# Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament/Sir Wilfrid Lawson

* related authors: Wilfrid Lawson (1829-1906).
* sister projects: Wikidata item.
VI.
SIR WILFRID LAWSON.
"And though that he was witty he was wise,  And of his port as meke as is a mayde:  He never yet no vilanie ne sayde  In alle his lif, unto no manere wight—  He was a veray parfit gentil knight."
I BELIEVE with all sound Christian people, our mendicant archbishops and bishops included, that it is as impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. My experience has likewise agreed with that of the pagan Fronto, who, Marcus Antoninus says, told him "that the so-called high-born are for the most part heartless." But, as is generally admitted, there are exceptions to all rules, and Sir Wilfrid Lawson is an exceptional man. He is a baronet, and so wealthy that I am almost afraid to particularize with regard to his income. Having never suffered the least inconvenience from the deceitfulness of riches myself, I prefer to speak of matter more within the scope of my knowledge^ With respect to Sir Wilfrid Lawson, however, I am sure of two things. In spite of his baronetcy he is a "jolly good fellow;" and in spite of his riches he may reasonably hope to enter in at the celestial gates, unless they are barred by John Calvin himself,—a contingency which there is less and less reason to apprehend.
​In any case there would be very little good of sending him to "the other place." Like the jovial monk of the old church legend, he would almost certainly, if ordered downstairs, make a little heaven of mirth in his own more immediate neighborhood, and so disturb general arrangements that it would speedily be found necessary to have him removed to more comfortable quarters. For not only is he witty in himself, but the cause that wit is in other men. It is impossible to converse with him for five minutes running without becoming in some measure infected by his irresistible spirit of "gay wisdom," as Earl Beaconsfield has felicitously designated his peculiar humor.
It is a total mistake to suppose that Sir Wilfrid's jokes are mere closet reproductions. He is even more witty in private than in public; and you never meet him that he has not the air of a man who has just experienced some extraordinary piece of good luck, in which you are called upon, if you are not an absolute churl, to participate. He is brimful and running over with sprightly sallies and clever epigrams. Indeed, they seem to come as naturally to him as dulness to most of us. And his wit is of the best kind. It is never used to wound the feelings of any, but to laugh men out of their follies, pretences, and insincerities. His keenest shafts are never envenomed, and are never sped except with a moral purpose. Were it otherwise, he might be classed with the humorous light horsemen of debate,—of whom Mr. Bernal Osborne was a favorite specimen,—in which case he would, of course, be entitled to no place in this series.
As it is, I believe Sir Wilfrid Lawson to be one of the most earnest and trustworthy Radicals in the House ​of Commons. Some there are, doubtless, who hold that true moral earnestness is never to be found clothed in quasi-comical attire,—that facetiousness and Radicalism are incompatible. My reply is, that the honorable member for Carlisle finds genial satire to be by far the most effective weapon in his intellectual armory, and that, like a wise man, he puts his special talent to the best use he can. In skilful hands the scimitar of Saladin will strike home as surely as the battle-axe of King Richard.
After some consideration of the matter, I have arrived at the conclusion that great Radicals, like great poets, are born, not made. They inherit, rather than acquire, the qualities of intellect and heart which enable them to point the path of human progress. Radicalism is a rare and generous fruit, which it takes generations to grow in any thing like perfection.
Sir Wilfrid's grandfather—jovial old Mr. Wybergh—was the counterpart of his grandson in wit and in politics, except that he required the aid of something stronger than either tea or cold water in order to keep in good form. An obituary notice of him, not long since unearthed by Mr. George Augustus Sala, credits him with an "uninterrupted gaieté decoeur, which not even pain or sickness had power to subdue." When Lord Brougham made his historic descent on Cumberland in the Liberal interest, the old gentleman was one of his most active supporters, and much harm did he do to the Tories by the inimitable raillery with which he assailed them. On one occasion, observing that the Conservative side of the hustings was crowded with clergymen, he stretched out his hand towards them, and prefaced a spirited onslaught with the text, "The Lord ​gave the word, and great was the company of the preachers."
He was not a Lawson at all, but the representative of an old Yorkshire family who had become connected with the county of Cumberland through marriage with Miss Hartley, whose sister was the wife of the then owner of Bray ton. Old Wilfrid Lawson, having no descendants, left his estates and name to his godson and nephew by affinity,—the father of the present baronet. He—the late Sir Wilfrid—married a Miss Graham of Netherby, the sister of Sir James Graham, the well-known Minister of state, who was consequently the member for Carlisle's uncle. Sir Wilfrid, senior, was a stanch Liberal, who did not permit family connections to hamper him in the discharge of his public duties. When Sir James Graham vacillated in his allegiance to Liberalism, his brother-in-law, who was universally esteemed for his many virtues, set an example to the constituency of fidelity to principle by being among the first to record his vote against him. The poll was then open and of two days' duration, and the consequence was that the Minister lost his seat. On repentance only was he permitted to resume it.
