Page 78.

After Lord John's failure to form a Ministry, Peel returned to power; Gladstone replaced Stanley at the War and Colonial Office, and Stanley became the acknowledged leader of the protectionist Opposition. Having Lord John's assurance that the Whigs would support anti-Corn Law legislation, Peel set about preparing his famous measure. But before it could be discussed in Parliament, the usual explanations with regard to resignation and resumption of office had to be gone through. In his speech on this occasion, Lord John tried to shield Lord Grey as far as possible from the unpopularity which he had incurred by refusing to work with Palmerston in the same Cabinet. Feeling on both sides of the House was against Lord Grey; for both Free Traders and Protectionists thought that Repeal ought to have come from the Whigs, and that it was Lord Grey who had made this impossible.

Lady John remained in Edinburgh, too ill to move. While her husband was helping Peel at Westminster, the following letters passed between them:

Lord John to Lady John Russell
LONDON, January 23, 1846
I did not write to you last night, as I thought I could give you a clearer account to-day. Sir Robert Peel gave up Protection altogether on the ground that he had changed his opinion.... I dine with the Fox Club [to-day?] and at Lansdowne House to-morrow. I have rather startled Lord Lansdowne this morning by some of my views about Ireland.

Page 79.

Lady John to Lord John Russell
EDINBURGH, January 25, 1846
I never doubted that you were as noble by nature as by name; and I am now more happily convinced of it than ever. Your whole speech was plain and excellent, but the part that I dwell upon with the greatest pleasure is that about Lord Grey.... I generally think your speeches a curious contrast to Sir Robert's, and it does not fail on this occasion. His humble confession of former errors, his appeal to our sympathies, and his heroic tone at the close, all got rather the better of my reason while I read; but the more I think over his conduct, the less becomes the effect of his words. Yours, on the contrary, as usual, only gain in force the more they are reflected on, simply because they are true. And now, having congratulated you quite as much as is good for your vanity, I must praise myself a little for the way in which I have hitherto borne your absence. What with its present pain, the uncertainty as to when it may end, and my varying and wearying state of health, I have many a time been inclined to lie and cry; and if ever I allowed myself to dwell in thought on the happy days which sad memory brings to light, I should lie and cry; those days when neither night nor day could take me from your side, and when it was as difficult to look forward to sickness or sorrow as it now is to believe that health and happiness--such happiness as that--are in store for us. But I do not dwell upon past enjoyments, but upon present blessings, and I do lie and talk and read and write and think cheerfully and gratefully.
Dearest, I know you cannot see much of the children, but when you do, pray be both Papa and Mama to them. Do not let their little minds grow reserved towards you, or your great mind towards them. Help them to apply what they hear you read from the Bible to their own little daily pleasures and cares, and you will find how delightfully they take it all in.
God bless you, my dearest. Pray go out every day, and take Isabel and Bessy or one of the small ones with you sometimes to enliven you.
Lady John to Lord John Russell
EDINBURGH, January 26, 1846
Your mention of the dreams which you had had of happiness for Ireland made me sad, and you know how I shared in those dreams.... I like the way in which politics are talked here, it is far enough from the scene of action for them to lose much of their personality, and for all the little views to be lost in the greater--and yet the interest is as great as in London.

Page 80.

Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby
EDINBURGH, January 28, 1846
Well, I wonder what you will say to the debate or rather the explanations in Parliament. Are not John's and Sir Robert's speeches a curious contrast? and is not John a generous man? and is not Sir Robert a puzzling one? and was there ever such a strange state of parties? What an unhappy being a real Tory must be, at least in England, battling so vainly against time and tide, and doomed to see the idols of his worship crumbled to dust one after another. In your benighted country [Italy] their end is further off; but still it must come. I am reading a book on Russia that makes my blood boil at every page. It is called "Eastern Europe and the Emperor Nicholas," and I am positively ashamed of the reception we gave that wholesale murderer in our free country.
Lord John to Lady John Russell
CHESHAM PLACE, February 1, 1846
The Ministry will carry their Corn Measure, but will hardly last a month after it. What next? I think the next Government will be Whig, as the Protection party have no corps of officers in the House of Commons. So that their only way of avenging themselves upon Peel is to bring in a Liberal Ministry.
Lady John to Lord John Russell
MINTO, February 7, 1846
I am glad you have a satisfactory letter from the doctor. A volunteered letter from him, as this was, must be a good sign.... I shall all my life regret not having been with you at this most interesting period in our political history; for the longest letters can but barely make up for the loss of the hourly chats upon each event with all its variations which are only known in London. Then, I think how sad it is for you to have nobody to care, as I should care, whether you had spoken well or ill. But all this and much more we must bear as cheerfully as we can; and I am glad to think that though one wife is far from you, your other wife, the House of Commons, leaves you little time to spend in pining for her. I think you quite right in your intention of voting for Sir Robert's measure as it is, in preference to any amendment which would not be carried, and might delay the settlement of the question. Not, as you well know, because I am not heart and soul a Free Trader, but because I think it a more patriotic, as well as a more consistent, course for you to take. Then if you come into office, as seems probable, you may make what improvements you like, and especially put an end to the miserable trifling about slave-grown sugar; a question in which I take a sentimental interest, as your first gift to me was your great sugar speech in 1841.

Page 81.

Lord John to Lady John Russell
HOUSE OF COMMONS, February 9, 1846
Here I am in the House of Commons, on the important night of Corn, having just introduced Morpeth as a new Member. It all makes me very nervous--I mean to speak to-night, and I must take care not to join in the bitterness of the Tories, and at the same time to avoid the praise of the Ministry, which I see is the fashion. ... I am glad you all take such interest in the present struggle--it would be difficult not to do so. Our majority will, I hope, be eighty. As matters stand at present no one feels sure of the Lords.
Lord John to Lady John Russell
CHESHAM PLACE, February 16, 1846
The events of the last few days have been remarkable. There has been no move, no agitation in the counties; but wherever a contest is announced the Protection party carry it hollow.... In London the Protectionists have created in a fortnight a very strong and compact party, from 220 to 240, in the Commons, and no one knows how many in the Lords--thus we are threatened with a revival of the real old Tory party. Of course they are very civil to us, and they all say that we ought to have settled this question and not Sir Robert. But how things may turn out no one can say.
Lord John to Lady John Russell
CHESHAM PLACE, February 21, 1846
I trust the feelings you have, and the enjoyment you seem to take in the flowers and buds of the garden, show that you have before you the opening Paradise of good health.
Baby's letter is very merry indeed. I long to see his little face and curly locks again.
I am going to have a meeting at twelve and of twelve on the affairs of Ireland. It is a thorny point, and vexes me more than the Corn Laws. Lord Bessborough and Lansdowne are too much inclined to coercion, and I fear we shall not agree. But on the other hand, if we show ourselves for strong measures without lenitives, I fear we shall entirely lose the confidence of Ireland.

Page 82.

February 22, 1846
We are much occupied with the affairs of Ireland--I am engaged in persuading Lansdowne to speak out upon the affairs of that unhappy country, where a Bill called an Insurrection Act seems the ordinary medicine.
Lady John to Lord John Russell
Minto, February 23, 1846
You were quite right to send the children out in spite of the remains of their coughs, but how hard it is for you to have all those domestic responsibilities added to your numerous public ones. It is more than your share, while I linger away my hours on the sofa, without so much as a dinner to order for anybody. Your Coercive measures for Ireland frighten me. I do not trust any Englishman on the subject except yourself, and you cannot keep to your own opinion in favour of leniency and act upon it. I often think how unfortunate it is that there should be that little channel of sea between England and Ireland. It prevents each country from considering itself a part of the other, and a bridge across it would make it much more difficult for Orange or Repeal bitterness to be kept up. I send you Lord William's ²⁶ letter. But first I must tell you that in a former letter from him he compared you to Antony throwing away the world for Cleopatra.... I read one of Lord Campbell's Lives aloud yesterday evening--Sir Christopher Hatton--a short and entertaining one; but from which it would appear that a man can make a respectable Lord Chancellor without having seriously studied anything except dancing....

