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Villiers for the preservation of peace, a fact which gave him great strength in the cabinet, though his office was not congenial to him. In 1847 he was nominated lord lieutenant of Ireland. The appointment was popular; but Clarendon almost at once found himself compelled to press the cabinet for further coercive powers, not all of which were conceded. During his term of office he had to cope with the famine, the Young Ireland agitation, the Smith O'Brien rising [see ], the Orange disturbances, and the economic difficulties produced by the emigration of the peasantry and the bankruptcy of the landlords. It followed that he came into conflict with all parties in turn, and was abused impartially by all. At first he sought to conciliate the Roman catholic leaders and to gain the confidence of their bishops, but after about a year he came to the conclusion that he could not rely on them. With the extreme protestant party he had also great difficulty. His life was constantly threatened, and for a time he was almost a prisoner in Dublin Castle. His letters to Henry Reeve [q. v.], with whom he constantly corresponded from 1846, show that he considered the position in Ireland so critical that a slight mistake on the part of government might involve grave disaster (cf., Memoirs, 1898). Although his industry and philanthropy were conspicuous, his services to Ireland great, and his failures chiefly due to the circumstances of his time, he earned for himself more censure than thanks. Lord Derby attacked him in the House of Lords on 18 Feb. 1850 for striking Lord Roden's name out of the commission of the peace in the previous October in consequence of the riot at Dolly's Brae on 12 July 1849, and Clarendon, who had come over from Ireland on purpose, replied with effect in a survey of his policy, which was afterwards published [see, third ]. The merits and achievements of his lord-lieutenancy are well tabulated and explained in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (xciii. 208); the Orange side of the question is stated with vigour and even violence in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (lxxxvi. 228) and the ‘Dublin University Magazine’ (xxxvii. 136). The measure which he was most instrumental in passing through parliament, and most relied upon, was the Encumbered Estates Act, and this certainly proved no settlement of the agricultural question. Perhaps credit is due to Clarendon's administration rather for what he avoided than for what he achieved. In the crisis of the famine he successfully resisted the pressure of commercial empirics, who urged a general government importation of food and a general prohibition of its export. He carried Ireland through a period of conspiracy and revolution with little or no bloodshed, and by his personal influence and assistance he did what little at the time could be done to improve the methods of Irish agriculture. On 23 March 1849 he received the order of the Garter, and the queen, departing from the usual practice, desired him not to surrender the insignia of the Bath, as he had so fully merited both distinctions.

When Clarendon returned to England in 1852 he was clearly destined for very high employment. As early as 1848 the prince consort had expressed a wish that if Lord John Russell resigned, Clarendon should succeed him as premier, but to this Clarendon would not listen. In December 1851, on Palmerston's fall, the foreign office was offered to him, but was refused (Life of Prince Consort, ii. 420; Greville Memoirs, 2nd ser. iii. 431;, Memoirs). In 1852, when Russell and Palmerston were in acute rivalry, a ministry under Clarendon was by many thought to be the solution of the difficulty. At length, in February 1853, he succeeded to the secretaryship for foreign affairs, just vacated by Lord John Russell.

Already the difficulties which eventually led to the Crimean war had begun; England was, in his own phrase, ‘drifting into war.’ Clarendon had the double task of endeavouring to keep the peace between Russia and Turkey and of harmonising the divergent policies and characters of his own colleagues. Within the cabinet he generally sided with Lord Aberdeen, and Lord John Russell and he were as a rule in substantial agreement. In Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the English ambassador at Constantinople, however, he had little confidence [see, first ]. The principal responsibility for the policy that led to the war is certainly not Clarendon's, though a want of firmness and an undue reliance on the sincerity of the Emperor Napoleon may be charged against him. In his despatch of 31 May 1853 he vigorously supported the Turkish resistance to the Russian claim of a general protection of orthodox Christians throughout the Turkish empire, but he failed to make the czar realise, on the eve of his occupation of the principalities, how deeply the English people resented his policy of aggression. He was somewhat hasty in agreeing to the Vienna note in July 1853 without first being assured that the Porte would accept it as it stood. He has, too, been blamed for weakness in not insisting