Page:The Maclise Portrait-Gallery.djvu/122

 he, "I expected to see a tall thin man, instead of which I found a little, sharp, cunning-looking fellow, with nothing of an imposing presence"; but on the other hand, a great poet writes:—

Everybody knows that he was the youngest son of the sixth Duke of Bedford, by his first marriage, and that he was born in London, on the 18th August, 1792.

By posterity, he will be better known as a diplomatist and politician than as a man of letters. "In him," said the Times, on the occasion of his death, "we have lost a man who illustrates the history of England for half a century better, perhaps, than any other person of his time. During his long season of toil there were more brilliant political intellects, more striking masters of debate, and men more gifted with the various qualities of party leadership. There were, on the whole, statesmen of greater foresight, and more executive ability. There were statesmen who exercised a far more powerful fascination on the minds of rich and poor. But there was no other man so closely identified with the political movements which will make fifty or sixty years of our history memorable to the future."

The political career of Lord John Russell extended over the period allotted alike by experience and biblical authority to the life of man. To understand and estimate his life and actions as a statesman, we must call to mind who and what he was. Belonging to the aristocracy of the realm, and born in the purple of a ducal house, his infancy and youth were passed at a period when the stupid tyranny of George III. was administered by men whose entire theory- of government was the repression of opinion, and compulsory subordination to the divine right of kings. But, fortunately for him, he was sent for education to Edinburgh, and there imbibed the principles of constitutional liberty, without the infecting prejudices which characterized the teaching of Oxford and Cambridge. England then groaned under the heel of Toryism; and its people were slaves alike in politics, in religion, and in industrial life. Their mouths were gagged, their progress was impeded and held synonymous with revolution, books and schools were scarce and few, the universities were closed, and the press for them had no existence. But why proceed.^ The ground is wide and slippers', and must be passed over with fleeting foot. Lord John Russell, whatever may be his shortcomings, his failures and his mistakes, was an honest and consistent reformer. It was doubtless a mistake to proclaim the Act of 1832 a "final" measure,—whence his nickname, "Finality John;"—but he lived to see his error, and in 1852 introduced a Reform Bill which went further in the right direction. The ball is still rolling, and the goal of to-day is the starting-point of to-morrow. It was Earl Russell who saved England