Chapter Thirteen

Prime Minister

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“Everybody wonders what Melbourne will do. He is certainly a queer fellow to be Prime Minister.” So wrote Greville in June, 1834: so thought a lot of people. In spite of his success as Home Secretary, Melbourne’s reputation, outside the circle of his immediate colleagues, was not of the sort that befits a Prime Minister. Queen Adelaide found his views on religion lax and his conversation disagreeably paradoxical. Many of her subjects agreed with her. To their solemn sensitive nineteenth century nostrils there was a disquieting whiff of the Regency about him. However, they could comfort themselves with the thought that his Government could not possibly last for long.

Melbourne drew comfort from this too. The weak Whig Government was weaker than ever now. Not only was it bereft of some of its most distinguished members, but it looked as though the time for an emergency Government of this kind was over. If the people wanted reform, they wanted it more radical than the old Whigs offered. If—and this seemed more like the truth—they were reacting against reform, they inclined to the Tories. Melbourne himself did not mind this. Privately, he said that he hoped the Tories would come in. The King agreed with him: so much so, that he suggested Melbourne should try to form a Tory-Whig coalition. The feelings of the Whig Party, however, put this out of the question. All Melbourne could do was, for the time being, to try and carry on as before. With the help of Althorp, who reluctantly agreed to rejoin the Government, he patched up a new administration out of the remnants of the old: and unhopefully set himself to his task.

It proved as thankless as he could possibly have feared. All the same questions began making trouble again; and all the same people. William IV, now convinced that England was on the slippery slope to an atheistic republic, wanted Melbourne to pledge himself first never to give a Radical office; and secondly not in any way to suggest altering the existing constitution of the Irish Protestant Church. Melbourne managed to parry both these attacks, but only after many letters and some painful interviews, each of which lasted several hours. Hardly less trying than the King, were his colleagues. There was Lord Lansdowne, nearly resigning in a pet because two protégés of his had not been given jobs; and there was John Russell who chose this of all moments to suggest that O’Connell should be given office in order to drive a wedge between him and his Irish supporters. Apart from the fact that the very idea of such an appointment was certain to throw both the King and the more cautious Whigs into a panic, Melbourne thought it would obviously fail of its object, “Taking office would not shake O’Connell’s influence with the people of Ireland one jot,” he wrote sharply. “The people of Ireland are not such damn fools as the people of England. When they place confidence, they don’t withdraw it the next instant.” A new stormy petrel too had appeared on Melbourne’s horizon in the shape of Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary. Personally, Melbourne got on with him well enough. For Palmerston—jaunty, plain-spoken and unchaste—was also a survival from the Regency. But he was a vulgar version of the Regency type, marked, as Melbourne was not, by its characteristic blemishes of arrogance and insensitiveness. Melbourne learnt with dismay that he seemed likely to antagonize every foreign diplomat in London by the casual bluntness of his words and manners. Palmerston’s manners were not his only defect; Melbourne was also suspicious of his policy. Europe during this period was divided by what, for want of a more agreeable phrase, must be called an ideological split. On one side lay the autocratic Eastern powers, Russia, Austria, Prussia, who wished to suppress within their own and other people’s countries that Liberal Movement which was the child of the French Revolution. On the other there were the Western powers, France and England, who were its supporters, so long at any rate as it showed no signs of growing dangerously revolutionary. Palmerston vigorously espoused the Liberal cause. His steady aim, pursued sometimes in action and always in words, was to make England its active leader. This came partly from the fact that he was a man of adventurous and domineering temperament whose instinct it was to intervene in other people’s disputes and partly because he thought that Liberalism, and those middle classes, who everywhere were its chief supporters, was far more likely than despotism to produce governments stable, pacific, and friendly to England and English trade. This was not a point of view to commend itself to Melbourne. His attitude to foreign affairs was of a piece with his attitude to home affairs. As at home, tranquillity was his first object; and, as at home, his sense of reality taught him that Liberalism was now so strong a force that refusal to meet its claims in some degree could only end in disturbance. On the other hand he never could like Liberal progressives of any nationality, nor did he see any reason to suppose that they would be more friendly to England than the autocrats were. “All these chambers and free presses in other countries are very fine things,” he said, “but depend upon it they are still as hostile to England as the old governments.” Let not Palmerston think that they would be grateful to him for intervening on their behalf. “The case with all foreign powers,” he remarked crisply to him, “is that they never take our advice on any of their previous steps; they treat us with the utmost contempt; they take every measure hostile to our interests; they are anxious to prove that we have not the least influence on them. And then when by their misconduct they have got themselves into an inextricable difficulty, they throw themselves upon our mercy and say, ‘For God’s sake re-establish us . . . that we may run again the same course of domestic error and hostility to England’.” Melbourne, too, did not share Palmerston’s belief in the middle classes as a bulwark against revolution. “The bourgeois are timid always,” he said, “I should have some fear, if difficult times were to arrive, of our own boasted middle classes.” Finally, his temperamental dislike of adventurous courses in general was as strong as Palmerston’s liking for them. The world was quite full enough of trouble as it was; why stir up more? As Melbourne watched Palmerston bombarding foreign powers with scoldings and unasked-for advice he felt sceptical, irritable, anxious.

But, as might have been expected, the greatest nuisance among his colleagues was Brougham. Rage that he had not been made Prime Minister swept away any vestige of self-control that may have remained with him. To soothe his vanity he gave out that Melbourne was his creature, who, for some mysterious reason of his own, he had chosen to put in office: he introduced a highly controversial Bill about a judicial matter in the House of Lords without mentioning a word about it to his colleagues: and he besieged the King—who detested him—with impertinent and unasked-for letters of advice. His most sensational performance, however, took place during the August Recess when he embarked on a sort of public progress round Scotland, making speeches in which he openly attacked his colleagues, and infuriated the King still further by representing himself as his only confidential friend among his ministers. In his intervals of relaxation he created scandal by playing Hunt the Thimble with the Great Seal in an Edinburgh lady’s drawing-room, and arriving at the local races dressed in the full regalia of Lord Chancellor’s wig and gown and roaring drunk.

To outward appearance Melbourne was unperturbed by all these disturbing events. He still ate enormously, saw a great deal of Miss Eden and Mrs. Norton, and found time to spend pleasant evenings at Holland House; where he awed the unwilling Greville by the breadth of his learning—he seemed equally conversant with Greek history, etymology, and the details of the texts of Shakespeare’s plays—and dazzled him by the lively boldness of his views. “Henry VIII was the greatest man that ever lived,” he asserted with a cheerful oath. “Melbourne loves dashing opinions,” noted Greville.

But beneath his smiling exterior, Melbourne during these months, was apprehensive and despondent. He did not see how he was to keep the Government going. He was also depressed by the general mental atmosphere of the age. On the night of 16th October, the Houses of Parliament were burnt down. Melbourne watched the huge conflagration as it reflected itself in the dark waters of the Thames. He looked cool and jocose, but in reality his heart was filled with strange and mournful emotions. The spectacle was symbolic. Thus also was the England he had always known being destroyed before his eyes. And no one seemed to mind: even The Times shocked him by the practical and utilitarian tone in which it spoke of the event. It seemed nothing to the men of today that the time-hallowed scene of so much of England’s past and England’s glory, the place where in the hopeful ardour of his youth—now alas so irrevocably distant—his heart had thrilled to the eloquence of Pitt and of Fox, should be a heap of ashes. In so alien a world, he felt little spirit to proceed with his anxious and thankless task, even had he thought that there was much prospect of his making a success of it.

Now an event took place which rendered success more unlikely than ever. On the 10th November Lord Spencer died. This meant that his heir, Althorp, was translated to the House of Lords; and the Whig Party lost its leader and most influential member in the Commons. Melbourne did not want to carry on in these reduced circumstances; he pretty well told William IV so in a letter. But he felt that he owed it to his party to agree to stay if required, and went down to Brighton where the King was at that time residing, to talk the matter over with him. After a lengthy dinner, in which William IV regaled his Prime Minister with naval anecdotes and did not mention politics at all, he suddenly said: “By the way, Lord Spencer is dead I hear. So is the Government, of course: where the head is dead, the body cannot go on at all. Therefore there is no help for it, you must all resign. Here, my Lord, is a letter I have written to the Duke of Wellington, directing him to form a Government. Be sure you give it to him directly you arrive in town.” Melbourne suggested John Russell as a possible successor to Althorp. The King repudiated the proposal violently. “That young man”—it was in this disparaging phrase that he always referred to John Russell—was associated in his mind with those alterations in the Irish Church which had become to him a symbol of all that it was his royal duty to resist. Indeed it was his feeling about the Irish Church, coupled with his dislike of Brougham, which had just decided him to get rid of the Whigs. After more fruitless and interminable conversations both that night and the next day, Melbourne arrived in London late in the evening. Just before he went to bed, Brougham burst in asking for news. Melbourne told him what had happened: but asked him not to say anything about it till he had had time to inform the rest of the Ministers. Brougham promised: but on leaving the house hurried off as fast as he could to give the news to The Times. Most of the Ministers woke up to learn of their dismissal from the morning paper.

