LIFE OF THE RIGHT HON. SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH, BART., M.P., F.R.S. Life of the Right Hon. Sir William Molesworth, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., by Mrs. Fawcett, LL.D. /*/ MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY IQOI All rights resented Ofl S3G M7F3 " EVERY such war [with an external foe] is necessarily an Imperial war ; the troops employed in it are employed for Imperial purposes, and consequently their expenses ought to be paid by the Imperial Government ; though in certain cases it would not be unreasonable to expect that the Colonies should assist the Empire both with troops and money ; and I feel con- vinced that if the Colonies were governed as they ought to be, they would gladly and willingly come to the aid of the mother country in any just and necessary war. They would do as the men of our old North American plantations did during a war with France, when they willingly bore a large portion of the burden of the contest with that monarchy and its Indian allies, and in every way proved themselves to be the hardy and generous sons of England." House of Commons speech by Sir William Moles- worth, April 10, 1851, on a motion for the reduction of Colonial expenditure. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION i CHAPTER I PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION . .7 CHAPTER II ENTRANCE INTO POLITICAL LIFE . . -33 CHAPTER III "THE LONDON REVIEW" . . . .54 CHAPTER IV THE REFORM CLUB . . . . .70 CHAPTER V THE ORANGE LODGES . . . .82 CHAPTER VI FAMILY AFFAIRS 1836 .... 101 vi SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAPTER VII PAGE DECLINE OF PHILOSOPHIC RADICALISM. . .114 CHAPTER VIII SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH AS A COLONIAL REFORMER THE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE . . 135 CHAPTER IX THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND ASSOCIA- TIONS . . . . . .154 CHAPTER X CANADA . . . . . .182 CHAPTER XI THE EDITION OF HOBBES AND SIR W. MOLESWORTH'S RETIREMENT .FROM PARLIAMENT . . . 206 CHAPTER XII 1841-45 LIFE AT PENCARROW MARRIAGE . .226 CHAPTER XIII SOUTHWARK ELECTION, 1845, AND SIR WILLIAM MOLES- WORTH'S POSITION ON QUESTIONS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY ... . 243 CONTENTS vii CHAPTER XIV PAGE AGAIN IN PARLIAMENT WORK ON COLONIAL REFORM 264 CHAPTER XV THE LAST OF TRANSPORTATION . . . 282 CHAPTER XVI SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH JOINS LORD ABERDEEN'S GOVERNMENT AS FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS 295 CHAPTER XVII SOUTH AFRICA IN 1852-54 . . . .310 CHAPTER XVIII CLOSING YEARS . . . . .326 APPENDIX DESCENT OF SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH FROM HENDER MOLESWORTH, THE FIRST BARONET . . 343 OF SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH'S HOUSE OF COMMONS SPEECHES ON COLONIAL SUBJECTS . 344 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF CHIEF EVENTS IN SlR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH'S LIFE . . 345 INDEX ...... 347 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Right Hon. Sir William Molesworth, Bart., M.P., 1854. From a Mezzotint . . Frontispiece Sir Arscott Ourry Molesworth, Bart. . . . Face 10 Mary, Lady Molesworth ..... Face 14 " The Pencarrow Academy " Caricature ... 29 Sir William Molesworth, Bart., M.P., at the age of 22 Face 38 Sir William Molesworth, aged 12. Silhouette . . 41 " A Leading Article of the Westminster Review." Political Sketches, No. 535, by John Doyle . Face 67 Charles Buller, M.P., Thomas Woollcombe, Arscott Ourry Molesworth, John Temple Leader, M.P., "Greek" Trelawney, Sir William Molesworth, Bart., M.P. . . 71 Francis Alexander Molesworth . . . . ,, 166 Sir William Molesworth, Bart., M.P. . . . 239 The Right Hon. Sir William Molesworth, Bart. From the Bust by Behnes in Parliament House, Ottawa ...... 240 Memorial Bronze Relief in St. George's Free Library, Southwark, by George Frampton, A.R.A ,,340 INTRODUCTION IT will be generally conceded that the most im- portant political event of recent times is the demonstration of the strength of the tie which unites Great Britain with her Colonies, and that this tie is not only capable of bearing the tension of war, but has gathered strength through that very tension. The great difference in the reciprocal feelings between the mother country and the Colonies at the present moment, and even a few years ago, can be referred by almost every one to personal experience and memory. But the extraordinary difference in this feeling between the present time and fifty or sixty years ago can only be gathered by those who take the trouble to make themselves acquainted with events too recent for history and too remote for politics. Such books as Miss Martineau's History of the Thirty Years' Peace, 2 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH 1815-18451 teem with evidence of Colonial dis- content and disloyalty : discontent and disloyalty which should be entered in the National Ledger as " for value received." In one of Miss Martineau's concluding chapters, she says : " Next to Ireland, our Colonies continue to be the opprobrium of our empire." The half- century which has passed since these words were written has converted the " opprobrium of our empire " into its greatest glory and pride. A group of men, represented inside Parliament by Lord Durham, Charles Buller and Sir William Molesworth, and outside Parliament by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and John Stuart Mill, deserve the chief credit of this brilliant transfor- mation. They saw, and gradually educated the public to see, that the true remedy for Colonial discontent could be found only by giving every Colony, as soon as circumstances rendered it possible, self-government and free representative institu- tions. When the small band of Colonial Reformers began their work they had against them the whole official class who believed that Colonial self-govern- ment would be inconsistent with the sovereignty of Great Britain, and also the popular political philosophy of the day, represented first by Bentham, and later by Cobden, which favoured the complete INTRODUCTION 3 relinquishment of that sovereignty. It says much for their practical sagacity and statesmanship that the Colonial Reformers were able to make way igainst such odds. The settlement of Canada after the rebellion of 837-38 was so brilliant an achievement, that the lames of Lord Durham and of Charles Buller will Iways be illuminated by its fame. John Stuart [ill has so many claims on the remembrance and gratitude of the present generation that there is 10 need to light a taper at his shrine. Edward ribbon Wakefield and Sir William Molesworth stand in a different category, and there appeared for some years a chance that the work of these two men as Colonial Reformers and as founders of the present Colonial system of Great Britain might fall into undeserved neglect. Dr. Richard Garnett las recently written an interesting monograph >n Wakefield, and it is my desire to perform, lowever inadequately, the same office for tolesworth : to introduce him to the present reneration and show them how much they owe to him. He belonged to the race of intrepid invalids. He hardly knew the meaning of the word health, and his life ended at the age of forty-five. But he was an incessant and indefatigable worker, and he 4 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH has left his mark for all time on the Colonial history of Great Britain. He foresaw, as very few did in his time, that the root of Colonial loyalty could flourish only in Colonial freedom. In 1851, when actual experience of Colonial relations was one long record of discontent verging again and again on rebellion, he raised the question of Colonial expenditure in the House of Commons, and in the course of his speech used the following words : " Every such war " [with an external foe] " is necessarily an imperial war; the troops employed in it are employed for imperial purposes, and con-' sequently their expenses ought to be paid by the Imperial Government ; though in certain cases it would not be unreasonable to expect that the Colonies should assist the Empire both with troops and with money, and I feel convinced that if the Colonies were governed as they ought to be, they would gladly and willingly come to the aid of the mother country in any just and necessary war : they would do as the men of our old North American planta- tions did during a war with France, when they willingly bore a large part of the burden of the contest with that monarchy and its Indian allies, and in every way proved themselves to be the hardy and generous sons of England." INTRODUCTION 5 The prophecy of 1851 has been amply fulfilled in 1899 and 1901. Sir William Molesworth not only uttered the prophecy but rendered its fulfil- ment possible by helping to base our Colonial 'policy on broad and generous statesmanship. Such a man has a strong claim on the gratitude of the present generation. He and a handful of friends laboured, and we have entered into the fruits of their labours. An acknowledgment of what we owe to