The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-01-01 00:00:00

LORD CASTLEREAGH ON THE LAND
QUESTION.

Viscount Castlereagh, in a letter declining to attend
a Liberal and Tenant Right Meeting in county Down,
says that he is one of many Conservatives who con-
sider the Radical party has too long been permitted to
use the tenant-right cry for political purposes, and that
those who first gave tenant right—namely, the Con-
servatives of Ulster, should come forward now and
put into definite shape principles which for gene-
rations they have practised in their dealings
with their tenantry. It is his opinion that
tenants should have security of tenure, and
as long as he pays fair rent for holding he
should not be disturbed; that when a dispute
arises as to what is fair rent it should be settled by an
impartial court of arbitration. He is of opinion that
when a tenant of an agricultural holding wishes to sell
his interest in that holding, he should be allowed to
do so to the best advantage. The landlord should
have the right of approval of the incoming man. His
lordship also suggests that Commissioners similar
to the Church Commissioners should be empowered
by the Government to purchase estates as they come
into the market, and re-sell to tenants on fair and
reasonable terms, taking care not to perpetuate miser-
able farms of a few acres, the main cause of the
poverty and discontent of the country.

LORD CARNARVON AND MR. BRIGHT.

The following letter has been addressed by Lord Cernarvon
to Mr. Bright
"Madeira, Dec. 8, 1880. v,
"Sir,—lt a considerable distance from England t
have read a speech which you are reported to have
made on the inauguration of a Liberal club at Birming-
ham on the 16th of November, and, being unable to
call attention to it in any other way, I trust that you
will excuse me if, with all frankness I make some
observations upon the singular statements which
it contains. I will only add as a preliminary
remark that I might have written what I now have
to say a few days. earlier; but my delay was, inten-
tional, for I could hardly concetve that, after such a
speech, you would continue to remain a member of
Her Majesty's present Government. This doubt is
now set at rest, and there is no reason for further
delay on my part. On your general exhortation to
patience with the anarchy and terrorism now reigning
in Ireland lam not concerned to say much here. I
will not disguise my opinion that the first and para-
mount duty which a civilized Government owes to
its people, is the enforcement of law and order,
and that till this condition is secured even redress
of grievances and new sehemes of policy are secondary
objects. For law and order are the first reasons
for which Kings reign and Parliaments are assem-
bled, and civilized communities exist; and when
life and property are not safe I fail to see what
useful purpose a Government fulfils. You, however,
not only give a preference to schemes of theoretical re-
form over the maintenance of law and order, but you
appear to go even a step beyond this. Your gentle
reproofs fell like balm on the lawless breaker of con-
tracts, on the secret society's man, on the hired mur-
derer, on the coveter of his neighbour's property, on
the treasonable agitator, on the rebel in intention,
if not in act; while you reserve your scathing denun-
ciations for the unhappy owner of land, who finds his
life in peril if he attempt to enforce the business con-
tracts into which he has entered with his fellow-subjects
under the solemn sanction of the law. Such a man,
whether he has succeeded to his property through a
long descent of father and son or has acquireei it a
few years ago on the invitation and faith of a Parlia,
mentary procedure, finds it hard to understand why a
distinction is now made between one kind of property
and another; still harder to understand how a grave
minister should use the combined weight of his prac-
tised rhetoric and official influence to break down the
slender bulwarks which separate all that he, perhaps,
has in the world from the violence of agrarian intimi-
dation and club law.