They were extremely indignant at the King’s behaviour; and surprised that Melbourne was not more so. They could hardly believe their ears when they heard that he had been seen at the theatre the very next night laughing heartily at a farce about the dismissal of a minister. As a matter of fact, though he was a little nettled by William IV’s brusqueness and high-handedness, Melbourne was relieved to be out. He had conducted the whole negotiation in a detached, take-it-or-leave-it tone, which was not calculated to persuade the King to change his mind. But he did not choose to risk undermining his party’s confidence in his loyalty to their cause by admitting his true feelings even to his intimate friends. Rather let them think that his calm was the expression of a proper pride that scorned to parade its injuries in public. “I have always considered complaints of ill usage contemptible,” he told Miss Eden, “whether from a seduced, disappointed girl or a turned-out Prime Minister.” Once more we note that Melbourne was a good deal more discreet than he appeared.9

He needed all his discretion during the months that followed. The left wing of his party—in order to revive that reforming enthusiasm in the nation which had swept them to victory four years before—wanted the Whigs to come out at once with a provocative programme of bold drastic reform. Melbourne was against this. Apart from the fact that he thoroughly disliked drastic reforms, he thought, with reason, that they were the last thing to appeal to an electorate obviously swinging to the right. On the other hand he had to avoid revealing himself as so unsympathetic with his party’s aspirations as to shake their faith in him. Accordingly he made a couple of vague, moderate-sounding, reassuring public speeches, and then, retiring to the country where no one could get at him, refused to make any definite statement about future policy at all. In January there was a general election. The Tories under Peel returned considerably stronger, but not in sufficient numbers to have a majority over the combined votes of Whigs, Radicals and Irish. After a month or two of minority government Peel was beaten on the crucial question of what was to be done with the revenues of the Irish Church. In March the Whigs were in office again. Melbourne was not surprised: he had doubted whether the pendulum had swung far enough yet to bring the Tories back. But he was far from pleased. He had resisted any proposal to turn the Government out till a question of fundamental principle like that of the Irish Church had arisen. And even then he did his best to avoid taking on the full responsibility of the Government himself. First he made some secret enquiries, using Mrs. Norton as go-between to find out if there was any possibility of arranging a coalition with some of the more moderate Tories. Then he tried to persuade Grey to take his place once more as leader of the Whig Party. It was only after both these attempts had failed, that Melbourne reluctantly resigned himself to taking up his burden again.

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One can understand why he was unwilling. The prospect facing the Prime Minister in the second Melbourne Government was not an inviting one. The party’s position could hardly have seemed worse. It was virtually in a minority. The King and the House of Lords were solidly against it. In the House of Commons it held its majority largely by favour of the Irish: this was a very uncertain quantity. Further, the Whig Party itself was more acrimoniously divided than ever. Its right wing had been weakened by the loss of Grey and Stanley, with the result that the Radicals had become more confident, more unmanageable, and more unwilling than ever to submit to what they considered the reactionary tendencies of their official leaders. All this meant that the life of the Government was perpetually in danger from three sides. If the Radicals or the Irish felt they were not getting what they wanted, they could either of them vote it out of office: if, on the other hand, the Tories considered that the Government was giving in too much to the Irish and the Radicals, they were able, with the help of the House of Lords, to make themselves so obstructive as to render the Government’s continued existence impossible. Melbourne’s only hope of carrying on, therefore, lay in a balancing, trimming, procrastinating policy, yielding a little to the left here and to the right there, according to which happened at the moment to be the greatest threat to him: and also in creating a generally relaxed and reassuring personal atmosphere in which differences of opinion lost their sharpness.

Luckily such a policy had more chance of success than might have appeared on the surface. For one thing none of the three potential sources of danger really wanted the Government to fall. The Radicals and Irish both knew that the alternative to the Whigs was the Tories, under whom they would fare far worse. Peel, for his part, did not want to come in until such time as he could be sure of having a solid majority of the country on his side. Moreover, Melbourne was admirably equipped for his particular task. It is paradoxical that the most suitable head for a supposedly progressive Government should have been a man who disbelieved in progress. But in fact Melbourne’s scepticism was a help to him. For it meant that his conscience was not upset if he had to make concessions to the Tories. As a matter of fact he often agreed with Peel more than with most of his own colleagues. Yet scepticism equally prevented him from being too dogmatically unprogressive. He was quite willing to agree to a reform if it seemed likely to stop a row and was thus the lesser of two evils. On the other hand, just because he feared unrest so much, he was not at all sceptical as to the importance of keeping the Government together. And he knew just how to do it. Friendly and easy-going, he easily liked people and easily made them like him. Yet no one could dominate him and no one could take him in. With negligent mastery he maintained his detachment amid the clamouring crowd of idealists, careerists and wire-pullers by whom he was surrounded. And, if he felt it necessary, he could put his foot down unhesitatingly and very hard.

This appears in his choice of his Cabinet. Four years of keen observation and harsh experience had taught him that this was a matter of critical importance. Never again, if he could help it, was he going to make a hard task harder by saddling himself with troublesome colleagues. What he wanted from them first of all was loyalty; he must be able to depend on them to back him up. “I will support you as long as you are in the right,” said a politician to him on one occasion. “That is no use at all,” replied Melbourne, “what I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.” A whole team of such self-sacrificing persons was, he realized, too much to hope for in an imperfect world. But certainly he was determined to have ministers who could be trusted not to work actively against him, or without consulting his aims and feelings. He would not have any avowed Radicals. Most of them were doctrinaire Benthamites, and, said Melbourne, “Benthamites are all fools.” No—let Radicals join deputations and sit on Royal Commissions if they wished: deputations and Royal Commissions, thank God, seldom accomplished anything. But there must be no Radical ministers. There were certain individuals also whom Melbourne meant to keep out if he could. He did not want to have Durham, or Wellesley, or Brougham—at any rate, not in positions of influence. And he wanted to keep Palmerston out of the Foreign Office. These were bold decisions, for, if they were offended, all these men could give a great deal of trouble. Lords Grey, Holland and Spencer agitatedly implored him not to take the risk of antagonizing them. Smiling and immovable, Melbourne disregarded their warnings. Over Palmerston he was beaten. Palmerston said if he could not be Foreign Secretary he would not join the Government at all: and Melbourne thought him too important to be prepared to lose him. Back to the Foreign Office, therefore, stepped Palmerston, jaunty as ever. But Melbourne got his way about all the others. Durham was packed off to Russia again; Wellesley was fobbed off with a Court appointment; and Brougham was not offered a job at all. The last two protested violently. Wellesley even talked of challenging Melbourne to a duel. Melbourne went to see him. “His language,” related the outraged Wellesley afterwards, “was rough, vulgar and such as has never been employed from a person in his station to one in mine.” However, in spite of this, there was no more talk of a duel; nor was Lord Wellesley promoted.

Brougham was a harder nut to crack. The trouble with him had started soon after Melbourne left office. Brougham had heard that his late colleagues were talking against him; he wrote angrily to Melbourne to ask why. He got a plain answer. “It is a very disagreeable task,” Melbourne said, “to have to say to a statesman that his character is injured in the public estimation: it is still more unpleasant to have to add that you consider this to be his own fault; and it is idle to expect to be able to convince almost any man, and more particularly a man of very superior abilities, and with unbounded confidence in these abilities, that this is true. I must, however, state plainly that your conduct was one of the principal causes of the dismissal of the late ministry; and that it forms the most popular justification of that step.” Brougham demanded details. Not without zest, Melbourne provided them. “You ask for specific charges. Allow me to observe that there may be a course and series of very objectionable conduct, there may be a succession of acts which destroy confidence and add offence to offence, and yet it would be difficult to point to any marked delinquency. I will, however, tell you fairly, that, in my opinion, you domineered too much, you interfered too much with other departments, you encroached upon the provinces of the Prime Minister, you worked, as I believe, with the Press in a manner unbecoming to the dignity of your station, and you formed political views of your own and pursued them by means which were unfair towards your colleagues . . . Nobody knows and appreciates your natural vigour better than I do. I know also that those who are weak for good are strong for mischief. You are strong for both, and I should both dread and lament to see those gigantic powers which should be directed to the support of the State exerted in the contrary and opposite direction.” To soften the blow, he ended his letter on a friendlier note. “I can only add that whatever may be your determination, no political difference will make any change in the friendship and affection which I have always felt and will continue to feel for you.” However, he had already decided not to take Brougham back. “If left out he would be dangerous,” he said, “but if taken in, he would be simply destructive.” Brougham was so obsessedly vain that despite all Melbourne’s home-truths, he was dumbfounded when he actually heard he was not going to get a place. His nose twitching more violently than ever, he strode round to Melbourne’s house, fulminating wrath and demanding redress. “Do you think I am mad?” he kept on shouting furiously, “do you think I am mad?” “God damn you,” said Melbourne, “you won’t get the Great Seal, and that’s the end of it.” Brougham left the house routed.

It was for ever, too. He never got office again; and he proved too crazy and too distrusted to be much danger to the Government in opposition. At last the Arch-Fiend’s bluff had been called. And it had been the easy-going Melbourne who had done it. Here was more evidence that he avoided rows, not because they frightened him, but because he thought them useless. No one could make a row with more thundering effect, when he judged a row was needed.

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The result of his firmness was that the first months of the new Government were the calmest for a long time. And if the calm did not last, the Government did. Though apparently always on the verge of sinking, the leaky, rickety vessel under the command of its flippant and indolent-seeming Captain, kept afloat for six years. It had, it must be admitted, an uncomfortable thwarted voyage. Events followed a recurrent pattern. The Whigs brought in first one and then another measure of reform—the most important were those concerned with Church Finance, Irish tithe, and the reformation of the Municipal Corporations of England and Ireland. Each Bill passed the House of Commons and proceeded to the House of Lords, who either held it up or threw it out. Then followed an interim period in which Melbourne and Peel strove to persuade the extreme members of their respective parties to agree to some compromise. This interim period was marked by crises, sometimes of sufficient intensity to threaten the very existence of the Government. In the end most of the bills were passed, but often in so modified a form as to defeat the intention of their original promoters.