those who have gone before is one of the strongest of the links binding the present with the past. Is it permissible to refer to another small link in that chain, the interest in which is largely personal to myself? Almost exactly forty- one years ago (October 1860) Henry Fawcett, young and unknown, offered himself as a parlia- mentary candidate for the borough of Southwark, the constituency which had been represented by Sir William Molesworth at the time of his death, five years earlier. Henry Fawcett stood as an independent Radical in opposition to the official Liberal candidate, and he described himself to the . constituency as a political follower of Sir William Molesworth. Needless to say he was unsuccessful, but it was his introduction to practical political life, and it is a source of some interest that the 6 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH younger man associated himself with the views and aims of the elder. It is the object of the following pages to render accessible some account of the political work of Sir William Molesworth and to give a picture of his personality. My task has been greatly facilitated by the generous confidence of Sir William's only surviving sister, Mrs. Richard Ford of Pencarrow. She possesses a large collection of letters and other documents relating to her distinguished brother, which she has placed unreservedly at my disposal. It would have been impossible for me to have given even the barest outline of Sir William's life without her help and co-operation, for which I take this opportunity of expressing my sincere gratitude. CHAPTER I PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION THE Molesworths of Pencarrow, in the county of Cornwall, are a family of genuine antiquity. One of their traditions is that an ancestor, Sir Walter de Molesworth, accompanied Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I., to the Holy Land in 1270 ; another ancestor, John Molesworth, was certainly " Auditor of Cornwall " in the time of Queen Elizabeth. It was he who settled at Pencarrow. Hender Molesworth, grandson of this John, was President of the Council of Jamaica in 1684 and subsequently Governor of the island. He identi- fied himself with the Whigs of 1688, and he is said to have been the first baronet created by William III. The patent is dated i9th July 1689. A succession of Molesworths (two Johns and a William) represented Cornish constituencies from the beginning of the eighteenth century till almost its close. The marriages of the Molesworths gener- 8 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. ally added strength in the form of either money, brains or beauty to the original stock. One of the most notable of these unions was made in the eight- eenth century, when the Sir William Molesworth of that day married Miss Ourry, a lady in whose veins ran Huguenot blood. She was descended from Louis Ourry, born at Blois in 1682, three years before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1707 his fidelity to his religion drove him from his native country ; he came to England and received a commission in the English army. He and his wife left a position of wealth and influence in France. Of the many valuables in their possession, they were able to bring away only a pearl necklace ;* plate and other treasures were left concealed in France. The Ourrys quickly identified themselves with their adopted country. Louis, the original fugitive, as has been seen, entered the British Army, and of his four sons, one followed his father's pro- fession and the other three entered the Navy. From one of these latter, who to Huguenot blood added the training and traditions of a British Admiral, the subject of these pages was descended. In the Lives of British Admirals, vol. v. p. 113, may still be read how, " in November 1760, Captain Ourry of the Action chased a large privateer and drove her on shore between Cape Barfleur and La 1 Still in the possession of their descendants, the Miss Lemprieres of Pelham, Alton, Hampshire. PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION 9 Hogue, and his cutter scoured the coast and took or destroyed forty vessels of considerable burden which carried on a great fishing near Dieppe." Admiral Ourry was afterwards made Commissioner of Plymouth ; his wife was a Cornish heiress and their daughter married Sir William Molesworth, the sixth baronet, and became the mother of Sir Arscott Ourry Molesworth, the father of our Sir William. Sir Arscott Ourry Molesworth did not neglect the tradition of his race, that the marriages of the family should bring new vigour to the Molesworth stock. His wife was a Scottish lady descended from the Hume family, of which David Hume, the historian, was the most brilliant orna- ment. Our Sir William always took a special pleasure in this connection, and referred to it with well-founded pride when the freedom of the city of Edinburgh was conferred OH him in 1854, the year before his death. Sir William's mother brought to the family into which she married the inheritance of beauty as well as that of mental dis- tinction. She was the daughter of a celebrated Edinburgh beauty, " Betsy Hume." The story is that the beautiful Betsy Hume was engaged to her cousin, Sir Alexander Kinloch,but in spite of this was besieged by another assiduous lover, Captain Brown, who toasted her at every supper party in Edinburgh. When asked how long and how often he would io SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. do this, he replied, " I shall toast her till I make her Brown." Such importunity did not remain unrequited. Sir Alexander Kinloch was gathered to his fathers before he had led his bride to the altar ; the beautiful Betsy Hume became the beau- tiful Betsy Brown and mother of the lady who married Sir Arscott Ourry Molesworth and in course of time grandmother of the subject of these pages, who was born in London on 23rd May 1810. The Molesworths were a short-lived family ; in the eighteenth century baronet succeeded baronet at short intervals. But the Scotch marriage of Sir Arscott Ourry Molesworth brought into the family a strain of much stronger physical vitality. The mother of Sir William Molesworth had a physical constitution which prolonged her life in unimpaired vigour to extreme old age ; she had also the moral qualities of self-reliance, sound judgment, and unbending determination charac- teristic of her country ; and these made her first a competent guardian, and to the end of his life the trusted friend and confidante of her son. He inherited many of his mental qualities from his mother : in her splendid physical constitution he had unhappily no share. His father, Sir Arscott Ourry Molesworth (of whom Pencarrow boasts a splendid full-length portrait by Raeburn), died at the age of thirty-two, on 26th December 1823, i PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION u leaving five children, three sons and two daughters. 1 William Molesworth was thus left, at the age of thirteen years, the eighth baronet of his line, the head of an ancient family, the owner of great estates, 2 in possession of mental vigour far beyond his years and an extremely delicate physical con- stitution : a perilous conjunction notwithstanding all that an able and conscientious mother could do to reduce its dangers. The state of his health rendered the discipline which a public school would have afforded entirely out of the question. He was indeed entered for Eton, but it was impossible for him to go there. In 1824, shortly after his father's death, Lady Molesworth consulted some of the leading physicians of the day on the possibility of letting him go to Eton. The verdict was, "You might as well hang him up at the Cross of Edinburgh." Fragile health was a burden which he carried with him from the cradle to the grave. But his excep- tional mental capacity manifested itself also from his earliest years. When he was hardly more than a baby his sister's governess gave him some of her sums to work out, thinking to distract the mind of the ailing child from his physical sufferings ; he quickly showed his innate interest in study and 1 William, born 1810, died 1855; Elizabeth, born 1812, died 1836; Arscott Ourry, born 1814, died 1842 5 Mary, born 1816, still living ; Francis Alexander, born 1818, died 1846. 