Letters of Lord Acton Part 12

[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 2, 1881_]

I have not fired all my shot, and I don't rely on Hartington's translation. His last speech does not strike me favourably.

He puts away the compensation argument in a fas.h.i.+on more parliamentary than statesmanlike. In debate, where effects are immediate and momentary, one is glad of anything that tells against opponents, and gets used to phrases instead of reasons.

Macaulay was indiscreet enough to write to his const.i.tuents on Windsor Castle paper. It was good material for a laugh, and no more; but Peel and Graham never let him hear the end of it. "From the proud Keep of Windsor you bade the lieges have no fear," and such like seemed equivalent to argument. When one addresses the Nation, with a sort of Manifesto on a difficult, new, and dangerous question, one must go straight to the point. We expect of a real statesman that he will take the case of his adversary not by its weak end, but at its strongest; that he will see whether he cannot even strengthen it before he replies. If he deals with the weak points, like a lawyer, somebody will follow, and will beat him. That is part of the integrity of public men. And I must say that H.'s idea that he meets the case for compensation by asking whether rack-renting landlords are to be paid for their iniquity, {117} exposes him to a rejoinder so crus.h.i.+ng as to damage his position and to strengthen my plea.

There is no constructive power among the Whigs. There is some among the Democrats, because their principles have been thought out, and provide legislation for generations. But the two men capable of working out thoughts into system on other than purely democratic lines are Derby and Goschen. And they are outside, and do not really contribute to the force of the party.

There was that omission in my former letter--not quite by accident.

Many things are better for silence than for speech: others are better for speech than for stationery. I have a large store of these.

[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 14, 1881_]

---- is so much stronger that I really believe that I shall be able to run over for a short visit, and the temptation is strong upon me to take your kind words literally. May I come--by the morning train from town--on Monday, the second day of 1882? It would be the pleasantest beginning of a New Year that I could possibly imagine, after a melancholy autumn.

To-morrow I am off to Nice with M., after the Blue Rose, and Christmas presents for the others. They tell me that Mr. Cross[155] is here. If so, I hope to have a talk with him about the difficult life he is writing.

I have been looking forward to the books of the Year, which I have not had courage to send for, especially the life of the most fascinating writer[156] of the day, and the letters of Bishop Thirlwall. I am glad to {118} think that I need not stop in London to read them, and am extremely interested by what you say of Thirlwall. I never found him very attractive or accessible, personally.

The success of Newnham is a thing to congratulate your sister on. As to Herbert, the papers enable me to follow his wanderings and conversations with old Irishwomen. He must be making himself very useful to Mr. Gladstone; and I rejoice at symptoms in this day's papers which tend to weaken my inclination to compensation.

Of course you will tell me if the proposed date had better be exchanged for another, if there is any incompatible visit just then or for any other reason. I should not start until Thursday, the 29th.

[Sidenote: _Cannes Dec. 27, 1881_]

The telegram summoning me for Sat.u.r.day arrived late last night. If the trains keep time, I shall catch the Boulogne tidal from Paris on Friday, and so obey the summons. I presume there is a 9 or 10 A.M.

train which will land us at Chester early enough in the afternoon to reach Hawarden about sunset. It looks like an early departure for Downing Street, which will be an affliction. Or perhaps some visitor with whom I ought to clash. But I am quite prepared to find the secret agent of the Vatican at Hawarden, and to look as if I took him for an African lion....

[Sidenote: _Athenaeum Jan. 7, 1882_]

... I met three Ministers last night at dinner, and the impression is that Mr. Gladstone is remarkably well. But the Conservatism of London is something too excessive.

I met at the Russells', Maine, Monck, F. Leveson, and Reay. At the Athenaeum, Hayward, {119} H. Spencer, May; and there are much worse croakers than these.

It will be quite refres.h.i.+ng to spend Monday at Seac.o.x, with a man[157]

who is understood to be travelling towards the Ministry, and no longer away from them. It has been impossible to call in Downing Street; and I dare say your mother was rus.h.i.+ng about. But I am to meet them, thanks to you as usual, at Lansdowne House this evening.

At the Museum, Poole gave me the papers to read that Mr. Gladstone spoke of.

[Sidenote: _Cannes Jan. 17, 1882_]

In London I saw everybody I had designed to look for, except John Morley.... Sir Henry Maine got me to criticise the proof of a lecture on the King and his Successor, which you will see in the February _Nineteenth Century_. I hope he accepted some of my amendments; but he was obdurate about the most important. He says that Primogeniture has been of very great political service. I admitted this, but objected that there is another side to the question, that Primogeniture embodies the confusion between authority and property which const.i.tutes modern Legitimacy, that Legitimacy has, in this century, acted as an obstacle to free inst.i.tutions, and that a one-sided judgment thrown off as that sentence is, gives a Tory tinge to the entire paper. He answered: "You seem to use Tory as a term of reproach."