It was not a satisfactory state of things for people who believed in the measures. John Russell in particular was in a continual state of exasperation. Could not they create Peers he said, in order to force the bills through the House of Lords? If this was impossible, then better go out; even opposition was preferable to staying in checked at every turn. Melbourne soothed him. What would be the good of going out, if the other side could not form a Government? Back the Whigs would have to come again. “It is no use popping in and out like a rabbit!” he observed sensibly. Himself, he saw no reason for resigning. In his heart of hearts he was pleased rather than otherwise when a reform was stopped: and he still feared that resignation might lead to a situation in which neither of the great parties could form a Government. “Perhaps it is a chimerical fear,” he told John Russell, “and one which vanity and self opinion very much minister to, and therefore should not be entertained. But I—being somewhat of an alarmist on this side, not having quite the confidence in the stability of popular and constitutional forms of government which others have, and thinking them very likely to break up of themselves and from the exaggeration of their own principles—cannot feel quite free from it.” Do what he might, the spectre of possible civil war and revolution still hovered, dimly menacing, in the hinterland of his mind.

These various considerations conditioned his outlook on political affairs during these years. In general, he was for standing still. “I am for holding the ground already taken, but not for occupying new ground rashly,” he announced to his colleagues. He set himself to act as a brake in the machinery of government. The words “delay,” “put off,” “postpone,” echo through his letters and speeches like a series of Wagnerian leit-motifs. Of course, if the Radicals got dangerously restive, it was right to pacify them by some concessions: in practice, Melbourne showed himself surprisingly ready to do this. But he did not like doing it; and always felt bound to justify himself on the ground that it was the only means of keeping things quiet. He even grew irritated with John Russell for mentioning the Reform Bill without saying it was a necessary measure. “If it was not absolutely necessary,” he remarked sharply, “it was the foolishest thing ever done.” As for encouraging people to bring forward new reforms, it was simply laying up trouble for the future. They would get the habit of asking for more and more; in the end they would have to be stopped; by which time it would be an almost impossible task. “My esoteric doctrine,” he proclaimed, “is that if you entertain any doubt, it is safest to take the unpopular side in the first instance. Transit from the unpopular, is easy . . . but from the popular to the unpopular the ascent is so steep and rugged that it is impossible to maintain it.” So far as specific measures were concerned he approved of them only in so far as they seemed likely to make things calm. He was against the secret ballot, for example, because he suspected that it would encourage subversive persons to express their preferences more boldly than before. He was against admitting nonconformists to the University as he thought it would put Anglicans in a bad temper. He was against schemes for popular education because they seemed likely to create a new class of semi-educated discontented people. “You may fill a person’s head with nonsense which may be impossible ever to get out again,” he said. He also thought such schemes were futile in themselves. For one thing, no one could ever agree what form they should take. “All are agreed about the benefits of education, but are unable to agree as to the means of carrying them into effect,” he told the House of Lords, “I am afraid this will afford those satirists, who disparage human nature, some matter on which to plume themselves.” Besides, only the intelligent in Melbourne’s view, were susceptible to real education, and surely the intelligent always educated themselves. Anyway, he sometimes wondered if education was really of any use, so far as success in life was concerned. The careers of his acquaintance seemed to indicate the reverse. “I do not know why there is all this fuss about education,” he once remarked to Queen Victoria, “none of the Paget family can read or write and they do very well.”

On the other hand, he was not against the act that proposed reforming the municipal councils. For one thing, he thought there was a strong feeling in the country in favour of it: and he considered, as he had over the Reform Bill, that a wise statesman defers to such a feeling even if he does not happen to share it, in order to keep things peaceful. Secondly, the Bill seemed likely to give more local influence to the middle classes. Melbourne rightly judged that the middle classes, whether or not they called themselves liberal, were a conservative-minded body who would dislike dangerous changes. Even so, he did not feel enthusiastic about the measure; and was not upset when the House of Lords threw it out the first time it was introduced there. “What does it matter?” he said. “We have got on tolerably well with the councils for five hundred years. We may contrive to go on with them for another few years or so.” And when at last it did go through, “It is a great bouleversement, a great experiment,” he remarked doubtfully, “we must see how it works!” Certainly he did not feel sure that the Whigs were especially efficient at running local affairs. The Tories in the House of Lords made an attack on some magistrates who had recently been appointed by the Home Secretary. Out of loyalty to a colleague, Melbourne defended these appointments. But after the debate was at an end, he strolled over to the other side of the House to speak to an opponent. “Have we really been so bad in our appointments?” he unexpectedly asked him.

His attitude to Irish affairs was of a piece with his attitude to English. The Irish question was not so troublesome as usual, for John Russell, with Melbourne’s tacit connivance, had negotiated an unwritten pact with O’Connell by which the Repeal campaign in Ireland was to be called off in return for promises to administer Ireland in a more pro-Catholic spirit than before.10 Melbourne did not object to doing this. He had always thoroughly disliked the Irish Protestants. His tolerant spirit was especially irritated by their bland assumption that, because they owned most of the property in the country, their church had a right to be supported by money wrung from the pockets of a poverty-stricken peasantry who thought them heretics. “Religious establishment,” he said with unusual bitterness, “is for population not property. Its existence is for the poor and needy, not for the opulent who have the means to provide spiritual instruction for themselves.” All the same, the moment that pro-Catholic action showed signs of seriously annoying people in England, Melbourne hung back from it. John Russell, as before, proposed a bill to reform the Protestant Church in Ireland and to strip it of some of its revenues. Uncertain and unwilling, Melbourne agreed. “I am afraid the question of the Irish Church,” he said, “can neither be avoided nor postponed. It must therefore be attempted to be solved.” However, when the House of Lords threw out this bill, he wanted to drop it. He was the more reluctant to proceed in the matter because growingly he doubted that it, or any other bill, could do much to solve the Irish question. The more he saw of the Irish the more he was confirmed in his conviction that their discontent arose from something born in them. “I never thought,” he said, “that their crimes and outrages had much to do with former misgovermnent and present politics. I believe them to arise from the natural disposition of the people and the natural state of society, which would have been much the same under any dispensation.”

As a matter of fact Melbourne did not play much part either in planning or initiating the positive legislation activities of his Government. He left such work to John Russell. Not only did his conservatism of spirit make him dislike new legislation, but it was mostly concerned with administration; and he was still as bored by administration as ever. It needed more than four years as a Minister of the Crown to turn Melbourne into a man of action. The old Melbourne, like the young Melbourne, was interested less in getting things done than in studying why they happened. In so far as active politics did provide a field for his talents, it was on their personal side; in the opportunity they offered him to use his gift for managing individuals. This opportunity involved quite as much work as Melbourne liked. He found his hands full keeping his colleagues together and the King in a good humour. Even over this he was careful to expend his energy economically. He prudently refused to remove from South Street to the Prime Minister’s official residence in Downing Street. The last thing he wanted was to be in the thick of things, with his colleagues bursting in at any moment of the day or night, asking awkward questions and urging quick decisions. Nor did he think it the Prime Minister’s business to take a hand in the detailed running of every department in his administration. Canning, he noted, always maintained that a Government worked best in which each Minister was allowed to do his own job independently, and where the Prime Minister only intervened if any specially critical situation arose. Melbourne was pleased to find that his opinions and his inclinations alike led him to agree with Canning. “The companion rather than the guide of his ministers,” so he was described; and he kept just sufficient eye on their activities to notice if they seemed likely to do anything unusually foolish. This, however, with a team like his and the situation so precarious, entailed the exercise of an incessant and vigilant diplomacy. He conducted it in his customary unofficial, undress sort of way—by means of a casual word dropped in the card room of Brooks’s Club or over the port wine at a dinner party; and also by letters. Every day a stream of notes proceeded from South Street; pithy, racy, conversational notes counselling moderation and good sense, couched in a tone that artfully combined subtle tact with an air of friendly frankness. Now and again a glint of his paradoxical humour showed itself; and also his love of bold generalization. “Political dinners are very good things when you can be sure of apparent unanimity,” he will say, “when great differences are found, they are dangerous.” Or, “People are very fond of stating others to be dead or in a hopeless state and are very much disappointed to find them alive or not so bad as they gave them out to be.” Sometimes such sentences disconcerted his correspondents; so much so as to undo the effect of his tact. He realized this. “I observe,” he confessed sadly, “that these speculative letters, especially if they are written in an impartial or conciliatory tone, give the greatest offence.” The English party system has much to be said for it: but it does not provide a natural home for the detached thinker.

For the rest, Melbourne’s working day was occupied with routine activities; leading the House of Lords and dispensing patronage. He was still only moderately successful in the House of Lords. It was not in him to assume that stately and formidable public personality by which a born Leader of the House like Grey awes his opponents and rallies his noble supporters. Melbourne’s was incurably a private face. Because the debates bored him he tended to leave the management of many bills to his deputy, Lord Duncannon; when he did it himself he was often listless and perfunctory.

