# Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament/The Hon. Auberon Herbert

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X.
THE HON. AUBERON HERBERT.
"They are slaves who dare not be  In the right with two or three."
WHEN a patrician like the Hon. Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert comes to figure as a strenuous people's tribune, it is not unnatural that his motives should be subjected to searching analysis. Of thorns men do not ordinarily gather figs, nor of aristocratic bramble-bushes gather they democratic grapes. Nevertheless, when it does happen that grapes are produced in such circumstances, they are sometimes of the choicest quality. They are like the strawberry that has ripened under the nettle. In the society of a man like Herbert you feel that noblesse oblige is not quite an empty phrase. There is a certain chivalry in his Radicalism, a knight-errantry if you will,—a combination of courage and courtesy, gentleness, and independence, which it would be hard indeed to match in these unromantic days.
"For manners are not idle, but the fruit  Of loyal nature and of noble mind."
By one or two critics I have been accused of fanatical abhorrence of aristocracy ; but it is not so. On the contrary, I should say of such men as Herbert, "I ​have not found so great faith, no not in Israel." I could name several members of his order who, for purity of motive, sense of justice, and genuine love of their fellow-men, have no superiors, or perhaps equals, in the ranks of those whose political principles may be said by comparison to bear interest. The aristocracy of England has never been absolutely without some redeeming representatives. If it had been wholly noxious it could not have survived so long. But it was founded in conquest and rapine; and it has all along clung to birth, and not merit, as the chief justification of its existence. The House of Lords is the most extraordinary anachronism in the political world. The idea of a hereditary legislator is even more absurd than that of a hereditary butcher or baker; and, if Englishmen had had any sense of the ludicrous, the peerage would have been laughed, if not kicked, out of existence long ago. Notwithstanding some appearances to the contrary, the baronage of England, Mr. Herbert maintains, and I agree with him, is now as effete as the Sublime Porte. There is but one thing they can now do with advantage,—efface themselves as speedily as possible, and fall into line in the great army of democracy, which, often retarded in its advance, never really turns back; which, "like death, never gives up a victim."
When an aristocrat by birth becomes a democrat by reflection, when a royalist by association becomes a republican by sympathy, the process of conversion can never be without interest. Those of us who, like myself, were at no time any thing if not Radical, are apt to set but too little store by principles which one in Mr. Herbert's position prizes like so much treasure-trove. ​Converse with Mr. Herbert on such matters, and you are made to feel as if you had been entertaining angels unawares. The ethical superiority of the Radical creed which you may have assumed, he will demonstrate to you with a freshness of logic and a fervor of conviction that I have never heard sin-passed; not that I agree with all or nearly all of the practical conclusions at which he has arrived. Of some of these I shall have a few words to say by and by. It is the frank, generous spirit, void of the faintest suspicion of arrière pensée, in which he approaches every political problem, that is the great matter.
Auberon Herbert was born in London in 1838, his father being Henry, third Earl of Carnarvon, and his mother Henrietta Anna Howard, niece of the twelfth Duke of Norfolk. The father of the first Earl of Carnarvon, the Hon. Major-Gen. William Herbert, was a son of the eighth Earl of Pembroke. Henry, the first earl, was raised to the baronage as Lord Porchester of High Clere, Southampton, in 1780, and in 1793 he was made Earl of Carnarvon. He was a gentleman of intrepid bearing, and is said to have earned his claim to a peerage by drawing his sword and threatening to run Lord George Gordon, of riotous memory, through the body unless he undertook on the spot to withdraw the mob from the precincts of St. Stephen's. The second earl affected Whiggery; the third, the author of "Portugal and Galicia,"—an authoritative book of travel of no inconsiderable literary merit,—was a Tory; while the fourth, the late colonial secretary (Mr. Herbert's brother), whose resignation was the first clear intimation to the country that Beaconsfield and the Jingoes in the cabinet meant serious mischief, it is ​hoped will eventually sever his connection entirely with the unconstitutional party, and join the Liberal party, with which he is so much more in sympathy.
Mr. Herbert is married to Lady Florence Amabel, a daughter of the sixth Earl of Cowper. She is a woman as remarkable for simplicity of manners as for the vigor of her intellect and the kindness of her heart. If Mr. Herbert is speculative, she is the incarnation of common sense. Tennyson's daughter of a hundred earls was not one to be desired. It is different with Lady Florence. She has fewer airs than the opulent green-grocer's wife round the corner, who might learn much from her in domesticity. With her, as with her husband, noblesse oblige.
