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CHAP.
III.

his two wives. But twenty-one out of the first brood of twenty-two died without descendants, and the Lydney estate, which Benjamin had possessed, passed away to the issue of his daughter Anne, who had some years previously married a Mr. Bragge. Anne's eldest son, Charles Bragge, had been sent as a boy to Winchester. There he had had the good fortune to form acquaintance with Henry Addington. Henry Addington and Charles Bragge became firm friends, and Bragge cemented their friendship by marrying Addington's sister. Brother Bragge's' fortune was practically made by his marriage. Addington became Prime Minister, and Bragge was made Treasurer of the Navy and Secretary of War. In the Talents administration he became Master of the Mint. Perceval offered him a seat in the Cabinet in the autumn of 1809; but Bathurst, like Vansittart, refused to desert Lord Sidmouth. He was appointed in 1812 to the Duchy of Lan

caster.

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Lord Sidmouth's brother-in-law Bragge,' and his brother, Hiley Addington, were the two politicians with whom Lord Sidmouth's name is most closely associated. They suggested the epigram with which Addington was taunted in 1804 :

When his periods hobble vilely,

What'hear him '! burst from brother Hiley!
When his faltering periods lag,

Hark to the cheers of Brother Bragge.1

But Brother Bragge was Brother Bragge no longer. His mother's twenty-one brothers and sisters were all dead, and he had himself succeeded to his grandfather's patrimonial estates at Lydney, and to his grandfather's name. Bragge-Bathurst, or Bathurst, as he was thenceforward usually called, did not, however, owe everything to his marriage with Lord Sidmouth's sister. He must have had higher qualities of his own which his incapacity in

1 Buckingham's Geo. IV., vol. ii. p. 340.

1

debate has partially obscured. Perceval said of him in 1805 he is a man of sterling worth, as a man of business as well as a gentleman.' It was Canning's opinion that Bathurst was an able man, and an acquisition to any party.' As Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, however, Bathurst could have found little room for the display of his qualities as a man of business. His colleagues must have often wished that he had a little less sense and a little more eloquence.

CHAP.
III.

Frederick Robinson was a younger man than any of Robinson. those who have hitherto been mentioned. The second son of the second Lord Grantham, he inherited a taste for political life. Born in 1782, at the termination of the war he had not completed the thirty-third year of his age, and he owed the position, which he had already attained in the political world, more to the accident of his birth than to any qualities of his own. Robinson had been educated at Harrow and at Cambridge; he had become private secretary to Lord Hardwicke, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland under Addington's Administration, before he was of age. Perceval introduced him to responsible office as Under Secretary of the Colonies and as a Lord of the Admiralty. After Perceval's death in 1812, he was promoted to the Vice-Presidency of the Board of Trade. He still occupied this subordinate position at the close of the war, but he was already regarded as one of the most probable recipients of political promotion. Few people, indeed, could have foreseen how rapid his advancement was to become. He became President of the Board of Trade in 1818, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1823, Secretary of State for the Colonies and Lord Goderich in 1827, and Prime Minister a few months afterwards. An easy-going cob accustomed to single or double harness, quiet under the

1 Perceval's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 149. Colchester, vol. ii. P. 180.

CHAP. saddle, and having no objection to the plough, the harrow, or the mill.'1

III.

Robinson must have had some qualifications, besides his birth, to win for him these rapid promotions, but it is almost impossible for the historian to detect where these qualifications lay. He was not quick, he was wanting in decision, he saw the end long before he saw the means, and his too sanguine hopes and self-complaisant disposition often led him into difficulties for which there was no escape without ridicule.' The serene composure with which, in a period of unprecedented distress, he expounded his budgets won for him the name of Prosperity Robinson. His feeble good-nature subsequently acquired for him the nickname of 'Goody Goderich.' After rising to the very highest station in the State, he fell, and became absolutely insignificant. Succeeding to another title, men forgot that the amiable nobleman, whom they knew as Lord Ripon, had once been nick-named Prosperity Robinson and Goody Goderich; they were utterly oblivious of the fact that in the days of their fathers he had filled many offices in the State and had been Prime Minister. "Who was Lord hipon?' was the question in 1859, when the ex-Prime Minister died.3

