Leading Articles on Various Subjects — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Leading Articles on Various Subjects
John Stuart Mill · en
The country has not yet forgotten that the Lord Chancellor of 1832 and
the two following years was no wild Radical. There was no leaven of
Chartism in Lord Brougham, though a very considerable dash of
eccentricity; and really, for a man who had been contending so many
years in the Opposition, and who had attained to so thorough a command
of sarcasm, he learned to enact the courtier wonderfully well. Neither
'Tompkins' nor 'Jenkins' had as yet manifested their contempt for the
aristocracy; nor had the 'man well stricken in years' written
anonymous letters to insult his sovereign. The universal suffrage
scheme found no advocate in the Lord Chancellor. He could call on
Cobbett in his chariot, to attempt persuading the stubborn old Saxon
to write down incendiarism and machine-breaking. He breathed no
anticipation of the 'first cheer of the people on the first refusal of
the soldiery to fire on them.' As for Reform, he was very explicit on
that head: really so much had been accomplished already, that a great
deal more could not be expected. Little could be done in the coming
years, he said, just because there had been so much done in the years
that had gone by. The Lord Chancellor was comparatively a cautious and
prudent man in those days--on the whole, a safe card for monarchy to
play with. Radicalism had learned that Whigs in office are not very
unlike Tories in office; and to Brougham it applied the remark: nor
was he at all indignant that it did so. All his superabundant energies
were expended in Chancery. We unluckily missed hearing him deliver his
famous speech at Inverness, and that merely by an untoward chance, for
we were in that part of the country at the time; but we have seen and
conversed with scores who did hear him: we are intimate, too, with the
gentleman who gave his speech on that occasion to the world, and know
that a more faithful or more accomplished reporter than the editor of
the _Inverness Courier_ is not to be found anywhere, nor yet a man of
nicer discrimination, nor of a finer literary taste. There was no
mistake made regarding his Lordship's sentiments when he spoke of the
Reform Bill as well-nigh a final measure; nor did his delight in the
simple-minded natives arise when he pledged himself to recommend them,
by the evening mail, to the graces of good King William, from their
wishing the bill to be anything else than final. Even with its
limited franchise, he deemed it a very excellent bill; and the
woolsack, to which it had elevated him, a very desirable seat. People
did occasionally see that Hazlitt was in the right--that he was rather
a man of speech than of action; that he was somewhat too imprudent for
a leader, somewhat too petulant for a partisan; and that he wanted in
a considerable degree the principle of co-operation.