2 Tetcott in Devonshire, and Pencarrow in Cornwall. iz SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. a natural capacity for arithmetic, mathematics and scientific pursuits. He spent a short time in a preparatory school at Putney ; but he was too weakly to join in the games of the other boys and was thus thrown more than ever upon his books and his own thoughts. His mother probably did the best that could have been done under the circumstances ; in 1824, when he was fourteen, she went to live in Edinburgh, taking him and her other children with her. Another Cornishman, destined like Molesworth to play a brief but distinguished part in political life, had received part of his education in Edin- burgh, only just escaping being a contemporary of Sir William Molesworth there. Charles Buller had been placed by his parents in Edinburgh, with Thomas Carlyle as his private tutor, in the years 1822-23. Carlyle described Charles Buller with unusual urbanity as "a most manageable, cheery and altogether welcome and intelligible phenome- non : quite a bit of sunshine in my dreary Edinburgh element " ; and again, at the time of Buller's death, Carlyle wrote of him in the Examiner : " A sound, penetrating intellect, full of adroit resources, and loyal by nature itself to all that was methodic, manful, true." There is no evidence that Lady Molesworth was influenced by the Bullers to bring her son to Edinburgh. Her own Scottish connections and her appreciation of i PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION 13 Scottish university education afford a sufficient reason for her choice. Sir William joined many of the university classes ; he also studied modern languages in Edinburgh under first-rate professors, and became a good Italian and French scholar and gained a fair acquaintance with German ; at a later period, a year's residence in Germany and an indus- trious course of study of German philosophy and metaphysics gave him a complete command of the language at a time when it was very little known in this country. During his residence in Edinburgh, boy as he was, he was a great deal noticed by many of the most distinguished men there, among whom he would sometimes mention in later life Sir Walter Scott, Sir William Hamilton, Jeffrey and the Professors Brewster, Leslie, Jamieson, Hope, etc. His Italian master in Edinburgh was a Signor Demarchi, 1 a superior and able man who had been driven from his own country as a political refugee. Young Molesworth became not only his pupil but his friend, and this friendship strengthened the ardent opposition to political despotism which was so marked in Moles worth's after-life. He attached great importance himself to the bias given to his mind by the education he received in Edinburgh. His taste for science was manifested in the usual boyish way : he made himself a chemical laboratory 1 In 1821 this gentleman became Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department in Piedmont. 14 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. and burnt holes in his sister's frocks and nearly poisoned himself by inhaling chlorine gas. At this early period of his life his family gave him the nickname of " the philosopher," which remained with him through life and the remembrance of which is perpetuated in the name of the " Philo- sophic Radicals," the political party with which he was identified on his first entrance into Parliament. More unusual than his chemical experiments was the passion he showed at a very early age for making libraries. Before he was fifteen, all his spare money was spent on books : and the love of books continued to the end of his life. Pencarrow contains three complete libraries, affording unmis- takable evidence of what Sir William's tastes were, just as the three perfect cock-pits in the grounds immediately surrounding the house are indicative of the tastes of his ancestors. By his last will his libraries were strictly entailed ; no book forming part of them may be taken away from the house. While he was still very young he made great progress in his favourite study of mathematics, and it is said that before he left Edinburgh he had mastered the whole of Laplace's Mecanique Celeste. Lady Molesworth, writing to Lord Erskine, British Minister in Munich in 1828, described her son as having been from his infancy " more man than boy." It is rather consolatory, however, to i PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION 15 see that " the boy " gained the upper hand of " the man " from time to time, as for instance in 1 824, when he writes to his mother for his " Italian grammar, likewise my fishing-rod," and adds, " If there is any fishing-tac/f ii ENTRANCE INTO POLITICAL LIFE 39 he could count on a big majority. He must have been a very strong candidate. His hereditary connection with the constituency gave him an advantage from the outset. His style of speaking marked the man : impassioned to the point of imprudence and often beyond it, but not frothy ; he always knew his facts well and never spoke but on a solid substructure of study and reflection. In the words of a near relative, " an undercurrent of energy and action flowed deep and strong beneath a delicate and aristocratic person, which in no wise displeased the masses, ever glad to be led by a gentleman." 1 His address to the electors was issued in June 1832. It is short and to the point. It proclaimed him to be an out-and-out Reformer. He promised to support "every species of just and salutary Reform in Church and State." He advocated National Education, the abandonment of the taxes on newspapers, and the abolition of Slavery, and he pledged himself to give a discriminating support to Lord Grey's Government. " I will support them," he said, " as long as they shall persevere in their present honest and enlightened policy." He probably had a pre- monition that his future relations with the Whig Government would not be characterised by un- 1 From an unpublished sketch written by Sir William Molesworth'* brother-in-law, Mr. Richard Ford, author of the well-known Handbook oj Spain. 40 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. broken cordiality. His friend Charles Buller had been in the House of Commons for two years before the passing of the Reform Bill. All that Buller had learned during those two years of the ways and doings of the Whigs was probably at his friend's disposal; and according to Buller the Whigs of his day were " a heartless, spiritless canaille," an opinion which Molesworth very soon shared and corroborated from his own experience. In the first few years of his House of Commons life he very seldom refers to the Whigs in home letters, or in other familiar correspondence, with- out some such ejaculation as " miserable brutes," or " slippery dogs," or others even less parlia- mentary. The fight between him and the Whigs was of the sort that is always going on between the enthusiastic advocates for reform working on first principles, and hand-to-mouth politicians who will do nothing that they are not absolutely compelled to do by fear of losing power and place. In the General Election of 1832 Sir William Molesworth was returned unopposed for the constituency of East Cornwall, his colleague being Mr. William Salusbury Trelawney. 1 His friend Charles Buller was returned at the same 1 It was Sir William's intention, if his ambition to sit in Parliament had been thwarted, to carry out the scheme of Eastern travel which had so strongly attracted him during his residence in Rome. ii ENTRANCE INTO POLITICAL LIFE 41 time for the constituency of Liskeard, which he represented till his death. A firm political and personal friendship was established between Molesworth and Butter, tempered occasionally but never seriously inter- rupted by Molesworth's fears that Buller was SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH, AGED 12. growing " Whiggish," and by Butter's efforts to moderate the ardour of Molesworth's onslaught on Whigs in general. Particular Whigs, such as the Whigs in Cornwall or the Whigs in office, Buller was willing to throw to the wolves, but from time to time he checked Molesworth's disposition to make public attacks on all Whigs, lock, stock and barrel. 42 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. On his establishment in London, in 1833, for the first session of the Reformed Parliament, Moles- worth quickly showed the temper that was to characterise his political life by voting against the Government of which he was a nominal supporter. He voted against them twice on amendments to the Address, and writes to his mother : " The debate, thank God, will finish to-night and you will find my name in another minority." The occasion of his opposition was the proposal to bring in a new Coercion Bill for Ireland, and he writes fervently : I will oppose this infernal Bill engendered in Hell [i.e. the House of Lords] to the last. . . . Ever yours on this subject most unhappy ; on all other ones, so-so. WILLIAM MOLESWORTH. Though he so ardently opposed coercion in Ireland, he never supported the Repeal movement. He said of himself that he was a Radical, not a Revolutionist ; he would never allow himself to be called a follower of Cobbett or O'Connell or any one else. " I will vote with them," he would say, " when to the best of my judgment they are right." He was very sensitive to the awe-inspiring qualities of the House of Commons, and wrote home that "it takes immense courage to rise in the House ; " he says he intends to break the ice by making short speeches on presenting petitions, ii ENTRANCE INTO POLITICAL LIFE 43 taking the opportunity of doing so when " atten- tion is slack and no one listens, which is an immense advantage for us timid and incipient orators." Describing one of these occasions he told his sister Elizabeth that he was so alarmed he could hardly stand. He discovers, however, that " provided you do not call the Speaker a blackguard or the members of the House six hundred rascals, you can say what you like." It strikes one