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    and family were barbarians , —like the best English nobles of that day , Horace Walpole , who was not of the Whig genus , excepted ; but Fox lived , in his youth , a great deal abroad , and in the cultivated good society , saturated with Voltaire , of Paris and Italy , and he acquired tastes and faculties and sympathies which puzzled the then Holland House , and also Brookes ' , when he got home—his French verses , of which any fairly educated English youth of twenty of our day would be heartily ashamed , being regarded by a British society not very well

    able to spell , as proofs of surprising genius . Fox became the idol of the young fellows , ; and as Fox read everything , particularly novels , it became a fashion to be clever—especially with the women . But the other heroes of the party were literary . Burke first , and then Sheridan , sustained and intensified the tone imparted by Fox to the party—men like Barre and Francis having prepared the way for that allusive and " smart" style of debating which Gibbon deplored , and which reached its perfection when Sheridan thundered a quotation from

    Demosthenes , which he subsequently confessed was in the Irish tongue , or as near an approach as he could remember to that enthusiastic language . That the fashion did as much harm as good to the " Whigs is quite certain . Every young Whig wrote something when he came of age : and the majority of the young Whigs made great messes of literature—or if they succeeded , got spoiled as politicians . Lord John wrote a play and a biography ; and has ever since ,

    no doubt , deeply regretted that he thus offered a real test of the extent of his capacity . On the other hand , Shiel , who was , if anything , a Whig , like all the young Irish collegians who worshipped Grattan , wrote a play which spoiled him— -he acted all his life after . For a certain time the literary reputation of the Whigs gave them an artistic position as a party : and they derived immense advantage , as the reading public increased , from the accession to their cause of all the clever fellows who

    turned up . Holland House was somewhere to go to : and the poets on town decided on Whiggery To have Moore on their side was worth fifty votes to the Whigs ; and how easily astute nobles could contrive to silence all the dangerous pens , was illustrated in Moore ' s career—for by a little flattery , a little cottage , and a little aid of directer sorts , they kept him quiet , intense Irish patriot as he was , even after Sheridan was deserted—and even while O'Connell was being prosecuted . Very slight management , and a few dinners , secured Sidney Smith , Jeffrey ,

    and Brougham : and the Edinburgh Review got the intellect of England alongside the Whigs . " All the talents" were so obviously Whigs , that every man of genius took to the party as a matter of course . Byron was no Whig , cither by connexion , or by nature : and yet Byron was flattered and petted . into doing enormous service to the Whigs by doing enormous mischief ( and more out of England than in it ) to the Tories—strong Tories , too , like Castlereagh and Wellington . Mackintosh was taken up by the Whigs because he attacked Burke ( whoso

    style , all the Whigs said , had fallen ofl "—as soon as ho left them ) : and yet Mackintosh hud as little sympathy with Whig principles as with French principles . Canning lounged into tho Whig party as an inevitable thing ; it was only when , matured , his vigorous and honest genius discovered that tho Whigs were diletantti , that ho sought tho more masculine sympathies of Pitt . In those days tho Whigs , eternally out , and forced to cultivate external alliances , managed

    the press excellently . They sent Terry gossip and invitations , and , what is more , dined with him : so with Hunt , and as clever and influential men of tho same class ; and the result was , that the press—which in these days , neglected , is abstract and to party useless—educated the rising generation' to believe in the Whigs . We wonder now when an editor of a # reafc journal dines with Lord Aberdeen : in those days royal Whig dukes went to dine with editorsand the editors did not chronicle the fact . "