Page 83.

Lord William Russell to Lady John Russell
Genoa, February 12, 1846
My dear Sister--I thank you much for your letter of the 4th from Minto, but regret to find my letters make you not only angry, but very angry. If I was within reach I should have my ears well cuffed, but at this distance I am bold.... You will not have to get into a towering passion in defending your husband from my accusation of loving you too much and dashing the world aside and bid it pass, that he might enjoy a quiet life with his Fanny. I begin by obeying you and asking pardon and saying you did quite right not to think me in earnest, and to "know that I often write what I do not mean," a fault unknown to myself, and one to be corrected, for it is a great fault, if not worse. The letter just received pleases me much, for I find in it a high tone of moral rectitude, a noble feeling of devotion to your husband's calling, an unselfish determination to fulfil your destiny, an abnegation of domestic comfort, a latent feeling of ambition tempered with resignation, such as becomes a woman, that do you the highest honour.... I think the crisis we are going through in England very alarming ... a frightful system of political immorality is stalking through the land--the Democracy is triumphant, the Aristocracy is making a noble and last effort to hold its own, unfortunately in so bad, so unjust, so selfish, so stupid a cause, that it must fall covered with shame.... The hero of the day, Cobden, is a great man in his way, the type of an honest manufacturer, but for the moment all-powerful. I am domiciled with your brother and sister,²⁷ under the same roof, dine daily at their hospitable table, sit over the fire and cose and prose with them, sometimes alone with your sister, who thinks and talks very like you, that is, not only well but very well.
I am very affectionately yours,
W. R.
P.S.--You say it would be unworthy of John to pine for office. I think the difficulties of a Prime Minister so great and the toil so irksome that the country ought to be full of gratitude to any man that will undertake it. I am full of gratitude to Sir Robert Peel for having sacrificed his ease and enjoyment for the good of his country, and to enable us to sit in the shade under our own fig-trees. Glory and gratitude to Peel.
Lord John to Lady John Russell
CHESHAM PLACE, February 15, 1846
I have been to St. Paul's to-day. Mr. Bennett enforced still further obedience to the Church, and what was strange, he said Papists and Dissenters were prevented by the prejudices of education from seeing the truth--as if the same thing were not just as true of his own Church. I do not see how it is possible to be out of the Roman Catholic pale and not use one's own faculties on the interpretation of the Bible. That tells us that our Saviour said, he who knew that to love God with all our soul and to love our neighbour as ourself were the two great commandments, was not far from the kingdom of God. This surely can be known and even followed without a priest at all.

Page 84.