"I was prepared for a wide difference of opinion be-
tween us on these questions; but what I confess has
astonished me is the preliminary proposition which,
as a servant of the Crown, you thought fit to lay down
in your advice to the Liberal club at Birmingham.
You are reported to have said that 'almost all the
greatest crimes in history have been committed,
and almost all the greatest calamities in history
have been brought upon mankind, by the direct
instrumentality of monarchs and statesmen,' and
that you prefer the judgment of an intelligent
and moral people who have no ambition to go
wrong, who are not subject to the temptations of
monarchs and statesmen and who, if they err, err
from ignorance and mistake. This last exquisite
picture of human perfection or perfectibility is—l
confess it in all humility—so new to me that I will not
discuss it. It may, perhaps, have a place in Plato's
Republic, but it has now, for a long time, been un-
known and unfitted to this rough world. Nor need I
now trouble myself with the defence of statesmen.
They are a very wide and indefinite class, and may,
by some, be held to include demagogues as well as the
sober advisers of Kings and Parliaments. Nor need
I enter on an historical refutation of your charge
against monarchs in general, except to say that
any one who can make such a sweeping assertion either
knows little of history or has read it to very little pur-
pose. There was a long period when the historian of
Rome has declared that the civilised world enjoyed
under its almost absolute rulers greater happiness
than at any other time; the work of Justinian has
survived him by thirteen centuries; nor have the
Henrys and Edwards, the Alfred, the Elizabeth, and
the Victoria of our own country deserved £0 ill of
the world that they can be classed among the
authors of the greatest historical crimes and calamities.
But why multiply inexhaustible examples? It would
be a waste of time to argue on such a proposition, and
I have no desire to dispute on the personal or private
opinions which you or any one may hold on the rela-
tive merits or demerits of particular forms of govern-
ment. What I desire to protest against is the use of
such language In the mouth of a Minister holding high
office under the Crown. There is an abundance of bad
precedents to be found for almost every kind of bad or
foolish speech in our constitutional history of the last
two centuries, but I doubt whether any one can be
produced to match the language which you, while a
Minister, have thought it not unbecoming to use.
Decency, at least, and the outward respect due to the
person of the monarch, have been considered by all
Ministers till now to impose some restriction upon
their words in public; and if they conscientiously ob-
jected to the monarchical principle they have coniidered
themselves debarred from the acceptance of office. In
no case—so far as I can reintmber—have they while
sharing and advising in the councils of their Sovereign,
thought themselves free to denounce as the cause of
the greatest human crimes and calamities an institution
which in English thought is inseparably associated
with the ' person who represents it.. I cannot
leave you the excuse of a hasty or unpremeditated
utterance. A Minister of your political experience
and high gifts of eloquence cannot be supposed to in-
dulge in idle platitudes, or at a critical moment like the
Present to speak with the stammering lips of a novice
on his first hustings. I deny, therefore, that you have
the right, so long as you occupy the position which
you now hold "by four of the Crown," to use
language which may be fitting in the mouth of a
-Republican, but is irreconcilable with the AB C
of constitutional or any other monarchy; and if.
indeed, such are your deliberate opinions
you must forgive- me for saying that what-
ever may be your abilities' or public eminence, you
are in a position false to yourself a. an individual,
misleading to the nation' and therefore destructive
to that public morality to which every statesman is
bound to pay regard. You are attempting to com-
bine a double and incompatible allegiance, and you
set an example which, if it is followed, will make con-
stitutional and Parliamentary government impossible.
There are certain limits within which long custom and
the genius of English moderation have compelled our
statesmen to walk; certain restraints upon the un-
bridled expression of their individual opinion which
their acceptance of office has been held to impose;
and if they have found themselves unable to submit
to this very moderate amount of self-control, On
have wisely embraced the only remainiv alternative
and confined themselves as private individuals t 3 the
duties of independent criticism either in or out of
Parliament. _

"I will not, of course, do you the injustice of im-
plying any want of personal good faith to the present
Sovereign. You have on former occasions expressed
yourself on this subject in terms the truth of which it
would be ungenerous to doubt ; but whatever the
contrast between your feelings as to the Sovereign and
your avowed preference for Republican institutions, you
set an evil example which goes to the very root of public
sincerity and truth.
"As regards the attacks which you make upon the
House of Lords, what I have said of the Crown, ap-
plies, but in a somewhat less degree, to it. Rightly
or wrongly, the House of Lords is an inseparable
cmstituent of our English system; and, putting aside
the question of good taste, I conceive that a Minister
of the Crown in the House of Commons is bound
to show outward respect to it as an institution in
the same manner and to the same extent as a Minister
who may happen to be a Peer is bound to show
respect to the House of Commons as an institution. I
am not unreasonable enough to ask for justice or
moderation in your estimate of the conduct and
motives of the House of Lords. There is nothing
new in unjust or immoderate judgments; but it is
new, and even monstrous, that a Minister of the
Crown should, with the full use of his official position,
inflame the passions of a popular meeting against an
institution which is only one degree less bound up
with the life of the Constitution than the Crown it-
self. _ _

"You are pleased to tell us that the House of Lords
cannot be a permanent institution in a free country ;
but as you have appealed so largely to history, I may
remind you that it has already lived its centuries, ex-
ceeding in duration even the House of Commons ; that
it is inseparably intermingled with some of the
proudest memories of the English nation—of her
greatest statesmen, captains, lawyers, Churchmen ;
and that, though it has been often threatened by
orators not inferior to yourself, it has outlived their
denunciations, as I trust it will, outlive yours.
_

"You have often preached a crusade against 'aristo-
cracy,' whether as a class or a principle; but the class
will probably long survive both you and me and all
the generation to whom your speech was addressed;
and the principle in its best sense is as true a part of
nature and as indestructible now that the world is old
as when it was young. The desire to found a family, the
pride in ancestral renown, the ambition to crown past
with present honours will be now, as they have been in
all times, the noblest inducements to noble action • and
if ever there was assembly which, subject to the defects
of all human institutions, was the goal and property of
all the popular and democratic excellences that have
sprung into being under that Constitution which you
apparently desire to revolutionize, it is the House of
Lords.