that there were very few places where Sir William did not say what he liked. Early in the session of 1833 he attended a Parliamentary dinner given by Lord John Russell and was pleased to find that at least half of his fellow- guests had opposed the Irish Bill. Molesworth argued with Lord John in defence of the Ballot and other Radical measures which " Finality John " had not then seen his way to support. Molesworth's Tory uncle in Cornwall, who had taken a natural pride in the compliment paid to his nephew in being returned unopposed for East Cornwall, soon began to exhibit signs of uneasiness at the votes the young member was giving against the Government, and the way in which he was identifying himself with what was then considered extreme Radicalism. The Rev. William Molesworth wrote to his nephew and namesake that his conduct was causing grave dissatisfaction in the constituency and that he was 44 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. seriously imperilling his seat. The younger man replied with a long letter (Feb. 1833) m ^ s own defence, and showed the courage and determination which never throughout his Parliamentary life failed him on similar occasions. He asked his uncle to inform any of his constituents who might complain of the votes he was giving that I consider myself a trustee, and that I am to execute my trust to the best of my abilities and judgment. The moment the majority of my constituents consider my opinions to be different from theirs, the moment they wish me to resign, they need not fear lest I should insist on the septennial lease which I am afraid the present Parliament will not shorten. His sister Elizabeth was both in politics and other subjects completely in sympathy with him. She drew an amusing picture of the Tory uncle perambulating the county defending the two Radical votes of the new member ; but the com- plaining constituents, at this time at any rate, appear to have been more imaginary than real, and Sir William felt rather aggrieved that he had been drawn into writing a long argumentative letter, when "a few words would have sufficed for him, as I know his inaccessibility to argument." " Crabbed age and youth cannot live together," especially when age is a Tory clergyman and youth is a Radical M.P., but notwithstanding ii ENTRANCE INTO POLITICAL LIFE 45 some coolness between the two there was never a positive break in their friendly relations. The whole tendency of Sir William Moles- worth's mind made him a Reformer, and his education had only strengthened his natural disposition. Scotch and German metaphysics made him a liberal thinker in the realm of theology as well as in that of politics. The opportunity he had had of seeing several of the small courts of Germany and Italy made him a Liberal in European politics. The Rev. William Molesworth in his Cornish rectory was not able to exercise any authority of a kind calculated to counteract all these influences, even if they had not been reinforced, as they now were, by the society in which Sir William mixed in London. Accounts of him at this period of his life agree in describing him as singularly attractive in appearance and manners. General Straton wrote to Lady Moles- worth a short letter of congratulation on the favourable impression he had created in his first session : From members of all parties I hear, though of course politics differ, a most favourable account of William's talents. ... I may congratulate you on his being a rising and promising young man. . . . He is in capital health . . . and really is a handsome young man with exceedingly good air and manners. In a later letter General Straton again expressed 46 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. to Lady Molesworth the same favourable impres- sion : I see no frivolity or silly vanity about him, and, as to his political start, a straightforward, independent course is in my mind at least that which bids fairest for fame. Mrs. Grote describes him at the same period as being surprisingly accomplished for his age, and speaks of the animation of his countenance lending a singular charm to his whole appearance. More weighty perhaps than either of the two witnesses just quoted is the testimony of Carlyle to the same effect. In a letter to his mother (3 chiefly Lyrical (1830), and of Poems 1 This was one of the words of the coterie language, in use by the Radical group of the time. 64 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. by Alfred Tennyson (1832) ; it was the first really generous public recognition of the new poet. Molesworth made no secret of his want of sym- pathy with John Mill's taste in literature. Of a later article by J. S. Mill on De Tocqueville, Molesworth wrote : " It is rather better than the Tennyson, though it might be better still." These differences, however, made no break in the close friendship between the two young men. The pecuniary indebtedness of the periodical to Molesworth was not confined to the transaction described by Carlyle ; there was another Radical Review in existence, known as The Westminster, which had been founded in 1 8 24 by Bentham and the elder Mill ; it soon passed into the hands first of Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Bowring, then into those of General Perronet Thompson, author of the Anti-Corn Law Catechism. The existence of another Radical Review was prejudicial to the success of the newly-established London, and exactly a year after the appearance of the first number, April 1835, Sir William Molesworth bought The Westminster of General Perronet Thompson for 1000 and amalgamated the two Reviews under the title of The London and Westminster Review. His proprietorship lasted till 1837, when it was transferred to John Mill, who kept it till 1840, when it again changed hands, and the original title of the first Review, The Westminster, was resumed. in "THE LONDON REVIEW" 65 There was doubtless some little anxiety in the minds of Lady Molesworth and Mr. Woollcombe l when they saw how fast thousands could disappear in literary undertakings. Sir William was only four- or five-and-twenty, and his former guardians may be excused some little uneasiness. He explains in a letter to Woollcombe that the fusion of the two Reviews will be " a real economy," and cut down expenses very considerably. In a later letter from John Mill to Sir William, October 1838, there is a passage about a sum of 17 which Mill said was " on every account " Molesworth's, and he adds : " If you get it, let Woollcombe know that he may include it in the statement of your disburse- ments for the Review, which I am sorry to say it goes but a little way to liquidate." The Review became an organ of very consider- able weight and influence, and was representative for many years of the best literary talent in the Radical party. In its pages appeared J. S. Mill's famous defence of Lord Durham's policy in Canada, which formed a turning - point not only in the career of Lord Durham, but in the relation of Great Britain with her Colonies. This subject will be referred to more fully in a future chapter. The article by John Mill on Tennyson has been already mentioned ; he also wrote an enthusiastic 1 Sir William's solicitor, and his devoted friend through life. He was trustee for the Pencarrow estate after Sir William's death. F 66 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. appreciation of Carlyle's French Revolution ; his father contributed two articles to the opening number, and continued, though in failing health, to give his best efforts to the Review till his death, in 1836. From the first he took a keen interest in the success of the Review and declined to accept any payment for his contributions. Sir William wrote to his mother in reference to the opening number of The London Review, April 1835 : The first article by Mr. Mill is such as no one but he could write, and is in his very best political style. He has behaved most generously to us and refuses to take anything for his writings, thus saving us in the first number some sixty or seventy pounds. The elder Mill shared his son's high opinion of Molesworth's character and capacity. Professor Alexander Bain, in his Life of James Mill, says that the elder man valued the younger both on account of his ability and for having the courage of his convictions. When James Mill died in 1 836 it was noted that of all the friends present at the funeral Molesworth was one of those most notably overcome by grief. In anticipation of James Mill's death, Sir William wrote to his mother : His loss will be much felt by us who look up to him with the greatest respect : more especially by myself, who invariably go to him whenever I have any political difficulty to solve. "A LEADING ARTICLE OF THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW*' Political Sketches, No. 535, by John Doyle. Published 2nd May 1838. in "THE LONDON REVIEW" 67 Sir William's own articles in the early numbers of The London Review are chiefly on the political subjects by which he was for the time engrossed. The only exception discoverable to this rule is a dissertation by him on "Dreaming " in the second number. His interest in the