The witty champion of the Permissive Bill was born in the year 1829 at Brayton Hall, Aspatria, Cumberland. He succeeded to the family estates and the baronetcy—which has existed, with a break, for about two centuries—on the death of his father in 1867. His education was, for a youth of his social status, of a very limited kind. He was never either at a public school or at college; and, if you ask him what instruction he received, he replies, with evident satisfaction, ​that he never had any. His father was a very "Low" or Evangelical Churchman,—a teetotaler, too, for many years,—who dreaded the contaminating influences of university life on his boys more than he coveted for them academic distinctions. What happened, accordingly, I cannot better describe than in the words of Sir Wilfrid's brother William, the author of "Ten Years of Gentleman Farming," a singularly candid and interesting book. "I had the advantage," he says, "of being the son of parents who were more anxious that their children should be happy and good than that they should be learned or great. My father had my education conducted—in a religious manner—at home, where I acquired a little Latin and Greek, and a few other things; and where, as is the case with many other youths, any thing in the shape of lessons was not attractive to me, and 1 learned as little as possible. I had, before I was eighteen, travelled several times on the continent of Europe, and had visited Egypt and Palestine; but circumstances never brought me in contact with rich or great people, and I had not much of what is called 'knowledge of the world;' nor, as I always had the prospect of enough wealth to enable me to live without working, did I form what are called 'business habits,' Trained as a shooter of animals, a hunter of Cumberland beasts with hounds, and a trapper of vermin, I found myself in the spring of 1861, in my twenty-fifth year, without an occupation, without many acquaintances,—except among the poor, whom I had not learned to despise because they spoke bad grammar, and took their coats off to work,—and without the reputation of having been successful in any undertaking except that of the mastership and huntsmanship of my brother's foxhounds."
​As a consequence of this sort of training, Sir Wilfrid Lawson is almost entirely devoid of personal ambition. Goodness, not greatness, is the object at which he aims. He is rich; but his sympathies with the poor are as fresh and keen as if he were one of them. He has not been deluded by the deceitfulness of riches, nor is "rank" to him other than the poor "guinea stamp" in comparison with the pure gold of genuine manhood. I know no one in any station of life who seems to me to realize more fully that
"Kind hearts are more than coronets,  And simple faith than Norman blood."
For fifteen or sixteen years he has been a total abstainer, simply from a sense of duty towards his fellows, and not from any personal or physical antipathy to stimulants. While the world standeth, he will do nothing to cause his brother to offend; nay, more, he will do his utmost to remove stumbling-blocks from his brother's path. In so acting, he may be right or he may be wrong; but at all events the motive is eminently respectable.
In 1859, in his father's lifetime, he entered Parliament as member for Carlisle, and found a more useful and honorable occupation than that of "a hunter of Cumberland beasts with hounds." In March, 1864, he first brought in a bill, since known as the Permissive Bill, "to enable owners and occupiers of property in certain districts to prevent the sale of intoxicating liquors within such districts." He lost his seat in consequence, and from 1865 to 1868 he was out of Parliament. Then the tide turned; and the cathedral city reversed its verdict, many publicans and sinners doubtless repenting them of the evil they had done.
​Like most places blessed with a dean and chapter, the Carlisle electors are in truth any thing but a model constituency. It is but likely that an obnoxious ex-mayor of the city petitioned against the return of two municipal councillors on the ground of bribery and treating, and had them duly unseated, the joke of the affair being that among the more systematic treaters figured some of the most active members of Sir Wilfrid's committee. Altogether the trial revealed a state of social habits and political practices so reprehensible, that one can only be thankful that so questionable a constituency should elect to be represented in Parliament by so unquestionable a member as Sir Wilfrid Lawson. It is one of the advantages of virtue that vice is always compelled to pay it a certain unwilling homage.
It remains to speak of Sir Wilfrid's legislative career, and of certain conceptions of the common weal with which his name has become indissolubly associated in the public mind. Two interests of transcendent importance—one social, the other political—he has made peculiarly his own; viz., those of temperance and peace. He is the sworn foe of publicans and soldiers. He regards both as hostes humani generis, whom it is the duty of all good citizens to unite to extirpate. In place of strong drink he offers us cold water, and in place of war a court of arbitration. Was there ever such a visionary? Why, since the dawn of human history till now, these are the twin Molochs to which countless generations have sacrificed their first-born. Who are we that we should depart from the wisdom of our ancestors? Did not the Son of man himself come eating and drinking? Are not the princes and ​potentates of the earth—our "sovereigns and statesmen"—they who set armies in motion? And do not all manner of priests, whether Protestant or Romanist, fervently thank God when the bloody work has been effectually accomplished? David going out with sling and stone against Goliath of Gath did not require to possess one-twentieth part of the sublime faith of him who undertakes to rout a combined array of publicans and Jingoes.
