanwhile the political machine had moved on. and left him behind. Pitt was dead, and) younger, men found the old Scotchman only’an‘embarrassment. But for his happy-go-lucky ways with the accounts, he might have succeeded Pitt as Prime Minister. As it was, he died a disappointed man. If he bad been at fault he was more than adequately punished, and history can afford to pardon,him.,..