42

CHAPTER V.

LATE MEMBERS.

Lord King-Lord Suffield.

LORD KING used to take a part in the debates on most questions of importance, especially on those connected with the Church of England. He hated the church in the aggregate; but the Bishops, or her "titled dignitaries," as he was accustomed to call them, were the objects of his special aversion. As Dr. Johnson avowed himself on all occasions to be an ardent admirer of a good hater, one almost regrets that the learned lexicographer was not a contemporary of Lord King. The Doctor's admiration of his Lordship would have known no limits, for a more cordial unqualified hater of any fellowbeing, or class of fellow-beings, never existed than Lord King, in reference to the Bishops. They were a moral nuisance in his eyes, and the feeling, it is right to add, was, in some measure, reciprocal. The religion which the Bishops profess teaches them to love their enemies; but as bishops are only men, and as to err is human, they regarded his Lordship with something of the same feeling as he evinced towards them. In short, to use a homely but expressive phrase, "There was no love lost between them." That must have been an obstacle of no ordinary kind which would have prevented Lord King's presence in the House when the Church or the Bishops were about to be brought on the carpet. Nothing short of some physical impediment could, in such a case, have kept him away. To hear the Bishops abused, to see the Church attacked in all her strongholds, was to him, beyond all doubt, the greatest luxury which life could afford. It was bliss beyond compare. It was so supreme that it inspired him with a disrelish for all the ordinary sources of enjoyment. Many were the assaults which his Lordship made on the Church and the Bishops; indeed, he was a constant thorn in the flesh of ecclesiastical dignitaries, as he sometimes called them. He was not without talent, though the bitterness of spirit with which he assailed them was, to say the least of it, fully as prominent as his abilities. He never minced matters when

arraigning the conduct of the bishops. His epithets of crimination were as unequivocal as they were numerous. Never did human being labour with greater zeal and more untiring perseverance to turn the tide of public feeling against any class of men, than did Lord King to turn it against the Bishops. That he and others have not laboured in vain, is sufficiently manifest in the state of public feeling on that point, at this moment. His Lordship's hostility to the Church and the Bishops was always sufficiently open; it was so much so that no one ever charged him with covert enmity to them. Even in many of his speeches on other subjects, you saw undoubted indications of the ruling passion, in the sly cutting sarcasms towards the Bishops with which his matter abounded. I have said that his Lordship was not without talent. To say no more on that subject were unfair towards his memory. He certainly had no pretensions to be considered a first or even a second rate man, but it is undeniable that he was above mediocrity. His speeches never wanted stamina, though that stamina was not always-indeed hardly ever-of a very superior kind. He was not to be put down by an opponent; he possessed that moral courage which taught him to fly in the face of the public opinion of his day, and of the numerical votes of both Houses of Parliament. His arguments were usually good, and they seemed to occur to his mind without effort. Though you were not struck with any ingenuity in his manner of putting them, they were always so cogent, and so much to the point, that you must have found great difficulty in triumphantly combating them. His language was not much elaborated: it was plain and perspicuous, but strong withal. He spoke with some rapidity, and always fluently. His aim was invariably so clear, that obtuse indeed must have been the mind which failed to perceive it. It would often have been a happy circumstance for the bishops, had they been able with any grace to affect an unconsciousness of his attacks on them and the Church of England. His gesture was liberal, without being redundant.

His voice was fine and sonorous, but he was never sufficiently impassioned in his manner to do justice to it; it did not want compass, but it was seldom or never called into full play. He usually spoke with much ease. He did not hesitate or falter, or become confused. He spoke as one who knew his subject, and who was sufficiently confident in his own intellectual resources. His articulation was always distinct, and his manner, on the whole, pleasant. At times he

spoke with a rapidity which impaired the effectiveness of his elocution.

In person he was tall and stout. There was more of robustness than corpulence in his appearance. His face was full and round. His features were regular, but had nothing indicative of any peculiarity of character. His complexion was florid, and his hair white. At the time of his death in 1834, he was in the fifty-seventh year of his age.

