LORD BROUGHAM

Evening Star, Issue 22104, 10 August 1935, Page 20

LORD BROUGHAM

AVERTED THREE REVOLUTIONS Not many politicians who have led ordinary, peaceful lives, and died quietly in their homes, could claim to have been instruments in averting three revolutions. That is part of the interest which attaches to the career of the subject of this book, ‘ Lord Brougham,’ by G. T. Garratt, writes Hamilton Fyfe. He lived in a time when the British monarchy had sunk into disrepute. Old King George HI. was mad and under restraint. His son, the Regent, who became in time George IV., was a man of evil character. He had married an unfortunate German princess, in spite of having an English wife (to whom he was joined secretly, though he lived with her pretty openly). Princess Caroline loathed him, but bore him a daughter, of whom he managed to get possession. When she was 17 he wanted her to marry an unattractive young man of the Dutch Royal family, known as the Young Frog. She was a high-spirited girl and objected. In order to escape from her father’s persecution, she left his house and threw herself on the pity of some of the Whig party leaders, who were in opposition to the- Crown. Brougham was one of them. He felt very sorry for the girl, but he knew that, in the state of the public mind, any encouragement to her might cause rioting, which might easily turn into a movement for the abolition of monarchy. An excited election was going on in Westminster (which then returned Radicals in Parliament); the streets were crowded. He told the little Princess gravely:— “ I have only to show you to the multitude and 'tell them your grievances and they will all rise in your be- “ Why should they not?” she asked.. He replied that her father’s house would be attacked—perhaps pulled down; the soldiers would be ordered out, blood would he shed, and he added, “ if your Royal Highness were to live a hundred years, it never would he forgotten that your running away from your father’s house was the cause of the mischief.” So the Princess was persuaded to go back to her father. But she did not marry the Young Frog. THE QUEEN’S ADVOCATE. Later, when the Regent had become King, and was trying to get a divorce from his queen voted by Parliament, Brougham acted as her principal advocate against the monarchy. ihe Queen was a foolish, vulgar woman, but the crowd saw her as an ill-used wile, and took her part. If the facts about the King’s marriage to Mrs faitzherbert had been made public there must have been an outburst of indignation. Brougham knew it . would be his “ unhappy fate . if he brought out those facts “to involve his country in confusion.” He contented himself with threatening to bring them out, . and was thus able to defeat the Kings effort to cut himself legally loose from his wife. But he recognised his responsibility and behaved with taore caution than he usually showed. A third time revolution seemed to be possible. This was when, just over 100 years ago, the “ great Reform Bill,” which began to break down the political dominance of the dukes and other aristocratic landowners on a vast scale, was held up by the House of Lords, with the support of King William IV. It would have been easily possible to stir up trouble. Brougham had a great influence over the more intelligent sections of the populace. He was as much of a Radical as anybody in those days. If he had stampeded, h© might have overturned the Throne, set up a republic, and become very likely its first president—or, of course, he might not. THE REFORM BILL. Speculation as to “ what could have happened if . . •” is amusing, but unprofitable. Clearly, however, Brougham deserved credit for what he did to get the Reform Bill passed without more violence than was actually used. At one point he and Lord Grey had to get William IV. down to the House or Lords to dissolve Parliament, so that the electors might show whether or not they wanted voting power to be more widely distributed. They had fairly to hustle His Majesty. „ The chief requirements were someone to carry the sword of State, an escort, and the State coach. Grey agreed to carry the first, and Brougham had with some coolness already sent to the Horse Guards. The King said; “ Well, that was a strong measure, and even after, when in high good humour, he used to remind Brougham of what he called his high treason. As for the coach, the King said that anything would do. Thus, the Lords’ plan to prevent an election was defeated, chiefly owing to the energy of Brougham, for Grey was anything but a hustler. How was it that a politician who had so wide a fame in his own age has been almost forgotten? Ask a bunch of undergraduates or sixth form schoolboys in one of those “ general papers ” which are now so much in vogue : “Who was Lord Brougham?” Not one in 20 would be likely to know. A few might have a vague idea that the Victorian form of horse carriage called a “brougham” took its name from him. Any who had’been to the Riviera would possibly be aware that Lord Brougham “discovered” Cannes and started its popularity with English visitors. That he took a prominent part in transforming the British political system from an aristocratic into a democratic State is hardly known to-day to anyone who lias not made some study of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Why is it that, while the names of Grey and Wilberforce, Canning, Melbourne, Lord John Russell are known to all educated people, the name of a contemporary of theirs in the front rank of politics should be so little familiar?

