IN

LORD CASTLEREAGH

N August 1822 Lord Castlereagh died by his own hand-worn out in the service of his country. And his name and fame are but now faintly emerging from the mist of detraction in which the pens and tongues of evil or foolish men have enwrapped them. The Whigs, whose rancour never dies, have pursued the memory of Castlereagh with a tireless fury, as though he was still present to fight for his country in the first line of defence. They hated him because he loved Great Britain, while they loved Great Britain's enemies. It is impossible, for instance, to imagine the frailest bond of sympathy which might have united Castlereagh and Fox. The men of letters reproached him because he did not mistake a showy eloquence for the end and aim of statesmanship, because he knew well that it was a greater offence to condone murder than to mix a metaphor. The poets, the most resolute of his foes, insulted and maligned him, each according to his own whim and fancy. To Byron, Castlereagh was a monster, because his energy and foresight had been the undoing of Byron's hero, Napoleon, or because he didn't approve of Castlereagh's management of the English tongue. Shelley saw in him a determined

enemy of the emotional anarchy which served him for a political creed. When he' met Murder on the way, he had a mask like Castlereagh,' and it mattered not to him that the Minister of his hatred had saved the country. As M. Capefigue, a Frenchman and Castlereagh's loyal panegyrist, asked many years ago : "Fallait-il laisser périr l'Angleterre pour plaire à des poètes? Fallait-il seconder les desseins des brûleurs de métiers et des voleurs de maisons?' To M. Capefigue's question a tardy answer has been given, and even in this time of revolutionary excesses the debts which wise and decent citizens owe to Castlereagh are at last remembered.

I

Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, was born in 1769, and having been educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, went early into politics. He was no more than one-and-twenty when he was elected by County Down to the Irish Parliament, after a contest, long since legendary, which is said to have cost his family sixty thousand pounds, and which impoverished his father until the end of his life. Four years later he was sent to Westminster, and seconded, in 1795, the Address in our English House of Commons. Marked out for preferment from the beginning, he was appointed in 1797, by Lord Camden, Keeper of the Privy Seal in Ireland, did Pelham's work as Chief Secretary until Pelham's retirement a year later, when he was himself appointed Chief Secretary at the age

of twenty-eight. Not for a moment did he underestimate the burden of responsibility laid upon him. He had a clear prophetic vision of events. He knew well what lay in store for Ireland and for him. France had declared her aim to be the tyrant of Europe, and Ireland, after her wont, had knit herself in the closest ties with England's enemy. It was Castlereagh's duty to suppress by all means in his power the rebellion which threatened the peace, the very existence of Ireland. The united Irishmen were a powerful body of men. They were said by some to exceed 50,000 in number, and they included rebels of all ages and classes. By a prudent policy, at once suave and stern, Lord Castlereagh put an end to the revolt. He did not fear to take repressive measures, whenever he thought they were necessary for the safety of the country. He was an untiring watch-dog upon the rebels. He proved a talent of just vigilance which was a constant check to the disloyal. His system of intelligence was perfect. He discovered the plans of the rebels before they were become active, and by his grasp of detail showed to the world the great administrator that he was. On the one hand, he was in communication with Emmet and his friends; on the other, the projects of the French Directory for the invasion of Ireland never escaped him. And it was mainly due to his energy and watchfulness that the rebellion of 1798 was finally suppressed.

Never did he underrate the necessity and the difficulty of the enterprise. Looking beyond Ireland to

the shores of France, he was convinced that the pacification of Ireland was the first stage on the long hard road of victory over France. So long as the soldiers of the enemy were permitted to land upon Irish soil, so long could the rebels, led and enforced by the ambitious tyranny of the French, strike a foul blow at England's heart. While he never ceased to follow the movements of Napper Tandy and Wolfe Tone, he did not neglect such help as his English colleagues might afford. He insisted that England should aid Ireland with men and arms. "The force that will be disposable,' he wrote to Pitt,' when the troops from England arrive, cannot fail to dissipate every alarm; and I consider it peculiarly advantageous that we shall owe our security entirely to the interposition of Great Britain. I have always been apprehensive of that false confidence which might arise from an impression that security has been obtained by our own exertions. Nothing would tend so much to make the public mind impracticable with a view to that future settlement, without which we can never hope for any permanent tranquillity.'

Stout fighter though he was, Castlereagh was always the friend of clemency. He was in favour of a generous amnesty while the rebellion was still unbroken, and was thwarted in his amiable design by the British Government. When the civil war was practically at an end, and when the battle had been fought at Vinegar Hill, he wrote in a congratulatory letter, addressed to General Lake, these wise words:

'I consider the rebels as now in your power, and I feel assured that your treatment of them will be such as will make them sensible of their crimes, as well as of the authority of government. It would be unwise and contrary, I know, to your feelings to drive the wretched people, who are mere instruments in the hands of the more wicked, to despair. The leaders are just objects of punishment.' And yet Castlereagh, like all those brave men who do not shrink from the suppression of massacre and arson, has been held up to the reprobation of the world. He has been set on the pillory which the Whigs keep for honest and courageous men. Twenty years after the event Lord Brougham, in a debate on the state of the nation, did not scruple to repeat ancient calumnies, invented by worthless and interested rebels. 'A man who has practised torture on men,' said Brougham, falsely suggesting that Castlereagh had callously witnessed the scenes of horror' of the '98, ' had obtained a bill of indemnity for all transactions, of which such cruelty had formed a part.' Presently Brougham, in his Historical Sketches, told another story, either because the calumny no longer served his turn, or because he had forgotten it. Lord Castlereagh,' thus he wrote, ' uniformly and strenuously set his face against the atrocities committed in Ireland; and to him more than perhaps any one else is to be attributed the termination of the system stained with blood.' Lord Brougham would have done better had he never brought the false charge, or having brought it,