Lord SUFFIELD is one whose name ought to be had in everlasting remembrance. His exertions in the cause of suffering humanity in our West India Colonies were zealous and unremitting. And this not for a short time, but for a long series of years. The noble Lord's exertions to emancipate the slaves in our Colonial possessions, were unequalled both as respects their strenuousness and their duration by those of any otherman in the country in the same cause, with the single exception of Mr. Buxton. He, indeed, until Lord Brougham's elevation to the Peerage, stood, in a great measure, alone in the Upper House, in his advocacy of the claims of the negro population of the West Indies. If a few other Peers adventured a word in favour of the 800,000 slaves in that part of the British dominions, it was done timidly, coldly, faintly. It was also done but seldom. On Lord Suffield alone devolved the task, and to him alone belonged the glory, of boldly denouncing negro oppression, and asserting the claims of the poor slaves to freedom. And this required no ordinary moral courage; for not only was almost every other Peer silent on the subject of the wrongs of the slaves, but almost every one, not excepting some of the most distinguished Liberals, was adverse to their emancipation. Had the cold sneers, the cutting sarcasms, the most abundant ridicule, or the most violent hostility of an overwhelming majority of the house, been sufficient to frighten him from the path of humanity which he had resolved to tread, he must, in the outset, have shrunk from the advocacy of negro rights. He, however, in the consciousness of the excellence of his cause, fearlessly braved everything, and held on with undeviating consistency in his career, until he saw the great principle which he had so long, so earnestly, so unremittingly asserted, gloriously triumphant. He died soon after. The circumstances under which the noble Lord's death took place are so well known to all, that it were unnecessary to advert to them.

Lord Suffield was a man of talents. They were not of a commanding order, but they were considerably above mediocrity. He was quick at detecting the fallacies or misrepre

sentations of an opponent, and was usually effective in exposing them. If you never saw anything profound in his speeches, neither did you ever perceive anything silly or feeble. If you were never startled or delighted by anything brilliant or original, neither were you sickened by anything absurd or stupid. His matter was always respectable, it was often more; it had the merit of being happy. There was frequently much force in his arguments, and ability in the way in which he put them. Those of his opponents who volunteered a reply to his speeches, found, before they had resumed their seats, that the task they had undertaken was by no means so easy as they had flattered themselves it would be before they rose. His argumentation was not refined or ratiocinative, but it was cogent from its inherent clearness, and the simple yet forcible way in which he either vindicated his own positions or assailed those of an opponent. His style was not elaborated; it had no appearance of being forced. It was plain, mixed with occasional traces of carelessness. His periods were not rounded; his speeches would have told with greater effect had they been more so.

As a speaker, the noble Lord did not rank high. His delivery was not good. His voice was weak, and somewhat unmusical, though it could not be said to be harsh. He did not speak with ease or fluency. Occasionally he seemed at a loss for suitable words wherewith to express himself; at other times he slightly stammered. He spoke in a low subdued tone of voice. He either could not, or would not, raise his voice sufficiently high to produce any effect. Speaking never seemed, for its own sake, to be any source of pleasure to him. Nature never intended him for an orator: and he knew it. Hence he never addressed the house except from a sense of duty. He very seldom spoke except on the great question of negro emancipation-a question which, to his mind, was paramount to all others which ever came before the house since his accession to the Peerage, and which, in so far as public matters were concerned, almost entirely absorbed his thoughts.

His action was moderate. He occasionally raised his right arm slightly, but otherwise stood motionless, with his eye always steadily fixed on the Lord Chancellor. His manner was modest and unassuming in the extreme. His features gave no indication of the moral courage he possessed. One who saw his countenance but did not hear him speak, would have thought him so timid as to be quite incapable of boldly

facing a body of men, the great majority of whom were most decidedly hostile to his opinions and objects.

He was about the middle height, and somewhat slenderly made. His complexion was dark. He wore large whiskers, which, like the hair of his head, were of a dark grayish colour. His eye was quick and clear. His brow slightly projected, which gave to his eyes something of a retiring appearance. His countenance had an intelligent and benevolent expression. He was in the fifty-fourth year of his age when the accident occurred, which, in the short space of eight or ten days, terminated in his death.