His individuality showed itself more happily in the dispensing of patronage. The letters he wrote on the subject are some of the most entertaining in his correspondence. Nowhere do the diverse strains in his nature exhibit themselves more curiously. His judgment was extremely detached. The fact that a man had attacked him did not in the least bias him against giving him an honour. And he had an acute eye to perceive genuine merit. On the other hand, he thought it foolish as a rule to waste an honour on a man who could do nothing to help the Whig cause. This disinclined him to reward literary achievement. “Literary men are seldom good for anything,” he said. He also had an aristocratic distaste for rewarding successful business men. “Never mind the clamour of the magnates in the city,” he told Lord Holland, “they grunt like pigs unless everything is done to suit their convenience.” This did not stop Lord Holland pressing for an honour to be given to a Mr. Goldsmith whom, he assured Melbourne, was not a vulgar commercial type of man. Melbourne replied, “I wish you would not press Goldsmith upon me. I hate refined Solomons. God knows I hate doing something for these Stock Exchange people; there are as many refined Christians as Goldsmith; and, after all, there is not so much merit in being a Jew as to cause him on that account to be selected in a manner which must provoke much clamour and discontent.” The Holland family were a great nuisance to Melbourne where honours were concerned. Lady Holland was so importunate as to come in for an incisive rebuke on the subject. “You seem to have one fixed principle,” Melbourne told her, “and that is to choose the man with the worst character in the list of candidates.” Certainly none of his friends and colleagues were considerate of him when they wanted a job done for a friend. John Russell himself forgot to be conscientious if there was a chance of promoting the advance of a member of his own family. “The Duke of Bedford and John Russell,” Melbourne exclaims on one occasion, “plague me for William Russell, a snuffling Methodist and a foolish fellow. No one has the least sense where their own connections are concerned, and a large family is a greater impediment than riches to a man’s entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.” And the obscure were just as clamorous as the great. “Turn round,” Melbourne whispered hurriedly to a companion when they were riding in Rotten Row, “is not that Dacres coming? There is no bore so great to a Prime Minister as a country gentleman.” All the same—and in spite of the bother that it involved him in—Melbourne got a great deal of amusement out of his job as patron. It was so delightfully revealing of human absurdity and vanity. Who, for instance, could have known that so many men wanted to be baronets? “I did not know that anyone cared any longer for these sort of things,” he said. “Now I have a hold on the fellows!” He was also entertained by the self-confident tenacity with which the Scotch nobility claimed honours for themselves. “Give him the Thistle!” he remarked about a notably half-witted Scottish Peer, “Why, he’d eat it!” Not that the English Peerage were much better. An Earl came to him demanding to be made a Marquess. “My dear sir,” replied Melbourne, “how can you be such a damn fool!”—and about an insatiable applicant, “Confound it! Does he want a Garter for his other leg?” Sometimes it seemed to him as if people demanded rewards precisely in proportion as they were undeserving of them. “The list of applications which I have,” he writes to John Russell about candidates for the Civil List pensions, “comprises Mrs. James, widow of the writer of The Naval History; Leigh Hunt, distinguished writer of seditious and treasonable libels; Colonel Napier, historian of the war in Spain, conceited and democratic Radical and grandson of a duke; Mr. Cary, translator of Dante, madman; Sheridan Knowles, man of great genius but not old nor poor enough for a pension. Say what would you think ought to be done.” It is to be noted that several of the names on this list did in fact get their pensions. Melbourne’s lack of illusions served, if anything, to increase his ironical tolerance. It also had the advantage of making him impervious himself to the temptations to which he perceived so many of his countrymen were susceptible. William IV urged him to accept the Garter; but, said Melbourne, “a Garter may attract to us somebody of consequence which nothing else can reach. But what is the good of my taking it? I cannot bribe myself!”

His most onerous work as patron was that concerned with ecclesiastical appointments. The Church of England was entering upon one of the most strenuous and turmoiled phases of its history. Like other traditional English institutions, it had woken from the placid summer afternoon slumber of the eighteenth century to find itself in a strange and disturbing world. The rise of liberalism, political and intellectual, appeared to be threatening its very existence: on every side the air re-echoed with the menacing cries of atheist radicals, now demanding its disestablishment, now questioning the very foundations of the Christian faith. However, the Church herself was susceptible to the spirit of the new age; romantic mysticism and the moral earnestness of the nineteenth century middle class flowed together into her veins to reinvigorate her with a fresh vitality; and she energetically rallied all her forces to resist her enemies. Unluckily, these forces could not agree as to how best this was to be done. There was the Liberal school who wanted to bring religion up to date; to strip its creed of what it considered its Medieval anachronisms and re-edit it on progressive “rational” lines. The new High Church party, the Puseyites of Oxford, on the contrary, were out to make the Church much more Medieval; surely she was strongest when she was mysterious and supernatural and authoritarian, as she had been in the great Age of Faith! Meanwhile, the Evangelical party, longer established than its rivals, stuck to its old prescription of philanthropy, puritan morals, and strict adherence to the literal words of the Scripture. All three parties regarded each other with righteous abhorrence. When an important position in the Church fell vacant, each loudly clamoured for it to be given to a candidate of its own persuasion. The unfortunate Prime Minister, in whose gift lay most important church appointments, had to decide between the claims of these vociferous and intolerant clerics.

Melbourne cut an odd figure in such a role. In one sense, he was better equipped for it than many statesmen; for theology had always been a hobby of his. But this very fact brought out in sharper relief how unlike his attitude to the subject was to that of the people with whom he was dealing. What were Dr. Pusey and the rest of them to think of a man who treated the most awful and momentous preoccupations of the human soul as matter for a hobby—and a whimsical hobby at that? These stiff, grave, conscience-ridden divines were disconcerted indeed to find themselves being tackled as to their views on the Virgin Birth or the Apostolic Succession in the cheerful man-of-the-world accents of a dinner party at Holland House. In 1840, for instance, we find Melbourne interviewing Dr. Thirlwall, a candidate for a bishopric, who had rendered himself a little suspect at Cambridge because he had translated from the German a doubtfully orthodox book on St. Luke’s Gospel. Dr. Thirlwall found Melbourne in bed surrounded by heaps of patristic folios. “Very glad to see you,” said Melbourne. “Sit down, sit down; hope you are come to say you accept. I only wish you to understand that I don’t intend if I know it to make a heterodox bishop. I don’t like heterodox bishops. As men they may be very good anywhere else, but I think they have no business on the Bench. I take great interest in theological questions, and I have read a good deal of those old fellows”—pointing to the folio editions of the Fathers—“They are excellent reading and very amusing; sometime or other we must have a talk about them. I sent your edition of Schleiermacher to Lambeth, and asked the Primate to tell me candidly what he thought of it; and look, here are his notes in the margin; pretty copious, you see. He does not concur in all your opinions; but he says there is nothing heterodox in your book.”

Dr. Thirlwall was a liberal theologian. Melbourne tended to favour these most. The evangelicals, he thought, were a set of bigoted, uneducated spoil-sports; and as often as not, hypocrites as well. “One good thing,” he writes to John Russell after reading Wilberforce’s life, “is that it shows the great philanthropist Thomas Clarkson to be a sad fellow.” The Puseyites were less objectionable—there was an agreeable odour of antique learning about them—but their mode of thought was so remote from his as to be unintelligible. “I hardly make out what Puseyism is,” he told Lord Holland. “Either I am dull or its apostles are very obscure. I have got one of their chief Newman’s publications with an appendix of four hundred and forty-four pages. I have read fifty-seven and cannot say I understand a sentence, or any idea whatever.” Melbourne certainly had survived into an age remote from that of his youth. It is comically incongruous to think of him in his armchair at South Street, puzzling over the sublime hair-splittings of Newman.

He found the thoughts of the liberal theologians easier to follow. Learned, sensible persons of a kind he expected to meet in academic circles, they were at least commendably open-minded about the mysterious subjects of their cogitations. He was also disposed in their favour by the fact that they were generally on the Whig side politically. This was a fact that the Prime Minister had to consider: the Government’s position was so precarious, and bishops had votes in the House of Lords. Indeed, in these days, most important Church appointments carried political implications with them. The realistic Melbourne was the last man to forget this. “I feel myself bound to recommend for promotion clergymen whose general views on political matters coincide with my own,” he told the Archbishop of Canterbury firmly. He added, however, that he did not want to advance any man whose views were heterodox, or who, for whatever reason, was unpopular with the main body of the clergy. Peace and quiet, as always, were the things he cared most about; and any sympathy he might personally feel with a man or with his opinions was kept strictly in check by his overriding determination to avoid a fuss. For this reason, he refused to make either Sidney Smith or Dr. Arnold a bishop. In delightful Sidney’s case, this was with regret and a certain feeling of guilt. “We shall not be forgiven for not having made Sidney Smith a bishop,” he exclaimed in his old age. No such qualms troubled him about Arnold. Humourless, busy and progressive, Arnold represented those aspects of the new age which Melbourne found most uncongenial. Besides, Arnold’s manner of preaching struck him as unpleasantly vehement, and he thought that he had very crotchety ideas about education. Alas, all Melbourne’s care did not save him from sometimes causing a storm by his ecclesiastical appointments. “I have always had much sympathy with Saul,” he once remarked. “He was bullied by the prophets just as I have been by the bishops who would, if they could, have tied me to the horns of the altar and slain me incontinently.”11 Such being his experience, it is not odd that he flinched at the prospect of adding to their number. “Damn it! Another bishop dead!” he would sigh, “I believe they die to vex me.”

