Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/647

 Reid : First Earl of Durham 637 Still more interesting are the illustrations of the church question. The bishop of Verdun was in the ecclesiastical province of the arch- bishop of Treves. When the news of the abolitions of August 4 came, the clergy protested on the ground of the stipulations of Westphalia. To the details of the sale of church property M. Pionnier has devoted a long appendix. Apropos of the Worship of Reason affair, he gives a list of the statues, pictures, and other objects destroyed at the cathedral, November 28, 1793, in the presence of the " pontife " (the Constitutional bishop, Aubry) and his clergy, who abjured their titles and renounced " charlatanerie ". It is unnecessary to add that on this occasion the countenances of the " sansculottes " were " suffused with joy ", as they also were, six months later, when the new cult was degraded to give place to Robespierre's Festival of the Supreme Being. The portions of the work which touch the Reign of Terror show the Verdunois as " gens de nature fort changeante ", to use M. Pionnier's words, and illustrate the fact that the particular use of the Terror was to maintain in power the group of politicians which had seized the reins of government in June and July, 1793. As the persons in Verdun responsible for the surrender to the Prussians in 1792 were not executed until April, 1794, and as for a large part of the intervening time it was doubtful whether their punishment would go beyond temporary im- prisonment and political ruin, the final execution had no moral value. The only other executions were of those who expressed sympathy with the proscribed Girondins. Henry E. Bourne. Lije and Letters of the First Ear! of Durham. i/'p?-i840. B Stu.art J. Reid. (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Company. 1906. Two vols., pp. xx, 409; xii. 409.) John George Lambton, first Earl of Durham, was a paradox, in the sense of Robertson of Brighton's well-known phrase, " my tastes are with the aristocrat, my principles are with the mob." Durham com- bined genuine radicalism with the ambition, ultimately gratified, of attaining high rank in the British peerage. His career fell at a mo- mentous era in English history. A young man of twenty-three when Waterloo was fought, he played a conspicuous part in the reconstruc- tion in England after the close of the war. From the first Durham opposed the Corn Laws, though he did not live to see their repeal. He fought for a more radical Reform Bill than was ultimately passed, voting by ballot being one of the things which he failed to carry. Had he not gone to the House of Lords, Durham's would undoubtedly have been the honor, which fell to Lord John Russell, of introducing the Bill in the House of Commons. As it was, the Committee of Four which shaped it met at his house and his influence was only short of dominant. His Whig colleagues who wished reform to go so far and no farther never wholly trusted Durham ; his nickname of " the Dissent- ing Minister " shows that he was a difficult colleague, and his dis- agreements with his Whig father-in-law, the Prime Minister, Lord Grey,