Lady John to Lord John Russell
MINTO, February 27, 1846
You seem to have had a very pleasant dinner at the Berrys, and I wish I had been at it. I wonder sometimes whether the social enjoyments of life are for ever at an end for me: and in my hopeful moods I plan all sorts of pleasant little teas at Chesham Place--at home from nine to eleven on certain days, in an easy way, without smart dressing and preparation of any sort beyond a few candles and plenty of tea. I feel and always have felt ambitious to establish some more popular and rational kind of society than is usual in London. But the difficulty in our position would be to limit the numbers: however, limiting the hours would help to do this; and I do not think one need be very brilliant or agreeable oneself to make such a thing succeed well. But what a foolish presumptuous being I am, lying here on my sofa, not even able to share in the quiet amusements of Minto, making schemes for the entertainment of all the London world! However, these dreams and others of a more serious nature as to my future life, if God should restore me to health, help to while away my hours of separation from you, and make me forget for awhile how long I have been debarred from fulfilling my natural duties, either to you, the children, or the world. This, believe me, is the hardest of the many hard trials that belong to illness, or at least, such an illness as mine, in which I have mercifully but little physical suffering.
Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby
MINTO, March 1, 1846
What pleasant times we live in, when the triumph of right principles brings about one great and peaceful change after another in our country; each one (this from Free Trade in a great degree) promising an increase of happiness and diminution of war and bloodshed to the whole world. No doubt, however, its good effects will be but slowly perceived, and I fear there is much disappointment in store for the millions of poor labourers, who expect to have abundance of food and clothing the moment the Bill becomes a law. Poor creatures, their state is most deplorable and haunts me day and night. The very best of Poor Laws must be quite insufficient. Indeed, wherever there is a necessity for a Poor Law at all there must be something wrong, I think; for if each proprietor, farmer and clergyman did his duty there would be no misery, and if they do not, no Poor Law can prevent it. You cannot think how I long for a few acres of our own, in order to know and do what little I could for the poor round us. It would not lessen one's deep pity for the many in all other parts of the country, but one's own conscience would be relieved from what, rightly or wrongly, I now feel as a weight upon it; and without a permanent residence one does not become really acquainted with poor people in their prosperity as well as adversity; one only does a desultory unsatisfactory sort of good. I have not seen Dickens's letter about the ragged schools of which you speak. What you say of the devotion of the Roman Catholic priests to the charities of religion reflects shame on ours of a purer faith, but is what I have always supposed. The Puseyites are most like them in that as well as in their mischievous doctrines; but then a new sect is always zealous for good as well as for evil.

Page 85.

Lord John to Lady John Russell
CHESHAM PLACE, March 3, 1846
I am so happy to find you have had a good night and are stronger in feeling. If you had not told me how weak and ill you have been I should have been beyond measure anxious; but, as it is, and with your letters, I have been very unhappy and exceedingly disappointed. For my hopes are often extravagant, and I love to look forward to days of health and happiness and gratitude to God for His blessings.... Need I say after all I have suffered on your account that while I am conducting my campaign in Italy²⁸ my thoughts are always with you? ... I cannot bear your absence. The interest of a great crisis, and the best company of London cannot make me tolerably patient under the misfortune of your being away; and it is you, and you alone who could inspire me with such deep love.

Peel had taken the first step towards feeding the poor at home. He had also done his best to relieve the immediate distress of Ireland. Shiploads of Indian corn had been landed, and public works for the help of the destitute established up and down the country. But the chief grievance of the Irish, which was at the bottom of half the agrarian crime, had not been remedied. The House of Lords, by having thrown out Peel's Bill for compensating outgoing tenants for improvements their own money or exertions had created, was largely responsible for the violence and sedition now threatening life and property throughout Ireland. The true remedy having been rejected by the Lords, the Government had to meet violence by violence. No sooner had the Corn Bill been passed in the House of Commons than Peel brought in a stringent Sedition Bill for Ireland. Lord John and the Whigs disliked the Bill because it was extremely harsh.

Page 86.

Lady John to Lord John Russell
EDINBURGH, March 12, 1846
Nothing that I read in the speeches in favour of the Coercion Bill convinced me that it would do the slightest good.... It must embitter the Irish against England, for which there is no need. Nothing can be more shocking than the continual outrages and murders in Ireland; but it is the penalty we pay for a long course of misgovernment, and from which nothing but a long course of mild and good government can set us free; certainly not severe indiscriminate measures which mark out Ireland still more as an unhappy conquered province, instead of a part of the nation. Such are my sentiments, dearest, on this subject, which always makes my blood boil.... I read the "Giaour" two nights ago to Addy--it has as great and as numerous beauties as any poem Byron ever wrote--but I find I am not old enough, or wise enough, or good enough to bear Byron, and left off feeling miserable, as he always contrives to make one; despair is what he excels in, and he makes it such beautiful despair that all sense of right or wrong is overwhelmed by it. I said to Addy that one always requires an antidote after reading Byron, and that she and I ought instantly to go and hem pocket-handkerchiefs, or make a pudding--and that is what she has illustrated in the newspaper I send.
Lord John to Lady John Russell
HOUSE OF COMMONS, March, 1846
Your views about the Irish Coercion Bill are very natural; but Bessborough, who is the best authority we have about Irish matters, thinks it will tend to stop crime--and especially the crime of murder. I should be loath to throw out a Bill which may have this good effect; but I shall move a resolution which will pledge the House to measures of remedy and conciliation. This may lead to a great debate.... The little girls look very nice, but Toza²⁹ is, if possible, thinner than ever. However, she laughs and dances like a little fairy. I dined with Mrs. Drummond yesterday. Macaulay ³⁰ was there--entertaining, and not too much of a monopolist--I mean of talk--which, like other monopolies, is very disagreeable.