In point of fact, the biggest row he got into over a matter of this kind was not concerned with a bishopric. In 1836, the Regius Professorship of Divinity at Oxford fell vacant. After much consideration, Melbourne offered it to Dr. Hampden, a man eminent for his learning, and a Whig. Unluckily, he had also acquired distinction by delivering a course of lectures in which he had betrayed himself as a little dubious about the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. In consequence, his appointment roused a storm of protest. William IV, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr. Pusey himself, all wrote agitatedly remonstrating with Melbourne; and some pious peers made angry speeches on the matter in the House of Lords. Dr. Hampden, whose temperament seems to have been less bold than his theological speculations, offered nervously to retire from the field. Melbourne, however, was not the man to let himself be bullied once he had made up his mind. Besides, he was determined to do nothing which looked like a surrender to the spirit of intolerance. Genially he soothed Dr. Hampden’s anxieties. “Be easy,” he said laying a hand on his arm. “I like an easy man.” Himself, he used his usual pacifying tactics with King and Archbishop and wrote a letter to Dr. Pusey suavely putting him in his place. “I entirely concur with you in the necessity of agreement,” he said, “if it can be created consistently with other more important objects, upon the greater points between those who fill the theological chairs in the same university. It is hardly necessary to go to Germany to learn so plain and so obvious a truth; and the theological colloquy and religious belief which prevails in the universities of that country is, if it be such as it is popularly represented, no very favourable testimony to the results of those institutions and to the manner in which they are conducted. Uniformity of opinion, however desirable, may be purchased at too high a price. We must not sacrifice everything to it; soundness of opinion, reasonableness of opinion, extent of knowledge, powers, intellectual and physical, must also be taken into account . . . I do not myself dread bold enquiry and speculation. I have seen too many new theories spring up and die away to feel much alarm upon such a subject. If they are founded on truth, they establish themselves and become part of the established belief. If they are erroneous, they decay and perish . . . I return you my thanks for calling my attention to the general state of religious feeling in the country, and to the deep interest which is taken in religious questions and ecclesiastical appointments. Be assured that I am neither unaware of its extent nor of its fervour, and that I have not been a careless observer of its progress. I doubt not that it is working for good, but the best and most holy aspirations are liable to be affected by the weakness of our nature and to be corrupted by our spirit of ill will, hatred and malice, of intolerance and persecution, which in its own warmth and sincerity it is apt to engender; a spirit to which, in whatever form or place it may show itself, I have a decided antipathy, and will oppose at all hazards all the resistance in my power.”

The House of Lords had less claim to be treated respectfully in these matters. Melbourne made this clear in a speech. “Very few of your Lordships,” he said bluntly, “have the means of forming any sound opinion on such extremely difficult and abstruse points as these . . . I know very little of the subject and yet I believe I know more than those who have opposed the Doctor’s nomination.”

Melbourne’s dealings with ecclesiastical affairs were not confined to the question of patronage. The spirit of reform was out to make itself felt in every established institution. A great many of these institutions were connected in some way or other with the National Church. Accordingly, during the period of Melbourne’s Government, progressive reformers were always coming forward with schemes that affected it; schemes for reforming tithe and church-rate and the constitution of cathedral churches; for legalizing civil marriage and abolishing religious tests at universities. In order to please his colleagues, Melbourne reluctantly agreed to support some of these projects. But he disliked them all. He was a liberal only in matters of thought: so far as practical Church reforms were concerned, he was as conservative as Dr. Pusey himself. He was against schemes for equalizing clerical incomes; “I am all for inequality and rich clergy,” he remarked gaily to a committee of the House of Lords. And how could anyone be so sure of anything, he would wonder, as to have conscientious scruples against being married in church, as their fathers and grandfathers had been before them? The same conservatism appeared in his dealings with the Church of Scotland. In 1835, it was proposed that the Government grant to the Scottish Church should be increased. Scottish divines were divided as to whether this would be a good thing. Some held that the cause of religion required financial support: others, that to accept State aid of any kind, was sinful and erastian. After listening to their arguments, Melbourne made, his comment in a letter to the celebrated Dr. Chalmers. “The one party looks to nothing less than a general change in the state of human nature and human society by means of increased pastoral exertion; and the other is dreaming upon the pure and prosperous state of the Christian Church in the first centuries, and the evil and degradation which it has incurred ever since the unfortunate conversion of the Emperor Constantine. You will excuse the plainness of my phrase, but to persons so influenced by heat and enthusiasm, to use no stronger terms, it is vain to expect that any arrangement can be satisfactory.” He was opposed, he concluded, to any alteration in the financial arrangements of the Church of Scotland.

So far as established Churches were concerned, Melbourne’s method did not work badly. Established institutions need, first of all, to be kept running smoothly. Melbourne’s spirit of civilized moderation helped him to do this. It was not so appropriate when he came into contact with independent and extreme religious bodies. One day a deputation of Dissenters came to see him. “Now, sir,” he said after listening to one of them, “you talk like a man of sense. It’s these damned Anabaptists who do all the mischief.” Another member of the deputation felt impelled to testify to his faith. “I am an Anabaptist,” he announced gravely. “The devil you are!” replied Melbourne, laughing and rubbing his hands, “well you’ve all done a great deal of mischief—and I should like to hear whether you are wiser than the rest!”

Towards the Church of Rome his manner was more respectful. No doubt it was superstitious and tyrannical, and Melbourne was extremely glad that England was not under its sway. Moreover, he did not like Roman ritual which struck his gentlemanly and English eye as too theatrical to be consistent with a true spirit of devotion. But the Church of Rome was an ancient and venerable institution that appealed to his historic sense and with which he thought it wise the English Government should be on good terms. Melbourne thought that the Whigs had always underrated the importance of the Church of Rome as a factor influence in public opinion. He regretted that Protestant bigotry made it impossible for him to send an ambassador to the Vatican. As it was, he made efforts to get into good unofficial relations there. These were not very successful as far as practical results were concerned. His tone was not quite right. “The present Pope was very rude to me,” Melbourne complained on one occasion. “I wrote to him asking him to give a Cardinal’s Hat to an Irish bishop who had been of great use to us on the management of the country. But he took no notice of my request.” It would have been odd if he had. The Vicar of Christ should not be addressed as if he was a political colleague to be breezily cajoled into doing a job for a harassed Prime Minister.

Indeed, Melbourne’s attitude to religion in its corporate manifestations was incorrigibly secular. Not in its personal ones though; here he remained paradoxically ambiguous as ever. He could not be called a believer. Yet he felt himself instinctively opposed to all professional unbelievers. He took a mischievous pleasure, when he found himself staying at Holland House with the atheistic Bentham, in beguiling him into attending Divine service at the local church. This was partly due, no doubt, to a dislike for dogmatic prigs of any kind. But not altogether: Melbourne had a positive feeling for religion that no amount of intellectual scepticism could dispel. He might have been expected to sympathize with Henry IV of France for becoming a Roman Catholic in order to keep his country at peace. On the contrary; “I would have died rather than do it!” he exclaimed to Queen Victoria; and he was seriously concerned lest the dying William IV should not see a clergyman. Moreover, Melbourne’s interest in theology, apparently so whimsical, was connected with the deepest movements of his nature. Amid all the distractions of office, his perplexed spirit continued to brood intermittently over the riddle of man’s relation to the universe. One day Haydon called to find him reading the Greek Testament. “Is not the world,” Haydon asked him, “evidence of a perpetual struggle to remedy a defect?” “Certainly!” mused Melbourne. “If as Milton says,” went on Haydon, “we were sufficient to have stood, why then did we fall?” At these words, Melbourne suddenly sat bolt upright. “Ah! That is touching on all our apprehensions,” he exclaimed.

This remark betrays a troubled spirit. Indeed, these were not happy years for Melbourne. His forebodings before becoming Prime Minister had proved justified. For all his growing reputation, for all that he was succeeding better than anyone had expected in staving off his Government’s defeat, he was usually harassed and often depressed. After all, though his policy might be the wisest in the circumstances, it was not a glorious one. It is not satisfying to be continually compromising and conceding, especially when the best that can be hoped from them is to put off the inevitable coming of some more or less evil day. Even on a short view, their success was precarious: any violent turn of events and the whole careful structure of his diplomatic skill would fall to pieces. Besides, to maintain it was wearing. It meant being constantly watchful, and tactful, and patient and good-tempered. Against considerable temptations to the contrary, too: so many people made themselves a nuisance to him so often. “Damn it! Why can’t they be quiet?” he would sigh to himself. As always, the King was the greatest trial. Soured by his failure to keep the Whigs out, William IV’s temper had become more uncertain than ever. During the first months of the new Government, he refused to speak to his Ministers at all, except on business. “I would rather have the devil than a Whig in the house,” he exclaimed, and sat sulking evening after evening, alone with a bottle of sherry. John Russell and Lord Glenelg, the Colonial Secretary, were his particular aversions. He insulted Glenelg so often and so publicly that Melbourne had to remonstrate with him. With good effect; indeed, Melbourne was admirable in dealing with the King who, under the influence of his mingled tact and firmness, did begin to grow friendlier. But his good humour did not last long. By the following summer, he was once more violently hostile—“Crazier than ever!” said Melbourne gloomily. Every week, he received some long, rambling, grumbling complaint from the Palace; about the Navy, or the Militia or the shocking behaviour of the Duchess of Kent—of whom, as the mother of the heir to the throne, William IV was furiously suspicious.