Mr. Herbert's early education was superintended by tutors, to the personal rather than to the scholastic influence of some of whom he was much indebted. In 1857 he proceeded to Oxford, where he became a student of St. John's College, but studied steeple-chasing and kindred pursuits more than the ancient classics or any other kind of literature. The spirit of adventure was strong within him, and after two years of desultory reading he determined to enter the army so as to see service abroad. Accordingly, in 1859, he joined the Seventh Hussars at Canterbury, and subsequently served in India for a period of six months, attaining the rank of lieutenant. Here, perversely enough, he was as studious as at Oxford he had been idle. He edited a little magazine called "The Crusader," and began to qualify himself for staff duties. With this object in view, he returned to Oxford to complete his university curriculum, and graduated B.C.L. in 1862. On taking his degree, not caring to resume his military ​career, he devoted himself to university tuition, and subsequently obtained a "Founders' Kin" fellowship. In 18G4 the man of "blood and iron" had matured his first great crime by procuring the invasion of Schleswig-Holstein by an irresistible Austro-Prussian army. Mr. Herbert, deeply sympathizing with the gallant Danes, abandoned his academical pursuits, and hastened to the Dybbol lines in order to encourage the defenders by succoring their wounded. He rendered valuable aid, was oftener than once under fire, and became a great favorite both with officers and men. The government subsequently signalized its gratitude by conferring on him, for his labor of love, the order of the Danneborg. The distinction was otherwise well merited; for Mr. Herbert pleaded the Danish cause with the English people in a series of "Letters from Sonderborg" in a way that would have stirred their hearts to active intervention if any thing could have aroused them from their apathy. When England is prepared to fight innumerable campaigns, it is, alas! not done on behalf of Danes, but of Turks,—not for freedom, but for despotism.
The Sonderborg letters are replete with manly feeling and shrewd military observation. They have been republished in a little volume entitled "The Danes in Camp," which every student of Bismarckian rascality ought to peruse. I make but two brief extracts, illustrative of its tone: "As you will easily conceive, the conduct of England has placed neither our nation nor our policy in a favorable light. The Danes are sorely hurt at our desertion of their fortunes. They feel it the more acutely because between them and England there has existed a silent brotherhood. English is the ​ which is taught in their schools and colleges, and which forms a regular part of their education. Their customs, their feelings, their ways of thought, their character, and sometimes their very look, are English. To English literature they have turned in the attempt to oppose it to that of Germany. English is the language which they seem to have chosen even in preference to French or German, which would have afforded a better link of communication between themselves and the nations of that great continent on whose outer edge their fortunes are cast, and to which they cling desperately, with nothing but the bravery and the stern virtues of the old Norse race to maintain them on their narrow foothold."
"Dark as are the clouds, and cruel as is the game which is being played out, I am determined to remain constant to my belief that I have both visited Arcadia and seen a 'patriot army.' Do you blame me in this nineteenth century for cherishing two such illusions, if illusions they are?"
While I am about it, I may as well finish the record of Mr. Herbert's warlike experiences. No sooner had he left the Dybböl lines than he sought those before Richmond, where the silent, inflexible Grant had at last got secession firmly by the throat. The taciturn general gave him a kindly reception, but was not to be "drawn." Not a man on the staff could move him to the faintest demonstrativeness. At last a dispute arose as to the distance between two places. One officer said five miles, another four, another six. "Three and a half," interjected Grant with a tone of decision. He alone was right. The general had been drawn, and everybody was satisfied. President Lincoln, to whom ​Mr. Herbert was introduced at Washington, impressed him very differently. Sagacity and honest}^ were his obvious characteristics. His implicit trust in Grant made Grant be trusted. The general had many enemies, some of whom accused him of intemperance. "Does Grant get drunk?" asked the President of one of these maligners. "They say so."—"Are you quite sure he gets drunk?"—"Quite." The President paused, and then gravely ejaculated, " I wonder where he buys his whiskey."—"And why do you want to know?" was the astonished rejoinder. "Because, if I did," replied Lincoln, "I'd send a barrel or two of it round to some other generals I know of."