colonies is manifested by an article on New South Wales in an early number. His growing determination to make a concentrated attack on the then prevalent system of transportation of convicts to Australia is de- monstrated in a letter to his sister Elizabeth, dated June 1835, in which he says, in reference to the second number of the Review, then about to appear : " John Austin has taken my subject of secondary punishments, which, as he will do it better than any man in England, I do not regret." In the words of Mr. Ford's unpublished memoir already quoted : " He made use of his articles for a double purpose ; they served as materials for speeches and as reports of their substance." The pages of The London and of The London and Westminster Review from 1834 to 1837 thus afford evidence of the direction of Sir William's chief political activities. There was a continuous and frank interchange of views and news, seasoned by a good sprinkling of " chaff," in these early years between Sir William and his friend Mrs. Grote. She has left on record that to Mr. Grote " he looked up as a 68 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. disciple might to a master, whilst in myself he found an indulgent friend and monitress. I liked and esteemed his noble, frank, and chivalrous char- acter, and took pleasure in affording him the privi- lege of unreserved and confidential intercourse." With all her Radicalism she had a great sense of what was fitting and comme il faut, and she had evidently reproached him for too outspoken or too crude an expression of extreme opinions. In writing to her about the prospectus of the new London Review he retaliates by promising a con- ditional welcome to any article she might like to write, " provided you are not too violent." He ends by begging her to entreat Grote to send an article he had promised on Swiss politics. In a letter to his mother referring to the second number of The London Review, July 1835, Sir William speaks of the sensation caused by the publication of De Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and says that he has secured a promise from De Tocqueville to write for the Review on France. 1 There is an article on the Church by Mr. Mill ; one on Bailey's book by John ; another by the same on Tennyson's poetry ; one on Crabbe's poetry by Blanco 1 This promise was fulfilled in the following year. In the first number of the periodical, after it had assumed the title of The London and Westminster Re-view (April 1836), appeared an article by De Tocqueville called "A View of the Political Condition of France," which excited very great interest in political and literary circles. in "THE LONDON REVIEW" 69 White ; on Canada by Roebuck ; on Austria, a most interesting article, by a German of the name of Gamier ... on Dreaming by myself; on Military Abuses, a very interesting article, it is said ; on Portugal ; on Napier's Ionian Islands, and a Parliamentary review by John Mill. Bulwer promised us ; but broke his promise. References to political rumours follow, and he continues : I am very busy with philosophy and reading Brougham's new book, which is most infernal trash. The Review was now well launched, and has kept its flag flying, though with varying fortunes, ever since. CHAPTER IV THE REFORM CLUB GROTE'S motion on the Ballot, which Sir William Molesworth told his sister had been put off " to God knows when, and he ought to be hanged for it," came on in June 1835. Molesworth seconded him. Charles Buller's favourable opinion of his friend's speech has been already quoted. 1 The Speaker told Charles Austin that in his opinion Molesworth would in ten years be one of the first men in the country. Molesworth wrote to his mother that his speech had gained him the greatest approbation. Every one allows [he says] that we had infinitely the superiority in the debate. Charles Buller's reply is acknowledged by all to have been most masterly, one of the best I ever heard and most enthusiastically re- ceived. ... It was a most gratifying debate; it was the first one in which the younger Radicals had displayed themselves and had obliged the leaders of the other parties to rise against them ; in spite of Lord John, , * See p. 52. CHAP, iv THE REFORM CLUB 71 Stanley and Peel, one-third of the House decided with us : we were a majority of Lord John's former supporters and many of their best friends stayed away. We have damaged the Whigs, and some of them had better look to their seats. . . . There is but one opinion with regard to the present administration, they are the miserablest brutes that God Almighty ever put guts into. Lord Brougham told Lord Kerry that it was the only Ministry in which there was not a single man of talent. The foregoing passage is quoted, not because history has confirmed the sweeping strictures of the young Radical (a Ministry which included Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell cannot be said to have been entirely bereft of men of talent), but to illustrate the extreme tension which existed in 1835 between the various sections of the Liberal party. Besides the Whigs and the Radicals, there was, then as now, the Irish party, and each section regarded the other two with vehement hostility and distrust. It was felt by the Radicals that their political group wanted cohesion and unity of aim, and with a view to bringing its members into closer personal relation with one another Sir William Molesworth and Mr. John Temple Leader, the member for Westminster, took a house jointly in Eaton Square, where they entertained their political friends and made plans for concerted political action. The writer of the notice of Sir 72 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. William in "The Maclise Portrait Gallery" (already quoted) does not fail to remark sarcastically on the flag of liberty being hoisted from a fine house in Eaton Square : " They are convinced that their party will dissolve unless rallied round one particular standard, and they have set up this liberty flag in Eaton Square. They keep a French cook and feed their less fortunate political brethren, a generosity noble on their part, but indeed necessary ; for the wholesome quality of the viands serves to keep these Radicals from starving and likewise greatly elevates the morale of the men." One of Charles Buller's jokes of the period was that the Reform party had been disintegrated and all the aggressive Radicals turned into Moderate Whigs by the excellence of the Speaker's cook. Possibly the dinners given by Molesworth and Leader in Eaton Square were an attempt to lead the flock back to the vigour of their former political professions. A private house, however, can never be a satisfactory headquarters for a political party, and early in 1835 Molesworth began to write in his private letters of the desirability of forming a club. In the new Parliament of 1835 tne Liberal majority was only twenty-three, and {this narrow margin gave additional strength and importance to the Radical group, who now had it in their power at any moment to put their iv THE REFORM CLUB 73 nominal leaders in a minority and consequently to extract concessions from them. The development of the scheme which was afterwards embodied in the founding of the Reform Club is best described in two letters from Sir William Molesworth to his mother. The first was written on i9th February 1835, and the second almost exactly a year later : MY DEAR MOTHER To-day begin the toils, contest and moils of the session. We hope and, I believe, will beat [j/V] if there be any faith in promises. Woe unto them that fail ; however, it will be very close. Our majority is calculated at twenty-three. 1 I was at two meetings yesterday, first at a Radical one. For you must know that a Radical party has been formed separate from the Whigs and from the Irish, to assist in the formation of which was one of my chief objects in coming to town so early. We shall ere long amount to between seventy and eighty. Most probably Grote will be the leader. We intend to have constant meetings in order to concert our measures and oppose the Tories. This is the commencement of a party which will one day or another bring destruction upon both Whigs and Tories. We next had a meeting with the Whigs. Lord John made a speech and requested us not to abuse Sutton 2 and not to cheer if we gained the victory. ... As another 1 The Tories were in office at the beginning of 1835. The Whigs came in in April. The first great fight, here referred to, was for the Speakership. 