The King’s rudeness annoyed the Ministers. Melbourne then had to soothe them. “It is best not to quarrel with him,” he would remark. “He is evidently in a state of great excitement.” But so, often, were they! Even without Brougham and Durham, they had turned out a difficult team to drive. Palmerston was rash and unmanageable, Glenelg feeble and languid; even John Russell, whom Melbourne looked on as the strong central pillar of his administration, was liable to what the cautious Melbourne considered fits of extreme indiscretion. Without a word of warning, in the Cabinet or, still worse, in public, he might come out with some dogmatic statement about his own opinions that was bound to cause a row. The chance that this might happen made Melbourne nervous. “I hope you have said nothing damn foolish,” he writes to him on one occasion. “I thought you were teeming with some imprudence yesterday.” Besides, if John Russell found himself unable to speak his mind as his principles directed, he was inclined to throw up the sponge. Three times at least, during these years, he threatened to resign: and had to be cajoled by his chief into staying in office. This irritated Melbourne. His irritation grew sharper when John Russell took upon himself to tell him that he ate too much and did not take enough exercise.

The King and his colleagues were not the only people to give Melbourne trouble. There was the Radical wing of his party exploding in righteous wrath every time he made a concession to the Tories: there was the Opposition in the House of Lords, always on their toes to trip the Government up, factious, carping, asking awkward questions and exulting in ugly pleasure over any Whig slip. It was true that Peel, for his own good reasons, did his best to keep them in check. But Melbourne could not feel that this was done in a spirit of sporting goodwill. Peel, in his view, was a cold, ungenerous, ungenial type of man—“Not a horse into whose stable you should go unadvisedly and without speaking to him before!” he warned John Russell; and again “he is cross and sarcastic which I take to be the nature of the man: it is only prudence and calculation which make him otherwise.”

Altogether, being Prime Minister was fully as troublesome as he had feared. Gradually the strain began to tell on his nerves. He slept very badly, and suffered from rheumatic attacks that kept him in bed for days at a time. Every month brought some new abortive crisis: every crisis left the Government a little more discredited. The nadir was reached in the late summer of 1836 after the Government had suffered a series of defeats in the House of Lords and every one—King, Irish, Radicals—seemed in a thoroughly bad temper. “It would try the patience of an ass,” Melbourne broke out one day. For the first time he began to wonder whether it might not be wiser to resign.

Dissatisfaction with his immediate situation merged into a more general sense of sadness and disillusionment. He felt the fleetingness of things mortal more acutely than ever; saw himself more than ever as an alien in the new age. Especially down in the country at Brocket, where he had time to reflect and the atmosphere was soaked in memories of his happy childhood and brilliant youth, regret swept over him like a wave. The golden September sunlight bathing the stretches of turfy parkland seemed only to mock by contrast the sunless autumn of his own prevailing mood.

“Thou bringest the light of pleasure fled,

And hopes long dead.”

So he would be heard murmuring to himself as he gazed out of the window.

(4)

The events of his private life contributed to his depression. He had lost Miss Eden for the time being. In 1835, Miss Eden’s brother, Lord Auckland, was made Governor-General of India; and she went away with him. No longer could Melbourne look forward to calling on her each week, for an entertaining talk on the foibles of his colleagues or the Epistles of St. Paul; no longer could he relax his taut nerves in the pleasant warmth of her kindness and her good sense. “My mother always used to say,” he writes in a note of farewell, “that I was very selfish, both Boy and Man, and I believe she was right—at least I know that I am always anxious to escape from anything of a painful nature, and find every excuse for doing so. Very few events could be more painful to me than your going, and therefore I am not unwilling to avoid wishing you good-bye. Then God bless you—As to health, let us hope for the best. The climate of the East Indies very often re-establishes it. I send you a Milton, which I have had a long time and often read in. I shall be most anxious to hear from you and promise to write. Adieu.”

Then in the spring of 1836 he found himself in serious trouble over Mrs. Norton. She had been the central figure in his private life for the last five years. Either in his house or hers, they saw each other nearly every day; often for three hours at a time and often alone. She talked or listened to him about his political work; when he wanted to forget politics, they read poetry together, or flirted and gossiped. Such a relationship, innocent though in fact it might be, was bound to excite censorious comment. One man can steal a horse, says the proverb, while another cannot look over the hedge. Melbourne and Caroline belonged conspicuously to the second category. Both lived in the public eye: Melbourne because he was Prime Minister, Caroline because it was her nature so to do. Moreover, what with Lady Branden and the general amorous reputation of his family, Melbourne could not pay marked attention to a woman without people suspecting the worst. Nor was Caroline the type of woman to disarm their suspicions. She was showily beautiful, her conversation was the opposite of prudish and she had no sense of decorum. “Met Mrs. Norton at the French Ambassador’s,” notes the correct Lord Malmesbury in 1835. “She talked in a most extraordinary manner and kicked Lord Melbourne’s hat over her head. The whole corps diplomatique were amazed.” The world in general reacted to such exhibitions in the same way as the corps diplomatique: and disapproval mingled with their amazement. Indeed, Caroline had only maintained her precarious footing in respectable society in virtue of the fact that she had not broken its first fundamental law of conduct: she still lived under the same roof as her husband. As time passed, she found this growingly difficult.

The marriage had always been a dog-fight. Neither husband nor wife had the self-control to keep their wrongs to themselves. Gradually, parties were formed on each side. They interfered and made things worse. Caroline’s supporters were the first to enter the fray. One evening in 1833, the Nortons had a worse row than usual. George Norton insisted on smoking a cigar in the drawing-room, though Caroline objected to the smell. Accordingly, she flounced upstairs and locked herself in her bedroom. Norton pursued after her, broke down the door, and, after blowing out the candle, proceeded to throw her and the furniture about in an alarming fashion. The next day she took refuge with her family who vehemently espoused her cause. However, things were patched up sufficiently for the Nortons and the Sheridan family—Caroline’s sisters and her brother Brinsley—to go on a foreign tour together in the following year. As might have been expected, this only led to more trouble. Once again the worst explosion was occasioned by George Norton’s smoking. One day, when driving with his wife in a small closed carriage, he puffed away at a hookah regardless of her entreaties. She tore the mouth-piece from his lips and flung it out of the window; he clutched her so violently by the throat that, in fear of her life, she jumped from the carriage and ran back to her relations. Outraged to see their sister treated in this way, they returned to England, George Norton’s implacable enemies who never lost a chance of working up Caroline against him. Now it was his turn to seek for sympathy among his relations. He found it, and especially from Miss Vaughan, an elderly spinster connection of his, to whom he had always taken pains to make himself pleasant as he hoped she might leave him her fortune. Stirred up by Miss Vaughan on the one hand and the Sheridans on the other, the feeling between husband and wife began to increase to a bitterness that made rupture inevitable. It did not come at once only because George Norton was too unstable easily to take decisive action about anything; and because Caroline, partly out of concern for her reputation and her children, and partly out of genuine softheartedness, shrank when it came to the point, from pushing matters to their extreme conclusion. Some uneasy months followed of recurrent quarrels, apologies, and reconciliations. Each time the quarrel was sharper and the reconciliation more half-hearted. In April, 1836, the final break came. Its occasion—a dispute as to whether or not the children should be allowed to pay a visit to Caroline’s brother—seems trivial enough. Perhaps George Norton had already thought of the plan by which he hoped he might at once disembarrass himself of his wife and also improve his wretched financial position. Why not take advantage of Caroline’s notorious indiscretion to get a divorce and make the co-respondent pay him large damages? He therefore turned her out of the house, packed his children off to his relations, and set about looking for a likely co-respondent. Several celebrated names occurred to him as possible candidates for this important role. For a time his mind wavered between Shelley’s corsair friend Trelawny, Harrison Ainsworth, the novelist, and the young Duke of Devonshire. Then an even more spectacular alternative presented itself to his mind; the Prime Minister himself. It is doubtful whether this was George Norton’s own idea or—as was commonly rumoured—it was suggested to him by wire-pullers from the underworld of the Tory Party, who saw in the divorce case a means of discrediting the Whig Government. How George Norton thought he was going to get away with it is hard to imagine. For, up till the very day Caroline left him, he had taken pains to keep on particularly good terms with Melbourne—even better than with Caroline’s other rich admirers. So far from objecting to the intimacy, he had ushered Melbourne up to visit her in her bedroom when she was ill and escorted her to South Street when she was going to pay a call there. However, he was intoxicated by the prospect of the fortune he was likely to get if he did contrive to win his case; alternatively, he thought Melbourne, for the sake of avoiding a public scandal, might pay up handsomely in order to persuade him to withdraw it. In either case he fancied he stood to win. He proceeded, therefore, to file a petition, accusing him of criminal connection with his wife.

The general sensation stirred can be imagined. It is not every day that the Prime Minister of England is publicly accused of adultery with a reigning beauty. The gutter-press of the day resounded with articles in which spicy scandalous rumours were nicely blended with pious reflections on the deplorable prevalence of vice in high places. All this was more agreeable for the newspaper reader than for the parties concerned. Caroline was consternated. It looked like the end of all her ambitions. In those days, divorce meant complete social ruin for a woman. Even if she were exonerated, her good name would be tarnished. Her children, whom she loved with all the unbridled force of her emotional nature, were cut off from her, and in the hands of the odious Nortons. Reports reached her that they ill-treated them. Her dramatic imagination exaggerated these reports till she was nearly out of her mind. Alas, misfortune did not make her prudent! Indeed, it served still further to weaken her self-control and provide a new channel for the expression of her instinct for theatrical gesture. She proclaimed her wrongs at the top of her voice; she did her best to put herself in the wrong with George Norton by writing him letters imploring his forgiveness if he would take her back; she even rushed down to the country house where her children were confined, only to have them torn screaming from her arms and herself thrust ignominiously from the gates. At the same time, she failed to take the opportunity to mend her broken reputation by adopting a soberer and more retired style of living. Instead—either from pride or a desperate longing to forget her troubles—she shocked people by continuing to dine out and to go to parties, gorgeously dressed in pink satin and black lace, and laughing and talking with feverish vivacity.