When Mr. Herbert went to America he was still a Conservative. What he saw and heard, however, of the great republic was not without its influence on his future conduct. "The easy, powerful current of life, the mixture of classes, the respect shown to all, made a deep impression on me. Ready to see all the faults of democratic government, I saw them, and yet felt the power and depth of the tide as if I had passed from some narrow lake out on the sea."
In the Franco-German war Mr. Herbert was once more a ministering angel to the wounded. "When in the Luxembourg train, I heard the sound of filing, jumped out, took my place in a coach going to a nearer point, saw the battle of Sedan going on from a rising ground, collected some lint, and, with a large pitcher of water, started for the field. It was a long distance, and I found myself for the greater part of my road absolutely alone. The villages through which I passed were almost entirely deserted. In the afternoon the firing ceased. It was nightfall before I reached the ​field. Some German officers asked for a drink of my water, but considerately accepted my excuse that it was for the wounded. … In the morning I found a country house full of wounded French who had not yet been taken to hospital. I spent the whole morning in applying the few simple lessons I had received in washing wounds and bandaging, and I think the belief that they had a doctor amongst them, which I took care not to disturb, did more good to them than my bandages. It was a pretty little country house; and, as I tore up sheets and curtains for what I wanted, I could not help thinking of the return of the luckless owners, who, however, perhaps came back with an exceedingly grateful feeling that any house at all remained to them." This simple narrative admirably illustrates the leading features of the writer's character,—his self-reliance and his humanity.
To come now to Mr. Herbert's political acts and principles, which should have been reached sooner. He started life, to be sure, as a Tory; but I cannot discover that he had ever the root of the matter really in him. He called himself a Conservative long after he had become more liberal than most Liberals. At Oxford, however, he must have had the reputation of being a sound Conservative; for he was elected president of the Union Debating Society over a Liberal opponent, and in 1865 he stood unsuccessfully for Newport, Isle of Wight, in the "Liberal-Conservative" interest. In 1866 a safe Conservative seat was offered to him; but he had resolved to throw overboard the Irish Church, and with the Irish Church necessarily went the safe seat. More decided steps followed. He went down to Newport, and frankly told his old friends ​that he could no longer conscientiously act with them; and, what testified still more strongly to the sincerity of his motives, he resigned his private secretaryship under Sir Stafford Northcote, and engaged in the less lucrative occupation of furthering various working-class movements in which Mr. Hodgson Pratt took an interest. The conversion was complete, but not sudden. It had been produced by several considerations, the cumulative effects of which were simply irresistible. On his way to serve in India he had stopped long enough in Venice to take sides against the Austrian tyrant; and on his return to Oxford the writings of Mill, more particularly his famous treatise on "Liberty," Buckle's "History of Civilization," and the personal influence of Goldwin Smith, had the effect, so to speak, of regenerating his entire political nature. When he made the final plunge into Radicalism he felt like an escaped prisoner on the first day of freedom.
In 1868 he made a gallant but unsuccessful effort to wrest a seat from the Tories in Berkshire. It was not long, however, before a much more suitable constituency sought and secured his services. In 1870 he was returned for Nottingham by a large Radical majority, and remained in Parliament till the dissolution of 1874, when, to the disappointment of many enthusiastic friends and supporters, he retired from the representation of the borough. His health had suffered, and his notions of the true functions of a legislature had in the interval undergone a change of which he could not at the time foresee the consequences. He required leisure to think them out. But of this more anon.