2 This refers to the fight for the Speakership. Mr. Manners Sutton (after- wards Lord Canterbury) was " the man what we kicked out of the chair " (see p. 61), and also the man with the persuasive cook. The Right Hon. 74 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. means of attacking the Tories a Liberal Club is to be formed, of which the more Liberal Whigs, Radicals, etc., will be members. Lords Durham, Mulgrave, etc., are anxious about it. It will be like the Athenaeum a good dining club. The great object is to get the Reformers of the country to join it, so that it may be a place of meeting for them when they come to town. It is much wanted. Brooks' is not Liberal enough, too expensive and not a dining club. The second letter on the formation of the Reform Club was written in February 1836. MY DEAR MOTHER I have not been able to write to you for an age. I have been so excess- ively occupied. I am going to second Hume's motion against the Orangemen on Tuesday. I shall make a long speech, and I think there will be a grand debate. I have been much occupied in establishing a political club to be called the Reform Club, the history of the transactions with regard to which will James Abercrombie was elected. Among the Pencarrow papers is a sheet in Sir William's writing "Abercrombie, 316. Sutton, 306. Abercrombie elected, God be praised." Grevillc gives a very interesting account of this exciting fight. There was a great deal of betting on it ; Greville won 55, and would have won more, but he got frightened towards the close and hedged. It illustrates the manners of the times to find that Molesworth, writing to his sister Elizabeth, thus described the devices of the Tories to induce a well-known Liberal M.P. to stay away : " That old rascal T came to town for the Speaker- ship vote and returned to shire to hunt the next day. ... On dit that the Tories offered him if he would stay away le plus beau chvval et la plut belle femme in the county." iv THE REFORM CLUB 75 amuse you much. Last year we attempted to do the same thing, but it failed in consequence of the Whigs being opposed to it secretly, and it would have failed again this year if they had taken the lead or if we had allowed ourselves to be humbug'd by them. You know soon after I came to town I saw Hume. I pressed him to exert himself to form a club independently of the Whigs and to leave them to join us if they thought proper. He was willing. He and I had several meetings with Joe Parkes and Ewart, and we looked out for houses, and communications were made to Ellice and one or two of the most Liberal Whigs who evidently wished to throw us over again and to procrastinate. This I had expected. Nothing was done previous to my going to Birmingham. Parkes and myself came to the determination that a blow must be struck and that we must make Joe [Hume] do it. I sat next to Hume and stirred him up as much as I could. Still nothing was done till the Tuesday. Ellice was to return from Paris on the Wednesday, and I knew if he were admitted to the preliminary consultations all was up for the present. Parkes sent for me, and I went to Hume and told him now was the time or never. He agreed to a meeting the next day, and we sent word to a very few persons ; seven persons only came, five of them only M.P.'s. We determined first That there should be a Reform Club. We then put fifty names down, almost all df them M.P.'s whom we knew were favourable to such a scheme. We appointed them the provisional com- mittee. . . . We dated our meeting London and left them to find out who had been present. This was a most bold and impudent blow. And I don't believe, except the five who were present, any other persons of our party would have assented to such a proceeding. . . . We 76 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. took the best of the Radicals and no Whigs. On the Thursday the House met. Many of the circulars had been presented ; the Whigs consequently saw them and were thunderstruck if they did not join they thought we should make a club alone and become their masters. If they succeeded in preventing a club, they thought they would offend the fifty mortally, and the party and their power would be destroyed ; they were at the same time excessively frightened by the proposal to leave them in the lurch. A shell had been thrown into the midst of them and had exploded j who threw it they could not make out. They went about endeavouring to trace who had been present at the meeting which issued this circular. They could only trace three persons, Parkes, Hume, and myself. We had shown fifty good Radicals, who, though none of them individually would probably have assented to such a proceeding, would not flinch or complain of being put on the committee ; indeed every one of them had either this year or kst expressed his opinion in favour of the club to some one of us. On the Thursday I met Ellice and asked him sneeringly if he had come from Paris to assist us in making a club. On the Friday he came to me as I was going out of the House and re- quested me to tell him what we were about. I informed him we were forming a club j he asked me why we had not consulted him and the more Liberal Whigs. Because, I replied, you twice frustrated our attempts last year j now we were determined to have a club, and they might join us and we should be delighted at their so doing. He then asked if the Radicals intended to lead the Whigs, and said if we acted in this manner we should break up the party. I replied we had no such intention and wished them to join us, and we intended to write them so to do ; iv THE REFORM CLUB 77 if he thought that the Whigs were to lead us as they thought proper, he was quite mistaken ; we would have a club. You may easily suppose that this conversation was not one of the most courteous description. I suppose you know who Ellice is. He was Secretary at War, brother-in-law of Lord Grey. We agreed at last to go to Parkes in Great George Street we were joined by Stanley, Secretary of the Treasury ; l between the four a discussion an angry one took place. At last Ellice offered to assist in the formation of a club and oblige the Whigs to join us, if we would consent to a committee containing a fair proportion of Whigs. To this Parkes and I assented. Ellice then wrote down the names of thirty-five persons, to whom we assented. Twenty of them were Radicals and fifteen Whigs ; several of them were junior members of the administration, whose consent Ellice and Stanley pledged themselves to obtain, and we promised to get the list assented to at the meeting of the next day. We then parted. As you may imagine, Parkes and myself were delighted. I doubt whether we could form a club without the assistance of the Whigs. We had them now ; they had come to us ; they had assented to a list written out by themselves ; it was impossible for them to retract. Our next object was to get the Radical meeting to consent to this list a delicate task, as many who were solicited to form the first committee might be offended at their names not being put upon this one. At the same time it was of the utmost importance that not the slightest alteration should be made, lest a pretext might be given to the Whigs, who we suspected would repent of what they had been about (such we found to be the case afterwards, and I hear they complain that we 1 Afterwards Lord Stanley of Alderley. 78 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. took them by surprise and had got them to assent to a list without calculating the number of Radicals upon it. Moreover, O'Connell was a bitter pill to many of them. Ellice himself, however, had proposed him and written him down). The next morning Parkes and myself started off to Hume, and he approved of all we had done, and said he would get the consent of the meeting. He took the chair. Everything went off most harmoniously and all appeared delighted. Afterwards, as we had suspected, there was a slight attempt to shuffle. Stanley told Parkes and myself that he must first obtain the consent of Lord John, and complained of our having divulged the meeting between us. To this we replied that we felt ourselves in no way bound to secrecy ; they had come to us, and they knew what they were about and ought to have obtained Lord John's consent before they proposed a list to us. We had pledged ourselves for our friends ; we had performed our promise, and they must perform theirs or take the consequences of an exposure which would now infallibly break up the party. They d d Parkes and cursed me in their hearts. But as there was no help for it, they have very wisely determined to get all their friends to join the club. Most of the Cabinet are now original members : the Dukes of Sussex and of Norfolk, etc. We have admitted already above six hun- dred persons. Our success is certain. It will be the best club in town, and the effect will be to break up the Whig party by joining the best of them to the Radicals, and the club will be the political centre of the Empire, and augment our power immensely. All we want is organisation. This we shall now obtain. We had no place of meeting. Ten Radical M.P.'s were never to be found together except in the House, conse- iv THE REFORM CLUB 79 quently no one knew what his neighbour was about. This disorganisation the Whigs desired, and on this account they have always in secret been opposed to a club. Now their only remaining hope is to join us in such numbers as to have the predominance ; they will fail in this respect. They have never been in social con- tact with us yet ; I don't fear their influence ; some few they may seduce, but very few, whilst we shall gain many of them, for in all arguments we are their superiors. The most intelligent of them are aware of all this and have made up their minds to it. Indeed, strange is