The one person she could not risk being seen with was Melbourne. However, she communicated with him in a series of letters in which cries of anguish, denunciations of the Nortons, and appeals for comfort and advice were frantically mingled. Poor Melbourne, he must have rued the day he first called at her house! No pleasure he had found there could compensate for the trouble it was now causing him. He had chiefly enjoyed his relationship to Caroline as a delightful distraction from the disturbances of his political life. Now it turned out to be involving him in disturbance itself. And a much more disagreeable kind of disturbance. For it was one that stirred his sense of guilt. Through his own indiscretion, he had done harm to the reputation of his Government and brought acute distress upon a woman he was very fond of. He did not, indeed, look on himself as primarily to blame for the failure of the Norton marriage. To his shrewd and worldly-wise eyes it seemed to have been grossly mismanaged from the start. No doubt George Norton was the villain of the piece. Melbourne’s personal experience of him made him certain of this. Norton had proved shockingly unsatisfactory at his job; quarrelsome, shifty, grossly unpunctual and conceitedly imperious to any word of correction. “I know very well that a man of that description,” Melbourne told Caroline, “who is fully persuaded that he is about to do something extremely well is on the point of committing some irretrievable error or of falling into some most ridiculous absurdity.” As to Norton’s behaviour at home, Melbourne saw quite enough of it to realize that all Caroline’s complaints were justified. All the same, he did not think she went the right way about dealing with him. Not thus would his mother have tackled a troublesome husband. Caroline was at once too violent and too weak; lost her temper too quickly and too readily forgave an injury. “The fact is he is a stupid brute,” he said to Lord Holland, “and she has not the temper nor the dissimulation needed to manage him.” Further, he thought that living with Norton had lowered her standards of behaviour so that she had grown content to let her marriage degenerate into a condition of continuous sordid squabble that must end in catastrophe. For he had no doubt that a breach was a catastrophe. Far more clearly than Caroline he recognized how fatal it would be for her reputation openly to be separated from her husband. All along Melbourne had urged her to put up with anything in order to keep the home together. As he wrote to her in his first letter after the final quarrel. “I hardly know what to write to you, or what comfort to offer. You know as well as I do, that the best course is to keep yourself tranquil, and not to give way to feelings of passion which, God knows, are too natural to be easily resisted. This conduct upon his part seems perfectly unaccountable, and, depend upon it, being as you are, in the right, it will be made ultimately to appear, whatever temporary misrepresentations may prevail. You cannot have better or more affectionate advisers than you have with you upon the spot, who are well acquainted with the circumstances of the case and with the characters of those with whom they have to deal. You know that I have always counselled you to bear everything and remain to the last. I thought it for the best.”

He still thought it for the best. Soon he was pressing her to try and make things up again—even after he got the news that George Norton was trying to find grounds for a divorce. “Never, to be sure, was there such conduct. To set on foot that sort of inquiry without the slightest real ground for it! But it does not surprise me. I have always known that there was a mixture of folly and violence which might lead to any absurdity or injustice. You know so well my opinion that it is unnecessary for me to repeat it. I have always told you that a woman should never part from her husband whilst she can remain with him. This is generally the case; particularly in such a case as yours, that is, in the case of a young, handsome woman of lively imagination, fond of company and conversation, and whose celebrity and superiority has necessarily created many enemies. Depend upon it, if a reconciliation is feasible there can be no doubt of the prudence of it.” In spite of all, to make it up would be the best for Caroline, best for her children—and of course best both for Melbourne himself and for the Whig Party.

When all hope of reconciliation was over, Melbourne concentrated on comforting Caroline and trying to persuade her to keep her head. “I hope you will not take it ill,” he said, “if I implore you to try at least to be calm under these trials. You know that whatever is alleged (if it be alleged) is utterly false, and what is false can rarely be made to appear true.” And again, “Keep up your spirits; agitate yourself as little as possible; do not be too anxious about rumours and the opinion of the world.” Alas, such advice, sensible though it was, had no effect on a woman like Caroline. Rather, it roused her exasperated nerves, to an outburst of irritation. To her his whole tone only showed that he was cold and selfish and did not enter into her feelings. How could he expect her to be calm? Nor did she like it when he said that other people agreed with him. What did he mean by talking of her concerns to other people. Was it not shockingly disloyal of him? Gently, and with the patience born of long experience of similar temperamental explosions in his own home, he defended himself. “You describe me very truly when you say that I am always more annoyed that there is a row than sorry for the persons engaged in it. But, after all, you know you can count on me.” Indeed, Caroline was wildly mistaken in thinking that he did not feel for her. On the contrary, as the time for the trial approached, the matter began to prey on his mind till he became actually ill from disgust and apprehension. The idea of any woman he was fond of being involved in the squalor of a public lawsuit on such a subject was almost unbearable to his chivalrous heart. Caroline wrote describing an interview with her lawyers. She had found it odious: they had been so cold-blooded about the affair, so obviously ready under an air of superficial politeness to believe her guilty, and, she cried once more, Melbourne did not realize her sufferings! He was feeling so worked up by now that this time he burst out in reply, “I have received your letter,” he said, “and given such instruction as I trust will be for the best. I do not wonder at the impression made upon you. I knew it would be so, and therefore I was most unwilling to have the interview take place at all. All the attorneys I have ever seen have the same manner: hard, cold, incredulous, distrustful, sarcastic, sneering. They are said to be conversant in the worst part of human nature, and with the most discreditable transactions. They have so many falsehoods told them, that they place confidence in none.

“I have sent your note, having read it. I daresay you think me unfeeling; but I declare that since I first heard I was proceeded against I have suffered more intensely than I ever did in my life. I had neither sleep nor appetite, and I attributed the whole of my illness (at least the severity of it) to the uneasiness of my mind. Now what is this uneasiness for? Not for my own character because, as you justly say, the imputation upon me is as nothing. It is not for the political consequences to myself, although I deeply feel the consequences that my indiscretion may bring upon those who are attached to me or follow my fortunes. The real and principal object of my anxiety and solicitude is you, and the situation in which you have been so unjustly placed by the circumstances which have taken place.”

It is likely that his passionate desire to convince her of his sympathy made him exaggerate a little. He cannot have suffered so profoundly as at the crisis of his marriage. But he was older now, he could stand these strains less well: and perhaps it is true that never before had he felt his nerves so wretchedly upset. Certainly it is the first occasion in this phase of his life that we find people saying that he looked depressed.

Meanwhile he asked the King if he should resign; he was willing to if it was thought proper. The King said no. He suspected the whole affair of being an underhand political plot: and with all his faults, William IV was not the type of man to connive at underhand plots. Nor had his own private life been of a kind to make him take a censorious view of Melbourne’s alleged misconduct. The Duke of Wellington also took steps to let Melbourne know that he saw no cause for resignation. On the contrary, he said he would refuse to take office in any Government that might be formed as a result of it. He too was not the man to be particular in such matters. Besides he was very anxious to dissociate himself from the intrigues of his shadier supporters.

The case came up for trial on 23rd June. Public excitement was tremendous. Couriers waited all day ready to carry the news of the verdict to every important capital in Europe. From early morning, the law courts were besieged by huge crowds trying to get seats: so much so that the Attorney General, Sir John Campbell, who was appearing for Melbourne, had considerable difficulty in pushing his way through the throng. During the whole day before he had been feeling acutely apprehensive. Who knew what apparently damning evidence George Norton might have contrived to concoct in order to gain his ends? Campbell need not have worried. Dickens was to satirize the case a year or two later in the Pickwick Papers: and in fact, the proceedings did turn out to be a scene of grotesque Dickensian farce. Hogarthian rather: for much of the evidence offered was of too scandalous a kind to find a place on the chaste pages of a Victorian novel. Melbourne and Caroline were not present, though Melbourne sent an affidavit asserting his innocence. George Norton could not by law go into the witness box himself. Instead, he relied on the evidence of a handful of servants once in his employ, whom he had tracked down after months of search in the underworld of London and then persuaded by means of lavish bribes to come forward on his behalf. They were of a type to cast a lurid light on the character of life below stairs in the Norton household. Two were women who had been discharged on account of their indiscreet familiarities with members of His Majesty’s Brigade of Guards; while the chief male witness was a groom called Fluke who had been dismissed for his habitual drunkenness. Fluke was an engaging character. It was reported that he had refused at the last moment to come to court unless he was brought in a chaise and four, and was given both chicken and duckling for breakfast before starting.

“I had had a drop too much,” he confided to the court, when relating an incident in his evidence.

“You like to speak the truth sometimes?” said Campbell sarcastically. “You took a drop too much, eh?” Fluke resented the tone of his remark.

“I don’t know who does not. We are all alike for that, masters and servants,” he answered.

“How often did you take a drop too much while in Mrs. Norton’s service?” asked Campbell.

“What Sir, during four years service!” exclaimed the astonished Fluke. “You have put a very heavy question!” It also transpired during his examination that Fluke had spent the last weeks living at a public house on the Norton family estate and had had several interviews with George Norton. The chief documentary evidence brought forward were three notes from Melbourne. The first ran, “I will call about quarter-past four. Yours, Melbourne.”

The second, “How are you? I shall not be able to come today. I shall tomorrow.”

The third, “No House today: I will call after the levee. If you wish it later I will let you know.”