Page 87.

Lady John to Lord John Russell
EDINBURGH, March 19, 1846
After dinner we drove to Portobello sands and there got out and walked for an hour; the sea was of the brightest blue, covered with sails; Inchkeith and the opposite coast so clear that every inequality of hill or rock was seen; Arthur's Seat, grand and snowy, was behind us, and the glittering sands under our feet--the whole beautiful far beyond description and beyond what I have yet seen it in any weather; for the east wind and bright sun are what it requires. How I did wish for you! I need not say that I only half enjoyed it, as I only half enjoy anything without you. My comfort in your absence is to think that you are not taken from me for nothing, but for your country's service; and that even if we could have foreseen four years ago all the various anxieties and trials that awaited us, we should have married all the same. As it was, we knew that ours could not be a life of quiet ease; and it was for me to decide whether I was able to face the reverse--and I did decide, and I am able--
"Io lo cercai, fui preso
Dall' alta indole sua, dal suo gran nome;
Pensai dapprima, oh pensai che incarco
E l'amor d'un uomo che a gli' altri e sopra!
PerchÈ allor correr, solo io nol lasciai
La sua splendida via, s' io non potea
Seguire i passi suoi?"
Now I am sure you do not know where those lines are from. They are a wee bit altered from Manzoni's "Carmagnola"; and they struck me so much, when I read them to-day, as applicable to you and me, and made me think of your "splendida via" and all its results.
Lady John to Lord John Russell
EDINBURGH, March 23, 1846
Thanks for your precious letter of Saturday. You need not grieve at having brought cares and anxieties ... upon me. You have given me a love that repays them all; and such words as you write in that letter strengthen me for all that our "splendida via" may entail upon us, however contrary to my natural tastes or trying to my natural feelings. What a delightful hope you give of your getting away on the 2nd--but I am too wise to build upon it.
Lady John to Lord John Russell
EDINBURGH, March 25, 1846
.... There is a calmness and fairness and depth in conversation here which one seldom meets with in London, where people are too much taken up by the present to dwell upon the past, or look forward to the future--and where consequently passion and prejudice are mixed up with most that one hears. Dante, and Milton, and Shakespeare, etc., have little chance amid the hubbub of the great city--but with all its faults, the great city is the place in the world I most wish to see again.... At poor Lady Holland's one did hear the sort of conversation I find here, and surely you must miss not only her but her house very much.

Page 88.

Lord John to Lady John Russell
April 3, 1846
At all events pray do not distress yourself with the reflexion that you will not be a companion to me during my political trials. You have been feeling strong, ... that strength will, I trust, return. I see no reason why it should not--and there is no one in existence who can think so well with my thoughts and feel so truly with my feelings as yourself. So in sickness and in sorrow, so in joy and prosperity, we must rely on each other and let no discouraging apprehensions shake our courage.

Meanwhile in Parliament the Irish Coercion Bill was dragging on. Lord Bessborough and other Whig peers had changed their mind about its value, and Lord John, instead of proposing an amendment, definitely opposed it. The Protectionists, eager to revenge themselves upon Peel, who, they felt, had betrayed them, caught at the opportunity and voted with the Whigs. The Government was defeated by a large majority on the very day the Repeal of the Corn Laws passed the House of Lords, and the Queen sent for Lord John, who became Prime Minister in July, 1846.