the progress of political events, and we must allow that Ministers have been acting very well of late. We are amazingly cordial now. Keep this letter and don't read it to all the world. The Happy Family so vividly described in the foregoing letter managed to subsist side by side in the same club. But Sir William's confident prediction that the Radicals would absorb the Whigs was doomed to disappointment. The pro- cess of absorption was in the other direction. The Radical party began to melt away, and the philosophical Radicals especially quickly approached a vanishing point. It was in the autumn of this year, 1836, in which the " bold and impudent blow " had been struck and the club so triumphantly founded, that Charles Buller uttered his well-known witticism, which is bound to be quoted whenever philosophical Radicalism is men- tioned. Staying late after a party at the Grotes' 8o SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. house at Dulwich in the late autumn of 1836, Sir William Molesworth, Charles Buller, and their host and hostess sat discussing the Parliamentary out- look, when Buller summed up the situation by ex- claiming : " I see what we are coming to, Grote ; in no very long time from this, only you and I will be left to tell' Molesworth." More seriously Mrs. Grote had entered in her diary about the same time : " Mr. Grote and about five others find themselves left to sustain the Radical opinions of the House of Commons." The next session Radical prospects were still waning, and Mrs. Grote wrote to Sir William after the General Election of 1837 : I don't see how we Radicals are to make head this coming Parliament at all. . . . The brunt of the battle will have to be sustained by Grote and you, aided by Buller, Leader, Charles Villiers and a few more. . . . Take care of your health, and don't sit smurring indoors, but take air and exercise, I entreat you. George sends love ; he has no heart in the coming session and deplores the loss of old William IV. daily. How amusing ! He is above all anxious for Hume to get seated somehow. One cause of the downfall of Radical hopes was to be found in the flood of loyalty that greeted the accession of the young Queen. This was why Grote uttered daily lamentations for the death of King William. But there were other causes at iv THE REFORM CLUB 81 work consuming the energy and weakening the faith of the Radicals. The fault was in themselves, not in their stars and not in the causes for which they worked, nearly all of which were in time successfully prosecuted, and have received and merit universal commendation. The failure of the Radicals of the second quarter of the nineteenth century was a failure which may be considered equivalent to success. The causes they espoused triumphed so completely that the Tories of this generation are more Liberal than the Liberals of 1832. CHAPTER V THE ORANGE LODGES IN the letter from Sir William Molesworth to his mother, quoted at length in the last chapter, he refers to a recent visit to Birmingham, and also states that he is " going to second Hume's motion against the Orangemen on Tuesday." The visit to Birmingham had been for the purpose of attending a public dinner and a meeting of the National Political Union, the famous association which had had so considerable a share in achieving the final victory in the battle for Reform. Sir William travelled to Birmingham with Joe Parkes, leaving London in a chariot at eight o'clock on Wednesday evening and reaching Birmingham at twelve noon the next day. He attended the public dinner, at which 1000 people sat down in the finest room he had ever seen ; he made a speech ; then went to the meeting, at which he spoke again ; left Birmingham at one o'clock on CHAP.V THE ORANGE LODGES 83 the Friday morning and reached London again at five the same evening. People talk of the nervous exhaustion caused by the rush and pace of modern life ; but travelling by coach for thirty- two hours between Wednesday at 8 P.M. and Friday at 5 P.M. and filling the rest of the forty-five hours by dining in public, attending meetings and making speeches, would be con- sidered a rather exhausting performance even at the present time. This hurried journey was in January 1836. No doubt Sir William wanted to get into touch with the Birmingham Radicals, but he does not appear to have been very favour- ably impressed by them. " Shrewd but uneducated men," he describes them in a home letter ; " the young men, however, are a much better set." He was surprised at the mildness of their speeches, and says he was the only one who " spoke out." On his return his time was divided between the establishment of the Reform Club and preparation for his speech on the Orange Lodges. His speeches were always most carefully prepared ; he worked at the facts on which he raised his structure of argument as carefully as a barrister gets up his brief. All contemporary accounts of his speeches agree that they were elaborate treatises, the result of hard study and industrious research. He thought no trouble too great to enable him to get a complete grasp of all the facts bearing on 84 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. the subject on which he spoke. He was no facile orator, and he was better in set speeches than in the cut-and-thrust of debate. But the labour he bestowed upon the material of his speeches is the main reason of their enduring influence. He looked not so much to the victory of the moment as to the establishment of principles on which he believed the progress of the future depended. It was said of him at the time of his death : The elaborate care with which he was known to pre- pare his speeches, and certain natural defects of manner and elocution, prevented his becoming a popular orator in the House of Commons ; but the weapons which he wielded were weighty, and probably no one ever produced so much effect in so few speeches. The moral nature of the man was a fitting counterpart to the intellectual. Simple, sincere, and straightforward, without fear and without compromise, no man's assertions carried more weight, no man received or deserved more entire credit for consistency of principle and singleness of purpose. Times, 2yd October 1855. These characteristics were very prominent in his speech on the Orange Lodges on 23rd February 1836. His readiness to prove an assertion which was believed at the moment to be a mere oratorical flourish was one of the most marked triumphs of the speech, which seems to have won him great applause in all respects. v THE ORANGE LODGES 85 Mrs. Grote, in her description of Sir William Moles worth, dwells on his sense of the injustice and wrongs under which the bulk of the English people suffered and the intensity of his desire to bring about a healthier and juster administration of the laws. In 1834 an event had happened close to his native county which had aroused these sentiments in the highest degree. In the early years of the rise of Trades' Unionism an attempt was made by working-class leaders to form what was called a Grand National Trades' Union that is, not merely a union within one particular trade, but a combination among the labouring classes generally, with the object of improving their condition. On iyth March 1834, six Dorsetshire labourers were sentenced to seven years' transporta- tion for administering illegal oaths in connection with their efforts to induce their fellow-labourers to join this National Trades' Union. This ini- quitous sentence aroused among the whole body of real reformers the most lively indignation. These poor and ignorant men were sentenced under an obsolete statute which had been passed in order to meet the case of mutiny in the Navy. For indulging in the foolery of a drawn sword and bandaged eyes and other paraphernalia of oath-taking, doubtless borrowed from the recol- lection of masonic ceremonies, six men were consigned to a punishment almost worse than 86 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. death. 