Norton’s Counsel did what he could with these unpromising documents. He said they showed “a great and unwarrantable degree of affection,” because they did not begin My Dear Mrs. Norton, and added, “there may be latent love like latent heat in the midst of icy coldness.” This mysterious and imaginative reflection failed to make the impression on the court which its author desired. The proceedings, which lasted for nearly thirteen hours, were frequently interrupted by bursts of uproarious laughter. Campbell called no witnesses for the defence. Instead, rising at six o’clock and continuing till the candles guttered low in their sockets, he demolished the evidence offered on behalf of the plaintiff in a speech which all present agreed to be one of the most brilliant exhibitions of legal wit and eloquence ever heard in an English Court of Justice. The case ended just before midnight: the Jury acquitted Melbourne without leaving the box. The verdict was received with thunderous applause. Late as it was, Campbell went down to the House of Commons, where the news of his success had preceded him, and was met with another great outburst of cheering. Even the bitterest Tory did not dare to question the justice of the verdict. “As far as I can see,” said one acidly, “Melbourne had more opportunities than any man ever had before and made no use of them.”

On the whole the Prime Minister’s reputation was affected wonderfully little by the affair. The newspapers indeed, on the morning after the trial, maintained the lofty and censorious tone which, as self-appointed guardians of public morality, they had assumed throughout. The Times, though it accepted the verdict, reproved Caroline’s conduct as “imprudent, indiscreet, and undignified, and the very last we should hold up as an example to an English wife.” As for Melbourne, a man who could waste his own and the lady’s time on such “contemptible and unnecessary frivolities” was, it said, utterly unfit for his high office.

This view does not seem to have been shared by any one in the world of politics and fashion in which Melbourne lived: while, as might have been expected, his own relations, little as they cared for Mrs. Norton—why must William always involve himself with such impossible women?—rallied round him with all that sense of family solidarity which was characteristic of them. “The whole thing seems to leave the lady in a position where, with a little protection, she may do very well,” wrote Frederick Lamb to his sister Emily. “We know them for canaille, but we must help her as well as we can. Do not let William think himself invulnerable for having got off again this time. No man’s luck can go further.”

William did not think himself invulnerable. No doubt it was a great load off his mind. The night of the trial, walking home by Storey’s Gate, he saw a young lawyer of his acquaintance staring curiously at Mrs. Norton’s house. Melbourne touched him on the shoulder. “What does this mean, Mr. Solicitor?” he asked with a roguish look. But he did not feel so carefree as to imagine he could risk resuming his intimacy with Caroline on anything like the old terms. It was sad; for he had grown in his loneliness to depend on her very much. But it was inevitable. All the same, he still felt responsible for her and very much concerned about her future prospects. Those were not bright. In spite of the fact that she had been exonerated, the trial was a disaster for her. It cut her off indefinitely from her children: and, for all that Frederick Lamb might say to the contrary, it struck a dangerous blow at her precarious social position. Many people still thought her guilty; at the best, she had shown herself extremely indiscreet. Nor did her flamboyant personality enable her to play the role of innocent, injured woman in such a way as to disarm the suspicions of the censorious. Besides, she was very poor. Legally everything she possessed down to her very jewels belonged to George Norton, even if she got a legal separation from him: and he was prepared to claim all his legal rights. Melbourne was all the more worried about her because for some time after the trial he did not hear a word from her, though he had written more than once. He began to wonder if she had not turned against him as one of the authors of her troubles. At last she did answer, miserable and bitter indeed, but against Norton, not himself. He replied in a series of letters in which are apparent the mingled strains of his feelings in regard to her: regret, affection, pity, a sense of personal responsibility and chivalrous indignation with Norton.

“Well, come what may, I will never again from silence or any other symptom think that you can mean anything unkind or averse to me. I have already told you that most of the bitterness which I have felt during this affair was on your account. I do not think your application to Norton was judicious.12 Every communication elates him and encourages him to persevere in his brutality. You ought to know him better than I do and must do so. But you seem to me to be hardly aware what a gnome he is, how perfectly earthy and bestial. He is possessed of a devil, and that the immensest and basest fiend that disgraces the infernal regions. In my opinion he has made the whole matter subservient to his pecuniary interests . . . Now that he has nobody to advise or control or soothe him, what follies or what abominable conduct he may pursue it is impossible to conjecture. I pity you about the children . . . It is most melancholy not to know where they are or with whom. I have never mentioned money to you. I hardly like to do it now. Your feelings have been so galled that they have naturally become very sore and sensitive. I know how you might take it. I have had, at times, a great mind to send you some but I feared to do so. As I trust we are now upon terms of confidential and affectionate friendship, I venture to say that you have only to express a wish and it shall be instantly complied with. I miss you. I miss your society and conversation every day at the hours at which I was accustomed to enjoy it: and when you say that your place can be easily supplied, you indulge in a little vanity and self-conceit. You know well enough that there is nobody who can fill your place . . . I saw Brinsley and his wife the other night at Lord Hertford’s. I thought him rather cold. None of them seemed really glad to see me, except Charles. But there is no reason why they should be. If they went upon my principle, or rather my practice of disliking those who cause trouble, uneasiness, vexation, without considering why they do it, they certainly would not rejoice in my presence.”

Towards the end of the year his private life was disturbed by yet another shock. For some months, Augustus Lamb’s health had shown signs of breaking up. The attacks from which he has suffered since a child came oftener and more violently. In spite of all his other preoccupations, Melbourne had watched over him as carefully as he could: had him with him when he was working, and sat in his room for hours together observing vigilantly every varying symptom of his condition. One evening in November they were together and Melbourne was writing when Augustus suddenly said, “I wish you would give me some franks that I may write to people who have been kind in their enquiries.” Words and tone were those of a sane, mature man: Melbourne’s pen dropped from his hand in astonishment. “I cannot give any notion of what I felt,” he related, “for I believe it to be, as it proved, the summons they call the lightening before death. In a few hours he was gone.” Melbourne’s words are calm and he went back to work at once, to all outward appearance his usual smiling self. But Augustus was his only child, and he had loved him with the ardour of a starved and tender heart. The event cast a greyer shadow on the last months of 1836.

There was nothing to dissipate it in his professional life. The Government continued, as it had for some months past, to jolt and creak along its accustomed round, checked and harassed as before by King and Peers, Irish and Radicals. The King’s moods were various. Violently out of temper during August, he was sufficiently softened by November to send his Ministers an invitation to dinner, accompanied by the alarming proviso that he expected them each to drink two bottles of wine. In December, however, he had turned against them once more: and, though his experiences in 1834 had taught him not to try and get rid of them on his own initiative, he remained for the rest of his reign hostile. The House of Lords, too, was very obstreperous. It threw out the Irish Church Bill at the end of 1836; mainly because it still objected to the clause appropriating Church revenue to secular purposes. Melbourne took the opportunity to persuade his colleagues to drop this clause. The House of Lords was not sufficiently pacified to pass the Bill; and the Irish were very much annoyed. One evening in December sitting at Lord Sefton’s, Creevey told Melbourne that he had heard O’Connell was likely to stop supporting the Government.

“God!” remarked Melbourne with placid interest. “It’s a curious thing—two or three people have said the same thing to me.”—and then after a pause, “God, perhaps it is so!” Creevey was amazed at the detachment with which the Prime Minister seemed to contemplate an event that must lead to the downfall of his Government. In fact O’Connell still preferred the Whigs to the Tories and so did not withdraw his support. His followers, however, were displeased. So were the Radicals. Every concession to the opposition made them harder to control. Meanwhile the Government appeared so weak that moderate opinion in the country was veering more and more round to Peel. The effect of all this was to exhaust the patience of Ministers to breaking point. John Russell began periodically threatening resignation again; and from the beginning of 1836 there was a growing party in the Cabinet who wanted to stop compromise, even if it meant that the Government went out. Melbourne felt a good deal of sympathy with them. The strain of accommodating himself to the King’s temper and what he called “Peel’s low creeping policy” was becoming more than he could bear. But his view of the general political situation had not altered; and against his private inclinations he still thought the Whigs ought to stick on. “A Minister has no more right to treat a case as desperate than a physician,” he remarked, “events are too uncertain and results differ too much from anticipation, to permit such conduct.” As late as May, 1837, he is still telling John Russell that he feared lest the fall of the Whigs might throw the country into a dangerous chaos. All the same, he cannot have thought the Government able to hang on much longer.

If it should fall, Melbourne’s career might well seem to have come to its end. The Whig wave was spent, the Tories were likely to be in for a considerable time. Melbourne was fifty-seven, and old for his years: it was improbable that he would be Prime Minister again. Dawning late, his difficult, frustrated, unrewarding day of eminence looked as if it would soon be over. In fact his unpredictable fate had yet one more surprise in store for him. The most brilliant phase of his whole history was just round the corner.

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9 There are various conflicting accounts of the Government’s actual dismissal. Croker says that Melbourne resigned voluntarily. The account in Lord Holland’s unpublished diary shows that if this was so, he concealed the truth, not only from the world but from his closest colleagues. This is not in keeping with his character. Besides they must have found out: and would have lost all confidence in him in consequence.

10 Melbourne, who both as an Englishman and a gentleman disliked O’Connell, professed to know nothing of this compact. But he certainly took advantage of it as indeed was necessary for the success of his own Irish policy.

11 It must be admitted that Melbourne on his side had no great opinion of the Bishops. “What a good, simple-hearted old man the Archbishop of Canterbury is!” said a colleague to him one day. “He is the damnedest fool alive!” replied Melbourne.

12 This appears to have been an application for money.