" It is seemingly an inexpiable cm n in' your eyes
that. some or many of its membsrs shoula be large
landowners ; and, indeed, I find it difficult to distin
guish which, in your opinion, is the greater offence
—the possession. of land or a seat in the House of
Lords. Whether by your unqualified denunciations of
English and Irish landowners you are likely to con-
ciliate men's minds and to smooth the way towards that
Land Bill which it is understood you design as am es-
sage of peace to a distracted country, you and your
colleagues must judge But if I follow your example
and turn to 'history, I suspect that some the
greatest landowners may claim a share in the civilis-
tion of their country and the improvement of their
generation. Possibly even your reading of history
may find a page for a Duke of Bridgwater who con-
sented to poverty in Order to enrich a county' for a
Lord Leicester, who turned the sands of Norfolk Into
a region of agricultural fertility; for a Lord Sterling,
the great settler of Nova Scotia; for a Lord Selkirk,
who could years ago foresee the future importance
of a now flourishing province; for the Roman Catholic
Lord Baltimore, the planter of Maryland; and though
an untitled man, yet one not unfriendly to Courts and
Royalty, the Quaker William perm, the founder of
Pennsylvania. Perhaps, too, if I may venture 'to
propose a descent from the abstract heights of 'history'
to the somewhat common-place observation of every-
day life, you will on enquiry learn liat many of the
i
largest properties n that Ireland vyhich furnishes you
with tio many texts on the oppression and misdeeds of
landowners—even though they are held by peers anti
country gentlemen—are the best managed and the
most free from. poverty and reproach.

-
"But I need not pursue an argument which really
has not two sides to it. Men will, doubtless, always
differ as to the relative merits of monarchies and re-
publics, of aristocratic and democratic forms of govern-
ment, and will judge wisely or foolishly, fairly or un-
fairly, according to their temper and sense of justice.
But none except the most prejudiced will accept con-

elusions so sweeping and indiscriminate as those whieh
you have made, or believe, in opposition alike to his-
tory and the evidence of their senses, that ancient
classes and institutions, because they incur your repro-
hation, deserve to be overridden by the democratic)
;.111ppogriff on which you have mounted.
"Many great changes have occurred in the genera-
tion in which you have been a prominent actor; many
further changes may occur. But as yet the fabric of the
ancient Constitution of government by which liberty
was secured and the rights and powers of the different
estates balanced under the authority and control of the
Sovereign remains in its outward forms erect and un-
impaired. We have no desire, except by fair argu-
ment, to interfere with the doctrines of those who seek
to destroy this-t—the .` levellers and Republicans' of our
times, secret or avowed ; but we do say that they who
profess such opinions have no place in the councils of a
monarchy. They cccupy the citadel, but they are not
the garrison; they are really enemies, to whom I will
not here assign a harsher name.

"In concliision, I will only add that in what I have
now said I am not assailing the principle of democracy
or desiring to limit its fair and f ull scope. Rightly under-
stood, it has its part in our form of government, and
the greatest thinkers and statesmen have endeavoured
to combine in haimenicrus proportions the everlastin.g
principles of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.
My object in this remonstrance is to protest against
the public repudiation of two of these principles by
one who, by the office which he has undertaken, is
bound to be a faithful guardian of the Constitution
and its integrity.-1 remain, Sir, your obedient ser-
vant, CARNILIVION.
"The Right Hon. J. Bright, M.P. '

The following is Mr. Bright's reply to Lord Car-
narvon's letter :
Itochdali, Dec, 25, 1820.
"Your letter of the 7th of December, which appeared ia .
the London' papers of yesterday morning, reached me last
might. You comment on my speech of the 16th of November
and find in it terrible blemishes, which have not been dis-
covered by its critics in this country. You condemn me
for attacks on the Sovereign, the aristocracy, and the land-
owners. I have defended the Monarchy. The defence is
little needed in this country, and in this reign. I
have warned the aristocracy of the danger I wished
them to shun. As to the landowners, I have been one of
the most prominent of the supporters of a policy so neces-
sary for the country, and so wise for them that, had it been
obstinately resisted, the great landowners of England and
Scotland would long ago have been running for their lives,
as sonic Irish landowners are reported to be doing now. I
will not reply at length to your letter; it is enough to
acknowledge the receipt of it. lam content to leave
my speech and your letter to the judgment of the public).—
I am, yours respectfully, "Jot
"The Eight Hon. the Earl of Carnarvon."