I was much struck by this answer--much struck to find a philosopher, entirely outside party politics, who {120} does not think Toryism a reproach, and still more, to find a friend of mine ignorant of my sentiments about it. And I am much tempted to have it out with him, and discover what he really means. Besides which, I spent some hours in Mark Pattison's company; found Reay desponding, but eager to speak; May,[158] very much depressed; H----, pottering feebly, as I thought, over Montlosier,[159] whom he does not understand, in the _Quarterly_, and Junius, whom he does not discover, in the "Encyclopaedia"; Monck[160] remarkable as the one happy Irishman.

I should like to impress one thought on your mind: Much will depend on your success in making the work of the Session sit lightly on the P.M.

in getting him to yield to distractions, even to amus.e.m.e.nts, and no longer to consider change of work an equivalent to rest. A house near town, the play, I had almost said the opera, might be a help. If he would be unprincipled enough to refuse tiresome dinners, however far off, and then to accept pleasant ones, at short notice, it would be worth a great deal. In short, a little demoralisation is the best security I can see for the supreme perfecting of his career.

By-the-bye, you condemn me for my indefinite answers to some very searching questions; and I find you are right. At least I have read a paper on the Revised Version which satisfies me that I ought to have joined more heartily in Mr. Gladstone's censure of it. But I have been reading it to my children, and it had got a.s.sociated with very sweet moments. Once {121} more, I perceive that my letter is full of everything except yourself....

[Sidenote: _Cannes Jan. 25, 1882_]

I return the letter of my heroine[161] with many thanks. It reminds me of what she wrote to me. If I could find it I would send it to you....

I think there is a piece of truth in Mr. Ottley's remark. Her strongest conviction, the keystone of her philosophy, was the idea that all our actions breed their due reward in this world, and that life is no reign of reason if we put off the compensation to another world.

That is a moral far more easily worked in cases of outward, transitive sin than in those which disturb only the direct relations of man with G.o.d. These indeed are cases which may partly depend on our belief in G.o.d, not only in humanity and human character. Deny G.o.d, and whole branches of deeper morality lose their sanction. Here I am preaching against Bradlaugh, after all!

Her genius would no doubt reveal to her consequences which others cannot imagine. But still the inclination of a G.o.dless philosophy will be towards palpable effects and those about which there is no mistake.

Especially in a doctrine with so little room for grace and forgiveness, where no G.o.d ever speaks except by the voice of other men. Defined and brought to book, that is a detestable system. But it is not on the surface--and many men can no more be kept straight by spiritual motives than we can live without policemen.

Still there is a piece of truth in this paganism. Looking at history, not at biography, taking societies, and not individuals, we cannot deal with things seen by G.o.d alone; things take other proportions; the scale of {122} vice and virtue is not that of private life; we judge of it by its outward action, and hesitate to penetrate the secrets of conscience. The law of visible retribution is false even there. But it is true that the test and measure of good and evil is not that of the spiritual biographer.

I shall punish Sir H. Maine with your very striking remark about Toryism.

That is a perilous point, about suspiciousness. By all means we should think well until forced to think ill of people. But we must be prepared for that compulsion; and the experience of history teaches that the uncounted majority of those who get a place in its pages are bad. We have to deal chiefly, in life, with people who have no place in history, and escape the temptations that are on the road to it. But most a.s.suredly, now as heretofore, the Men of the Time are, in most cases, unprincipled, and act from motives of interest, of pa.s.sion, of prejudice cherished and unchecked, of selfish hope or unworthy fear.

[Sidenote: _Cannes Feb. 20, 1882_]

I spent at Rome a most interesting fortnight, explaining the history of the Church and of the world to M., listening to a great debate on the representation of minorities, and hearing a good deal of the M.P.[162]

who neither has nor has not a mission. We wound up with two days at Florence, and I accompanied M. to Genoa, along the finest part of the Riviera, and then went to Bologna, to a dying relation. All which has stood in the way of coming home, of writing, and of knowing what is going on. I am reading up the debates, and your letters light up the task.

{123}

Bonghi, who has a volume of Roman History ready, spent an afternoon with me in the Forum; but proved unsound about Ireland. Minghetti took us over the palace of the Caesars, as they call the Palatine. I took M.

the round of imperial statues and monuments of the Popes, hanging a tale to each, and I am afraid her impressions of history are gloomy.

We made up for it a little at Santa Croce, with Dante and Fos...o...b..oni; and in Savonarola's cell at S. Marco, I sat in his chair, and told her of the friar who died for his belief that the way to make men better was to make them free.

I was not happy about Errington. Everybody spoke well of him. But there was too manifest a desire to amplify the significance of his position, and to entangle him in Roman schemes and views.