Mr Garratt, in his entertaining and painstaking biography, does not quite answer this query, though he provides most of the materials for an answer. The reasons why Brougham did not leave behind him a resounding reputation as a statesmen were, it seems to me, these;—

First, ho was before his time. He had a strong intellect, interests of every kind, an immense capacity for hard work, and in many directions he thought as people did at the end of the century, not at all as they thought at the beginning. Ho ■ denounced all tyranny, all oppression, and all the panic-stricken interference with liberty which followed the Napoleonic Wars. This called for a good deal of courage in an age when it was held by judges to be “ seditious and unconstitutional to discuss the acts of the Legislature,” and when it was a crime to "make people dissatisfied with the Government under which they Jive,” which sounds quite Hitlerian and Stalinesque.

Brougham did great service also to the cause of education—got London University founded, amongst other things. He opposed slavery. He reformed legal procedure so that *at “ wellnigh destroyed the race of sharp attorneys.” He prepared the nation for many necessary reforms which have since been carried through. But the statesmen who seem to have the biggest success are those who carry through some change which the mass of the people already desire. Those who do the spade work and lay the foundations are never so famous as those who complete the building. TOO VERSATILE. Secondly, Brougham was too versatile. He puzzled and bewildered most of his contemporaries by the number of causes ho took up, by his sudden shifts of attitude towards measures and men, by appearing to be at times disinterestedly patriotic, by speaking and writing with unconquerable vigour, by displaying so much more mental and imaginative energy than any other politician of his time. Thirdly, he was opposed to the “spoils” system, which prevailed at this date and which was held by public men to justify them in getting all they could out of public funds. Here again he was far in advance of his time. There is a well-known story of Melbourne telling a small boy, taken by his mother to see him, to carry off from the official table as many pens and sticks of sealing wax and rolls of red tape as he could, in order to accustom himself to being a politician later on. Brougham had a higher sense of honesty than most people of his day, and he was not content to be an honest man Himself; he wanted others to stop robbing the nation. That enraged them; they spread all sorts of disparaging tales about him, to which writers of the time gave wider currency. Disraeli sneered at him for pretending to know everything and “ knowing nothing thoroughly.” Byron taunted him with “showing more appetite for words than war,” meaning that he insulted people and refused to fight duels with them. Carlyle opposed Brougham’s picture being placed in the National Portrait Gallery while he was alive, and added spitefully that “ when he was dead he would be speedily forgotten.” But the chief reason why Brougham did not rank among the leading statesmen of the period in which the nature of the British State was gradually changing was that he came of a_ middleclass family; he had no entry into the governing caste. We find it hard to imagine an England in which dukes were the most powerful people, politically as well as socially. The usual way of getting into the House of Commons then was to get a duke’s nomination for one of the constituencies controlled by him. Other peers wielded this sort of influence, too. Brougham himself, in spite of his independent character, represented one of seven boroughs purchased by a Lord Darlington, who had quarrelled with the Regent and purposed sending to Parliament “ seven patriots to vex his_ ungrateful master.” The tradition of the aristocracy, which had ruled with undisputed authority since the reign of Queen Anne, was one of despotic, though easy-going government, and of lavish expenditure. The Lord Durham whoso report saved Canada from civil war between British and French was known as “ King •log,” because he had said once that “ on £40,000 a year a man could just jog along.” Not being an aristocrat, Brougham could not get into the inner circle, any more than Burke or Sheridan could; therefore he could not form a party ; therefore he did not secure the position to which his abilities entitled him. This mattered a good deal to his generation , which was held hack from muchneeded improvements. But it probably does not matter at all now.