This time, beyond the usual troubles in the distribution of offices, he had no difficulty in forming a Ministry; but when formed it was in an unusually difficult position. They were in power only because the Protectionists had chosen to send Peel about his business, and the Irish problem was growing more and more acute. The potato crop of 1846 was even worse than that of 1845, and Peel's system of public works had proved an expensive failure, more pauperising than almsgiving. The Irish population fell from eight millions to five, and those who survived handed down an intensified hatred of England, which lives in some of their descendants to this day.

Page 89.

In the autumn of 1846 Lord John, little thinking that a home would soon be offered to him by the Queen, bought a country place, Chorley Wood, near Rickmansworth.

Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby
CHORLEY WOOD, RICKMANSWORTH, December 12, 1846
About the 10th January we all go back to town for good, as John must be there some time before the meeting of Parliament. Oh that meeting of Parliament! It is so different from any I have ever looked forward to; and though it has always been awful, this is so much more so. I shall then first really feel that John is Minister, and find out the pains of the position, having as yet little experience of anything but the pleasures of it. Then will come the daily toil beyond his strength, the daily abuse to reward him, and the daily trial to us both of hardly meeting for a quarter of an hour between breakfast and bedtime. In short, I had better not begin to enumerate the evils that await us, as they are innumerable. However, I feel very courageous and that they will appear trifles if he succeeds; and if he is turned out before the end of the session, I shall never regret that he has made the attempt. It is a fearful time to have the government in his hands; but for that very reason I am glad that he and no other has it. The accounts from Ireland are worse and worse, and what with the extreme misery of the unfortunate poor and the misbehaviour of the gentry, he is made very miserable. As he said this morning, at times they almost drive him mad.

During Lady John's long illness in Edinburgh, Francis Lord Jeffrey had been one of her kindest friends, and had helped to brighten many a weary hour by his visits and conversation.

Lord Jeffrey to Lady John Russell
EDINBURGH, December 21, 1846
It is very good in you to remember my sunset visits to you in the hotel. I never pass by its windows in these winter twilights without thinking of you, and of the lessons of cheerful magnanimity (as well as other things) I used to learn by the side of your couch. The Murrays and Rutherfords are particularly well; the latter will soon be up among you, and at his post for the opening of a campaign of no common interest and anxiety. For my part, I am terribly frightened--for the first time, I believe I may say, in my life. Lord John, I believe, does not know what fear is! sans peur as sans reproche. But it would be a comfort to know that even he thinks we can get out of the mess in Ireland without some dreadful calamity. And how ugly, in fact, do things look all round the world!

Page 90.

One of the first acts of Lord John's Government was to vote £10,000,000 for the relief of Ireland. In July, 1847, Parliament was dissolved. When it met again Lord John was reluctantly compelled to ask for its votes in support of an Irish Bill resembling the one on which the Liberals had defeated Peel the year before.

A bare enumeration of the difficulties which beset the new Prime Minister brings home a sense of his unenviable position. Ireland was on the verge of starvation and revolt; everywhere in Europe the rebellions which culminated in 1848 were beginning to stir, seeming then more formidable than they really were in their immediate consequences; in England the Chartist movement was thought to threaten Crown and Constitution; and, in addition, the country had taken alarm at the weakness of its military defences. Lastly, for power to meet all these emergencies Lord John was dependent, at every juncture, upon the animosity between the Protectionists and Peelites proving stronger than the dislike which either party felt for the Government. There were 325 Liberals in the House; the Protectionists numbered 226; the Conservative Free Traders 105; so the day Protectionists and Peelites came to terms would be fatal to the Government. Such were the troubles of the Prime Minister, who was a man to take them hard. As for his wife, her diaries and letters show that, however high her spirit and firm her principles, her nature was an intensely anxious one.

In December, 1846, they both went down for a short holiday to Chorley Wood, where, on the last night of the year, they held a "grand ball for children and servants. All very merry. John danced a great deal, and I not a little. Darling Johnny danced the first country dance, holding his Papa's hand and mine."