Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/648

 638 Reviews of Books were notorious. Durham retired from the Cabinet in 1833 and never again became a minister. He had some hope of succeeding Lord Grey in the leadership of the party, but he was not regarded as a safe man and Melbourne came to the front. The Whigs dared not ignore Dur- ham, but Melbourne would not have him in the Cabinet. So in 1835 Durham went as ambassador to Russia. This post he resigned in 1837. Just then rebellion in Canada called for a master-mind to study and solve its problems. Urged by Melbourne, Durham went to Canada. He exceeded his powers, was censured at home, and promptly threw up his post and returned to England, where a year and a half later, in 1840, he died. He had long been a sufferer from disease, and the vexatious conclusion of his Canadian mission no doubt preyed upon his mind and hurried his end. The motto of Durham's family is " Le jour viendra." He died under something like a cloud. The men with whom he worked on equal terms. Grey, and Palmerston, and Melbourne, and Russell, stand prominently before posterity because they were long in the public eye. Durham's figure, conspicuous enough to his contemporaries, has for us been in the background, partly because he died so young. Now Mr. Reid, who has made an almost lifelong study of the subject, throws into clear relief, in these two handsome volumes, the chief aspects of Durham's career. Perhaps his hero needed vindication less than Mr. Reid supposes. It is chiefly with the Reform Bill and the reorganization of Canada that history will associate his name, and the average man knows that in con- nection with both Durham played a creditable part. Mr. Reid now furnishes much detail. We are glad to have fuller knowledge about so picturesque a personality, but we knew before that Durham was " Radical Jack ", dear to the hearts of the working classes in his time ; and even in regard to Canada, we knew pretty much all that Mr. Reid now tells us, in spite of his access not only to Durham's papers but also to those of the brilliant Charles Buller, Durham's secretary on the Canadian mission. One result of the long delay in producing an ade- quate life of Durham is that his age seems far removed from ours. Durham's contemporaries were astounded that he should praise and appeal to the workingman. That the people themselves should judge what was good for them did not please the Whig aristocrats ; in the spirit of the benevolent despots of the eighteenth century they wished, like a physician, to prescribe for the people who were expected to take the healing medicine and be thankful. Doctrinaire liberalism they abhorred, and when Durham was leagued with men like Grote, Dun- combe, Sir William Molesworth, and Sir Henry Bulwer, Lord Grey's disapproving comment on his relative was : " Lambton has formed bad connections." Whigs of Lord Grey's type long since became Tories, and it is not easy for a present-day Liberal to understand the resent- ment and suspicion which some of Durham's views excited among the members of his own party. It was Gladstone who made that party really liberal in the sense of trusting the people.