Such were the three men on whom Castlereagh and Canning mainly relied in the session of 1816. There were indeed three other statesmen who held subordinate situations in the ministry, who had higher qualifications, and who eventually acquired greater distinction, than Bathurst, Vansittart and Robinson. But a long period passed before Huskisson, Peel, or Palmerston, were admitted into the Cabinet; and it will therefore be convenient to defer an account of these men to a later period of this history. The opposition side of the House had far more ability at its disposal. Ponsonby and Grattan were indeed hardly equal to Castlereagh and Canning. But 1 Ann. Reg. 1859, p. 476. • Ibid. p. 475. 3 Ibid. p. 476.

Castlereagh and Canning had no such subordinates to rely on as Tierney, Whitbread, Brougham, Romilly, and Horner. It was the misfortune of the Whig party to lose four of its strongest representatives, Ponsonby, Whitbread, Romilly and Horner, at the most critical period of its history, almost immediately after the conclusion of the war. Tierney and Brougham are therefore the only two of these personages who exercised any lasting influence on English politics.

CHAP.

III.

Tierney's career illustrates, in a very striking way, the Tierney. jealousy which the Whigs entertained of new men. Had he been the son of a country gentleman, or the distant relative of a peer, he would undoubtedly have succeeded to the lead of the Whig party on Fox's death in 1806, and he would probably have left a very great name behind him in the annals of the Whigs. Being only the son of a Spanish merchant, he never acquired the confidence of his party. He held office three times in his life, once under Addington in 1803, once under the Talents administration in 1806, and once under Canning in 1827. Nothing but his wealth secured him a seat in Parliament, nothing but the death of all his rivals. gained him ultimately the nominal lead of the Whig party. He represented in the course of his career Colchester, Southwark, Athlone, Bandon Bridge, Appleby, and Knaresborough. His elections must have cost him a fortune. At Colchester there was a double return; he only gained his seat for Southwark, which he had lost after a costly contest, by a costly petition. In 1807 he offered Lord Abingdon's trustees 10,000l. for the two

1 The lead which he enjoyed was only nominal. The Grenvillites can hardly be said to have acted with him, At the very commencement of 1818 Wynn, Stanhope, and Phillimore quietly seceded from the Opposition, and endeavoured to form the nucleus of a third party: Fre

mantle and Banks became their
allies; and other moderate Whigs
were disposed to flirt with them.
Memoirs of Regency, vol. ii. pp. 211,
226, 233. The extravagant price at
which the services of the third party
were ultimately secured by the Tory
Government will be related further on.

CHAP.

III.

Brougham.

seats at Westbury. Expenditure of this lavish description did not however obtain for him any compensating advantages. He never filled any higher office than the Presidency of the Board of Control; he never held any office for twelve months in succession; his name has almost dropped out of history; and the circumstance for which he is now best remembered is the duel which he once fought with Pitt.

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Yet Tierney was one of the very last statesmen who deserved to be forgotten. He lived amongst a race of parliamentary giants, and under such circumstances even he made his mark. Addington used to say that there was no one whose Parliamentary talents he envied more than Tierney's, as he always expressed his meaning in the clearest manner, and said neither more nor less than he intended.'2 His eloquence was colloquial, he was unrivalled in restating the argument of an opponent and turning it to ridicule. Men wondered as they listened to him how they themselves could have failed to detect the absurdity of the reasoning which was thus consummately exposed. His great powers of sarcasm, his admirably simple language, his readiness and dexterity, made him a particularly efficient debater. When Fox seceded from Parliament in 1798, Tierney supplied his place and managed by the vehemence of his attacks to maintain a show of opposition. Yet it was humorously said at that time, that the opposition generally went home to dinner with Tyrwhit Jones in his coach. Ponsonby reinstated in the nominal lead of the opposition,' wrote Speaker Abbot in January, 1810, but, he added, Tierney the efficient man on that side.'4

Brougham was an abler man than Tierney, and a far more formidable opponent to his adversaries. Yet, like Tierney, he never quite achieved the distinction which his

1 Romilly, vol. ii. p. 200.
2 Sidmouth, vol. ii. p. 135.

3 Memoir, Ann. Reg., 1830.
Colchester, vol. ii. p. 225.

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