MEMOIR OF JOHN MONTAGU.

Otago Witness, Issue 367, 11 December 1858, Page 6

MEMOIR OF JOHN MONTAGU.

( Original contribution— concluded)

AT this period Mr. Montagu's views of the desirableness of immediately introducing the Representative system changed. The unanimity which prevailed previously to the anticonvict agitation in 1848 had ceased, and in 1851 its leaders carried their opposition to Government to extremes, and created a feeling prejudicial to calm enquiry, more paiticularly in the neighbourhood of Cape Town ; and, moreover, it would have been impossible to obtain the presence of the members of the Eastern Province, as the inhabitants " were employed in nightly patrol or in the tented field. Many were homeless wanderers, ruined of all— from affluence reduced to poverty, in fact disfranchised by war, rapine, and conflagration." Had immediate action ensued, the Western Province alone would have decided every point, while their Eastern brethren were confronting the foe. His opposition filled the vial of a people's wrath, and his removal was demanded of the Home Government. On his devoted head fell the blow, for as the editor of the '•' Graham's Town Journal" justly remarks — "He steadily upheld the authority of Government, kept together and brought into exeicise the elements of order, peremptorily refused to succumb to popular intimidation, and, as the natural result, brought upon himself the odium and uncompromising hostility of those from whose hands he withheld the power at which they grasped, and which could not have been conceded without discredit to the British name, and great detriment to the public interests."

The demand for his removal was not complied with ; but these turmoils preyed heavily upon his constitution, and his conduct, misunderstood amid the strife of passions, alienated some whose esteem he once held and highly valued. Well does the biographer say of such that " he is unworthy to be called a public man ; nay, he deserves not the name of man who can see nothing great nor good, nor honest, nor disinterested in his political opponent." But we must hasten to a close. We cannot detail Mr. Montagu's indefatigable and extensive exertions in raising and forwarding levies to Sir Harry Smith, who was battling the Kaffirs with fearful odds. They were justly characterized by him when he writes :—": — " Your exertions are incredible, beyond all praise." Another chief actor in the war writes — " We feel certain that to his (Mr. M.'s) personal exertions alone was due the merit of rescuing us fiom a most difficult position."

But these accumulating duties, unnatural alienations, and unjust persecutions, sapped a constitution which had borne up against what most men would have succumbed to at once. The depreciation of his property at Van Dieman's laud by his removal and transfer to Cape Town had deeply involved him, and his noble nature, sensitive even to a passing shadow of disgrace, would not permit him to provide for the college education of his son while any man could call him debtor. An Insolvent Court could not in his opinion cancel a debt, and though the payment involved severe retrenchment for years, and demanded domestic privations of no ordinary nature, he hesitated not. All this added to his trials, and he retired " to die at home, and to find his body's restingplace far from the scene where his heart still lingered, and whose wellbeing claimed his dying thoughts."

His medical attendant, after a minute and careful examination, saw at once that the brain had become incurably affected : the truth did not startle him ; living, as he had, alone in the performance of duty, he was not afraid to die. He calmly reviewed his past career, and prepared for the last conflict. Prayer had always been to him a duty, which was never neglected, but now he was enabled to say, " my soul prays." lie became alive to the fact, that in Christ alone was there any safety. Blameless in the ejes of men, he yet humbled himself in the sight of God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Well might the Bishop of Capo Town, who watched beside his dying friend, say of him— "l loved and admired Mr. Montagu much in the days of his health and vigour, not so much for his great abilities as for his uprightness, his truthfulness, courage, firmness, determination to do what was right, let who would gainsay it — his entire freedom from all selfishness — and the cheerful readiness with which he sacrificed popularity to the performance of what he deemed his duty. But I can safely say I never admired or loved him so much as on his sick and dying bed : I think I never saw a more beautiful or affecting spectacle than he presented as he lay propped up, worn, exhausted, gasping for breath day after clay, and yet in mind just the same aa I remember him in the days that are past. No one saw even an impatient look or heard a hasty word during his whole illness. I have never seen so much cheerful patience and resignation on a sick bed. lie was great in his death as he was in his life."

" He who enriched a nation died poor:" but such 18 not seldom the case where a generous heart is the accompaniment of sterling integrity. The Colonial Legislature denied his widow a small gratuity, which was strongly recommended by the Duke of Newcastle. Public antagonism had not yet subsided ; but the Home Government, justly appreciating such devotedness, awarded her a pension of £300 a-year.

"We would fain dwell more at length on the noble character which we have been considering, but we must reluctantly close in the language of the biographer:— "Although no proud bust or public column has yet been raised to him, nevertheless, from the height of the pedestal upon which his own celebrity and

the elevating commendation of great and good men have figuratively placed him, he can calmly and grandly look down, as do those bronze and marble statues which a nation has actually erected to preserve and honour the memory of her greatest and wisest benefactors. Even now the colony for which he sacrificed himself begins to view him as a chief character in its history, and it will yet univeisally acknowledge him as the greatest, the wisest, the most upright of its advisers, promoters, and benefactors.

Or,D Scotland for Ever. — The Baron Dupin, the French Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, has recently published the first part of the labours of the Frerch. Commissioners in the Industry of Nations. In explaining results and differences, he makes the following remarks :—": — " The Attica of the north, with its naked mountains, its frozen islands, and its sky of iron — Scotland — sends to the different nations more productions of its soil and its arts than the vast country of Mexico, vith its silver mines, worked by hundreds, its eternal spring, its sunshine like that of Egypt, and its vegetation, in the presence of which even that of the ancient promised land and the wonderful East i 3 weak. Scotland, with her numerous flocks, helps to feed London, the city of 2,500,000 souls. By the works of two of her sons, Adam Smith and James Watt, she has anticipated England in the study of riches ; uniting practice with theory, she has drawn from the vapours of water the most powerful and the most obedient of moving forces, in order to apply it to an infinite variety of arts. At this day Great Britain builds a larger number of iron steam-ships than are built by all the nations of Europe put together ; and of this wonderful work of Great Britain, little Scotland does more than the half !"