1 In superficial natures the rage awakened by such judicial atrocities produces but a super- ficial effect. But with those, who possess tenacity of purpose and strength of will the keen emotion of the moment hardens into stern resolve to devote throughout life all the best powers they possess to make such injustice impossible in the future. The history of social and legal reform in England is starred with the names of many such men and women, and among them that of William Molesworth deserves to be remembered and honoured. The first result of his indignation is to be found in his speech on the Orange Lodges what was sauce for the Dorsetshire labourer should be sauce for a Royal Duke. The second result was a close examination into the character of the punishment of transportation, which resulted in his determination to prove to the whole country that it possessed every evil and disadvantage which could accrue to any penal system, and that it was necessarily attended by moral evils of the most appalling character. The Parliamentary inquiry 1 "A free pardon was sent out to these men in 1837 ; but not without an extraordinary display of physical force on the part of the Trades' Unionists. On zist April 1837, 30,000 working men displayed themselves in London, each armed with the tools of his trade, preference being given to such as could be used as weapons. It was proposed to meet violence by violence j twenty-nine pieces of artillery were brought up from Woolwich to Whitehall, and small cannon were mounted on the roofs of the Government offices j but the danger of conflict was averted by the Ministry giving way, and the Dorsetshire labourers were recalled from Van Diemen's Land." Miss Martineau, Thirty Tears' Peace, vol. ii. pp. 155-156. v THE ORANGE LODGES 87 into the effects of transportation for which Moles- worth moved for a Select Committee in 1837 was the first public outcome of two years' previous study given to the subject. This is proved by his correspondence. Indirectly resulting from his study of the subject of transportation and its effects grew his more general interest in Colonial government and his conviction that the only reasonable system was to allow the Colonies self- government on democratic lines. Like Saul, who started to find his father's asses and found a kingdom, Molesworth set out to protest against the iniquity of the sentence passed on the Dorset- shire labourers and found his life's work. First, the destruction of transportation as a secondary punishment, and secondly, the establishment of the principle of Colonial self-government. As the first step on this path, the attack on the Orange Lodges and on the Duke of Cumberland as their Grand Master receives whatever interest may accrue to it at this time. The present genera- tion quite correctly associates Orangeism with the North of Ireland, especially with Belfast, where the Orange Lodges are known to be intensely loyal and intensely Protestant, with a loyalty and a Protestantism which cannot be produced save by the exciting proximity of disloyalty and Roman Catholicism. This also was in the main the history of Orangeism from its foundation till about 1828. 88 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. There were two or three isolated Orange Lodges in England and Scotland early in the nineteenth century, but only in places where the Northern Irish had migrated in considerable numbers. About 1828, however, Orangeism began to spread rapidly in England and Wales. The Duke of Cumberland became the Grand Master, and Lord Kenyon the Deputy Grand Master. The Bishop of Salisbury was the Grand Chaplain : no salary was attached to chaplaincies of the lodges, but it was naively stated that the position was one which "might lead to promotion." The Duke, with a mockery of the formalities of a Royal Commission, appointed his " trusty and well-beloved " Colonel Fairman to go about the country and establish Orange Lodges wherever he could, even in the Army. This the Duke afterwards denied, but the House of Commons Committee which took evidence on the whole subject in 1835 g ra vely reported that they found it most difficult to re- concile statements in evidence before them with ignorance of those proceedings on the part of H.R.H. the Duke of Cumberland. This may be taken as the nearest approach to giving H.R.H. the lie direct which the convenances of a Select Committee admitted of. The exciting cause of this outburst of Protestantism in such a precious upholder of religion in any form as the Duke of Cumberland, was the passing of the Catholic v THE ORANGE LODGES 89 Emancipation Act by the Duke of Wellington's Government in 1829, and the political agitation leading up to it. The commission of Colonel Fairman on behalf of his Royal Master was to represent to groups of people, whom he was to induce to form Orange Lodges, that on the presently expected demise of the Crown (George IV. died in the following year) the next heir, the Duke of Clarence, was insane and the second heir presumptive " was not alone a female but a minor." Under these circumstances, so Colonel Fairman was to lead his dupes to believe, the Duke of Wellington would probably seize the Crown unless his machinations were frustrated by the loyal Orange Lodges insisting that the Duke of Cum- berland should be King. To us all this seems like the idle dream of a crack-brained fanatic ; but at the time it did not seem so prepos- terous as it seems to us. In this as in so many other things, people then looked at events by the light of the French Revolution. Napoleon Bona- parte, from being the servant of France had made himself her master, and had reigned as her Emperor. Was there therefore anything intrin- sically absurd in Wellington, the conqueror of Napoleon, aspiring to place a crown upon his brow? Fairman's campaign in the country met with no little success. He boasted that the Orange army consisted of 140,000 men. He started a 90 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. campaign among Lord Londonderry's pitmen, but did not find them very amenable to his seductions. From time to time he returned to headquarters and was closeted for hours together with the Duke of Cumberland at Kew. Lord Kenyon wrote that in the last two and a half years he had spent nearer ^20,000 than ^10,000 " in the good cause." Thirty lodges were formed in the Army and Navy. Soldiers and sailors were attracted to the organisa- tion by a remission of the fees. As in the case of the Dorsetshire labourers, all the solemn mummery of the administration of oaths was gone through, and signs and passwords were adopted. In the session of 1835, J se ph Hume moved for a Parlia- mentary Committee of Inquiry on the subject. Most of the evidence was obtained by means of a man named Haywood, who had once belonged to the Orange organisation but had turned against it. On 4th August 1835, Hume moved a series of resolutions, ending with an address to the Crown asking for the condemnation of the proceedings of the Orangemen in the formation of lodges in the Army. On the motion of Lord John Russell, the debate was adjourned for a week, to give the Duke of Cumberland time to withdraw or explain ; but he did neither. On nth August, Lord John said that the Duke had not done what the House had the right to expect of him ; and Mr. Hume's resolutions were, with some modifications, agreed v THE ORANGE LODGES 91 to. On 1 9th August, the House was informed that the " trusty and well - beloved " Colonel Fairman had refused to produce a letter -book required by the Committee. Fairman was com- mitted to Newgate for breach of privilege, but sought safety in flight. Haywood was prosecuted for libel. Molesworth was one of a small group who made themselves responsible for his defence, and retained Buller and Austin as his counsel. The trial, however, never came on ; for Haywood broke a blood-vessel, and died before the proceed- ings began. Molesworth wrote an article on the Orange Lodges, based on the evidence given before the House of Commons Committee ; this appeared in the January number, 1836, of The London Review. It was resolved to prosecute, under the same law by means of which the Dorsetshire labourers had been condemned, the Duke of Cumberland, Lord Kenyon, and the Bishop of Salisbury. In all of this we trace the hand of Molesworth. It is the same spirit which dictated the letter to his sister quoted on p. 60 : " Alderman Wood has brought in a Bill against omnibuses, and I intend to bring in a Bill against gentlemen's carriages." He was determined to make the governing classes smart under the very same lash which they had complacently prepared for the groundlings. The rest of the story can now best be told by the Pencarrow letters. 92 SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH CHAP. SIR WILLIAM MOLESWORTH TO HIS MOTHER January 1836. I returned to town rather tired [this was after the Birmingham excursion], and was much vexed at finding Haywood, whose defence we had undertaken, and whose trial would have come on to-day, was dead by the bursting of a blood-vessel. For various political reasons, the in- dictments [against the Duke of Cumberland, etc.] will not be presented now till March. This delay annoys me ; it cannot, however, be avoided without endangering our ultimate success, and I still hope we may bring the culprits to trial and convict them. Mr. Hume wanted all proceedings stayed till after the House of Commons debate, because, by the well-known rule, it would have been impossible to have a debate on a subject that was at the same moment being tried in the Law Courts. Hume stuck staunchly to his guns, and Sir William wrote again to his mother in the month of January 1836:- I saw Hume on Friday. He is an admirable person, and I will never laugh at his blunders again. He is worth 100 of your do-nothing gents. The debate took place on 23rd February 1836, and Sir William seconded Mr. Hume's " tremen- dous resolution " proposing an address to the King praying him to discharge all Orangemen and members of other secret political associations from all offices, civil and military. Sir William's speech v THE ORANGE LODGES 93 was an unqualified success. Here is his own description of it, followed by extracts from letters from his brother Arscott and his friend Mr. Duppa, who were present on the occasion : Feb. 24, 1836. MY DEAR MOT