In Parliament Mr. Herbert was not, generally speaking, a grata persona. He was too conscientious to be ​a good party man, too Radical all round both for Conservatives and Liberals. The cut and color of his coats, moreover, scandalized honorable members. They were light green when they ought to have been of a more sombre hue, and it was oftener than once debated by certain of the weaker brethren whether the speaker's attention might not with advantage be drawn to the irreverent attire of the member for Nottingham. This, however, was not Herbert's greatest enormity. In seconding Sir Charles Dilke's famous motion respecting the civil list, and commenting on the justly suspected frauds connected therewith, Mr. Herbert, while alluding to the actual occupant of the throne with all the superstitious reverence which a degraded public opinion could possibly exact, had yet the manhood to affirm his conviction that a republic is preferable to a monarchy in a community such as ours. Thereupon one honorable member "spied strangers in the gallery," and had the press ejected, while a noble lord manifested his loyalty to the crown by "cock-crowing"! So great was the uproar, raised chiefly by the "party of order," that for the space of an hour the member for Nottingham could scarcely ejaculate more than a word or two at a time. The speaker pronounced the scene the most "painful" he had ever witnessed; yet I have never heard any one allege that Herbert uttered one untrue or offensive syllable in his speech. The fault was entirely with the fault-finders. It was the old story,—Great is Diana of the Ephesians: the silversmiths were all in arms. Howbeit,—
"They have rights who dare maintain them:
 We are traitors to our sires,
Smothering in their lioly ashes  Freedom's new-lit altar fires.  Shall we make their creed our jailer?  Shall we, in our haste to slay,  From the tombs of the old prophets  Steal the funeral lamps away  To light up the martyr fagots  Round the prophets of the day?"
The religious provisions of the Scotch Education Bill of 1872 Mr. Herbert criticised with commendable candor, and a rare appreciation of the evil effects of ecclesiastical uniformity on the character of the Scottish people. The justice of his strictures, to which no member from Scotland dared give expression, was gratefully acknowledged by enlightened Scottish opinion.
In 1873, in criticising the army estimates, Mr. Herbert took occasion to impugn the organization and question the efficiency of our standing army. He proved by irrefutable statistics that the British army is consumed by loathsome disease, and thinned by incessant desertion to an extent that is almost incredible. "Officers and gentlemen," needless to say, were horrified, more especially when they were told by a member, who might be regarded as one of themselves, that a territorial citizen force, a simple extension of the volunteer system, would be more effective in the field than a standing army, and incomparably less costly to the British taxpayer.
Mr. Herbert's kindly nature was never seen to greater advantage than in the untiring efforts he made "to provide for the protection of wild birds during the breeding-season." He set forth the virtues of thrushes, blackbirds, jays, and sparrows with something like ​paternal pride, and begged the House, with a genuine ardor which aroused its sympathy, "to have compassion on creatures which were so entirely within their power." So true it is that—
"He prayeth well who loveth well
 Both man and bird and beast."
Since Herbert has been out of Parliament he has devoted himself to agricultural pm-suits; but no serious call to public duty has found him wanting. The Bulgarian atrocities filled his mind with horror. He came to London, and "lobbied" for weeks in order to put courage into the breasts of timid Liberal members. The St. James's Hall conferences owed him much for the success which attended them; and he gave a striking proof of his personal intrepidity by presiding at the second anti-Jingo meeting in Hyde Park, where the herculean strength of Mr. Bradlaugh with difficulty availed to save himself from a violent end.
As a politician Mr. Herbert has latterly adopted the ultra-individualist theories of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and started a "Personal Rights and Self-Help Association" as the outward manifestation of his new faith. The Personal Rights Association abhors socialism in every form. What is socialism? It exists whenever the state does for individuals what they might voluntarily achieve for themselves. They are the best laws which repeal laws. The church as by law established is a socialist institution,—down with it. National education is socialist,—down with it. The poor law is socialist,—repeal it. The liquor laws are socialist,—away with them. Factory legislation is socialist,—undo it. What is wanted is absolute free trade in ​every thing,—religion, ignorance, whiskey, destitution, and over-work. The hotter war, the sooner peace. The individual must save himself. By throwing away the state crutch is it alone possible to learn to walk. The true sphere of government is merely to preserve the internal and external police of the realm. When more is attempted it is an illegitimate and baneful exercise of authority, an arrest of progress, a stunting of the national growth. Either the state must do every thing for the individual, or the individual must do every thing for himself. Neck or nothing! It is the ideal social democracy of Germany against the ideal individualist democracy of England. Unfortunately the problem is complicated, and will remain insoluble until monarchy and aristocracy have disappeared from both countries. A privileged aristocracy at the top of the social pyramid necessarily implies protected poverty at the base. Deal with the cause before you meddle with the effect. When some simple form of republican government, based on universal suffrage, such as Mr. Herbert desires, has been attained, it will be time enough seriously to concern ourselves about the intrinsic consequences of socialism and individualism. With a complete democracy, socialist and individualist conundrums will solve themselves. Let Mr. Herbert seek first the republic, and all else will be added to him.