A wide survey of history seems to show that the essential habits of individuals and of nations are ineradicable. The asceticism of the Commonwealth was followed by the unbridled license of the Restoration; the austere virtues of the Roman Republic by the unlimited vices of jthe Empire. Human nature is so imperfect that there is an undoubted danger in being "righteous overmuch." What, then, is the true motto of the temperance reformer? It is to be found in the words of Goethe, "Without haste and without rest." The drinking habits of the people must be eradicated gradually, one branch of the upas tree being lopped off here, and another there, till at last the time may come when it will be safe to strike at the trunk itself.
I do not for a moment mean to affirm that Sir Wilfrid Lawson is so ignorant of human nature as to be likely to dash his head incontinently against it; but he has many intemperately temperate followers who habitually do so, to the great detriment of the cause which they and all well-intentioned citizens have at heart. Enthusiastic temperance reformers are so apt to underestimate the warping influence of social customs and of early acquired habits, even on the healthiest consciences. I, for example, through force of association, am not an ​abstainer, though I often feel that it would be right I should be so; yet I am Pharisee enough to thank Heaven as often as opportunity offers, that 1 am not like that inhuman "hunter of Cumberland beasts with hounds," Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., the apostle of temperance, whose devotion to the public weal and domestic purity of life I so greatly admire. I would rather get hopelessly drunk every day in the week than even for once
"Blend my pleasure or ray pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that lives."
Howbeit, had I been born a fox-hunting squire like the baronet of Bray ton, there are ten chances to one that I should have been as arrant a Nimrod as he. "That monster custom, which all sense doth eat of habit's devil," is too much for us all, if not in one particular, then in another.
Like all friends of temperance who aim at possible reforms, I rejoice that Sir Wilfrid, during the session of 1879, saw fit to substitute "Local Option" for the Permissive Bill. The latter had a detestable plebiscitary flavor about it which made it stink in the nostrils of every man who believes that representative institutions afford the safest guaranties at once for liberty of the citizen and efficiency of administration. From this objection Local Option is free, and a flag is now unfurled around which may rally every one who is not the blind partisan of a "trade" which openly boasts of preferring its own small and not over-creditable "interest" to every consideration of national welfare. For years the publicans have openly identified themselves with every re-actionary "cry," and they will ​have themselves to blame if at last they find themselves at deadly feud with the whole Liberal party. It is perfectly intolerable that such a body of licensed monopolists should be permitted longer to make and unmake governments. To this conclusion has Sir Wilfrid Lawson's persistent efforts brought us; and who shall say it is not a long way?
With regard to Sir Wilfrid's enlightened advocacy of peace principles, no exception whatever need be taken. He is not, so far as I know, a "peace-at-any-price man;" but he is the very incarnation of the righteous spirit of anti-Jingoism. Historically Jingoism is a ghastly recrudescence of all the brutal, bloodthirsty passions of bygone generations. Sir Wilfrid was one of the few members of the House, who, at the moment that we seemed on the very brink of committing the incalculable folly and unforgivable crime of rushing into a second Crimean war, most clearly apprehended the true character of the impending calamity, and courageously pointed it out to Parliament and the country. It is in such crises that true Radicals, genuine patriots, come to the surface. It is not every man who, when such tried friends of freedom and national rectitude as Mr. Joseph Cowen are found fervently preaching the immoral and parochial doctrine of "my country right, or my country wrong," has the fidelity to affirm, "I have a mightier country than you, and a larger interest to protect. The globe is my country, and its entire inhabitants are my countrymen. Eternal justice is the interest which I desire to see conserved." This was the spirit in which Sir Wilfrid spoke when nearly every one else feared to utter words of truth and soberness; and his constancy ought not to be forgotten. ​His cause, the cause of international arbitration, is a growing one. In spite of appearances, the day-dream of Mazzini will yet be realized. There will be a United States of Europe, as of America, and the sad Italian—
"Who, rowing hard against the stream,  Saw distant gates of Eden gleam,  And did not dream it was a dream"—
will be numbered among the world's greatest seers.
Sir Wilfrid has likewise, in the matter of the royal grants, along with Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. P. A. Taylor, done all that one faithful representative could to rescue the people' s hardly earned money from the devouring maw of useless princes and princesses.
For the rest, the member from Carlisle, on subjects with which he is less familiar, alwa3's follows the best lead; and his vote will never be found recorded among the ayes when it should be among the noes.
He is not what can be called an orator; but his style of speaking is admirably adapted to the matter, which is no less closely reasoned than wittily conceived. He is the readiest and perhaps the most pungent writer of satirical verses I ever met. If he were setting himself to it, he could fill columns of "Punch" every week, to the great advantage of the proprietors. I subjoin a very recent specimen, consisting of a paraphrase of the ministerial reply to Mr. Samuelson's question regarding the language officially used in Cyprus:—
"About Cyprus we scarce know what language to speak,  Whether English, or Turkish, or Russian, or Greek;  There's only one language we can't speak, forsooth,—  When Cyprus is mentioned we never speak truth."