    And , after all , thin patronage of literature , at first an accident , and then a policy , wan very definite :, — or rather very indefinitely small , in substance . There arc no instances of Whig liberality to men of genius ; whorcao there uru ninny instances of Tory liberality to men of jfcniuti . Canning- and Disraeli , one tho son of an actress , the other the sou of a Jew

    antiquarian , got the " lead" of the House of Commons : are there such instances on the Whig side ? When the Marquis of Rockingham died , Burke was the natural heir ; but he was pooh-poohed into a fourth or fifth place , and set aside in favour of Charles Fox , who was a mere Lord Derby : and it was when Burke discoyered , in the very zenith of his genius , that an unfamily-ed " adventurer" had no chance with young noble ' s addicted to declamation on the rights of man , that he left the Whigs , — taking on them a terrible vengeance by arresting

    the French Revolution ! Sheridan ' s is a parallel case . Too much has been made of his sorrows : he was not more worthless , or half so immoral , as Fox : but he was worthless and he was immoral : and he died friendless , because he had never deserved to keep a friend . But he served the Whigs for years : served them when he could have got from George IV . what he most needed , —money—to desert them : and yet they never gave him a first office or seat : —and on his death-bed he cursed them and the hire for which he had sold his genius .

    Prophetically , with justice : for when he died they maligned him : and Lord Holland , the hospitable Lord Holland , tells , in his book , how " Sherry , " when his guest , used to take a bottle of wine and a book— " the former for use "—up to bed , and how he would stop , next morning , on his way to town , at a Kensington public-house for a drain : —interesting details , but hardly worthy of the narration of a hospitable entertainer . The Whigs bought Moore , and made him eternally contemptible , —a traitor to the creed and the country to which he lavishly professed devotion : but at how small a price !

    They gave his father a gaugership : they gave him 300 / . a year . That as a party ; and as individuals , they did less . When Moore was flying from the Bermuda storm— " still vexed " in the law courts , too—they made him offers of help so small that he was compelled to decline them . Lord John Russell proffered him the copyright of the dismal Biography , not adding—strangely enoughhis share in the receipts during the performance of Don Carlos ! Not a Whig followed * Moore to his grave ; and Moore ' s legacy to the Whigs , —that they would make such use of his MSS . as would bring his widow a small annuity , whereupon to , end her days ,

    —is so nobly appreciated , that rather than club 100 / . per annum between them , they soil his memory by pitching to the public the undigested mass of his essentially private papers . So on to the end of the list of Whig agents . To Mackintosh , as to Macaulay afterwards , they gave a second-rate Indian ap pointment . They attempted to retain Brougham as their abject tool : and because Brougham resisted , they reviled him . They never could bear great law officers : as Fox hated Thurlow and Dunning , Lord John Russell has sneered at Brougham and

    suppressed Roebuck , —wherefore Brougham dictated , and Roebuck wrote their history . * Tho Whigs were always promising to promising young men : but never fulfilled a promise . Mr . Fonblanque was , for a space of twenty years , the greatest of the " Liberal" " Wits , " before he was found out by the Whigs ; and excepting Mr . Fonblanque , not a Liberal writer , who was not also one of tho caste , has , in later times , received at the hand of the Whigs a passport to the service of tho country . And those who were in " the House" fared worse : for their ambition

    was the more conspicuous , and their disappointment the more glaring . Charles Bullcr was a surpassingly brilliant man . At one point in his career , if he liad headed tho . Radical party , he would have effected wonders . But he sank all his energies , all his genius , all his honour , iu , the service of tho Whigs : perhaps because ho was very poor , but I believe because ho was misled by the iijnis fatuu . v of the historic glory of tho Whim . Such a perfect

    parliamentary man had not turned up since Charles TownshoneL ; ho was created for tho House of Commons . Yet he died , full of remorse and misery ; he had been kept down , whilo Cretins liko Lord had been put up . Tho catalogue ( and it might" bo amplified to pain ) m as long as the list of Margaret ' s lovers—used , and then scorned—who floated down tho Seine , below tho Tour do Nusle . Lately , Holland IIouho becamu shunned as the ; Wluir Tour do

    Nesle : and in our day the old Whigs broke down because every young Liberal—a premature Ulysses —found that though the Syrens made pleasant music—they kept their places . A terrible chapter of history would be " the Whigs and their Victims : "—

    " In verdant meads they sport , and wide around Lie human bones , that whiten all the ground . " Old parties need new blood : but blood is simply the product—of food . Whether the Whigs have not always been as unreal'in their politics as unearriest in their patronage of letters , is a question , appropriately raised in discussing the career and character of the amiable Marquis of Lansdowne , which will never be fairly discussed but by some man like Guizot , who , without

    being an Englishman , comprehends as thoroughly as any Englishman could , English history . At this period it is a question to be raised by Liberals , without the slightest danger to the Liberal cause . The English people have no longer to seek popular triumphs by playing different sections of the aristocracy against one another * In our day our democracy has to pit Manchester against Downing-street , —the ambitious middle class against the whole of a wornout aristocracy . Mr . Disraeli said , when turned out , that he was sure of one thing , —that England had

    never loved coalitions : but between the last and any preceding coalition there could be no parallel . This last was a c oalition , in fact , of the whole of the aristocracy—of Whig and Tory ; all others were coalitions of sections of Lords against other Lords ; and though , even in this case , a clique of Lords are left out , they are Lords without a party or a principle , and , consequently , leaving out Lord Derby means as little in history as leaving out Lord Greylosing Lord Palnierston as little as leaving out Lord Grey . And by such a coalition the Whigs commit

    suicide ; or rather , the alliance of a Tory leader like Lord Aberdeen with the alliance of a Whig leader like Lord Lansdowne , is the alliance of Mezentius with a corpse : and hence the propriety of an inquest on Whiggery . And an impartial investigation does not lead to the conclusion that the Whigs have ever been respectable . That the empire is indebted to them for every advance in liberty and organisation since the Revolution of 1688 , is palpably true , —and that at this moment the whole aristocracy is , so to speak , Whig—and that we have a coalition dependent for its chances upon a competition , with the

    middle class , in Liberalism , — are beyond all question . But the Tiger fought with the Lion for the Lamb , not for the Fox ' s sake : and the Fox eat his Lamb without a thought of gratitude to either of the combatants . " Civil and Religious Liberty" has never been more than a cry with the W higs ; whereas " Church and State" was more than a cry with the Tories -their interests were bound up in Conservatism , and their intcrestswere the interests of their class , whicn included the Whigs . The " glorious revolution , " with which the Whigs always began their congratulation s , was a colossal imposture on the people . The result was to make the House of Commons omni potent , ana

    gradually the House of Commons got more and more afraid of the people ; but , in intention , tho Whiga , who comprised most of the titled nobility , meant merely to destroy a Monarch who had resolved himself to rule , and not to let tho Aristocracy rule , tne nation . How far religious liberty was meant , wn » proved by the penal laws against the Papists in l J land ; and Scotland , in an early massacre , and oi afterwardsascertained the extent of Whig and lJatt

    , devotion to civil freedom , while England , l > ° minZ Dutch Treasure House ( and always , —is not tho sa feeling exhibited to this day , —abhorring the nilo o " Foreign Frinco" ) , perceived how much finer it ^ to be governed by a Stadtholdcr than by * * ° V ~ though tho price of tho Stadtholdcr waa a n national debt . The reign of Anno ( and cven soon the aristocracy had split again , so that her soon cue aristocracy imei hjmio i * s »» " , «~ - ¦ - j , h

    lininent :, when hIio died , was the most Hig ^ ' rlcfl and Prerogative Parliament since tho time ot C i ^ II ., —which suggests the " progress" made > y ^ glorious revolution ) has been called tho A " ^ an ( i ago of England .- —and so it was—for liberty , ei religious , was dead . Tho Whigs held P <> '" tho two first Georges' reigns , not because * ^ , oric 3 for civil and religious liberty , but because tli ftnt were JocobiticM , and because the Kings wcro ^ or j 0-and brutal foreigners , compolled to rely on

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    * I li « writer of tliiH , however , anfiumcH « s to the tono of that work . Hu novor rend it .

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    1 < 2 * 4 TRET LEADER . [ Saturday ^

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 17, 1853, page 1214, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2017/page/14/