s of Lord
Derby, his personal relations with that aristocratic nobleman are not
only friendly, but intimate; and that, after abusing one another lustily
at Westminster, they retire together arm in arm, chatting and laughing
as familiarly as if there never had been the least difference of opinion
between them. Like Fox, in this particular, he never allows his partisan
views to interfere with his social relations; and although he is a
fierce and bitter antagonist on the benches of Parliament, no one is a
more constant or a more zealous friend in private life. His efforts have
always been enlisted in behalf of the education of the masses;
conceiving that this is the foundation of a thoroughly popular political
system, such as he is desirous to introduce into the British
Constitution. Bred among a timid and peaceful sect, his opposition to
wars has been determined and earnest; and he was one of those who, in
1854, sent a deputation to the Emperor Nicholas to urge an abandonment
of his war policy, and the maintenance of peace, as the duty of a
Christian race. He is, however, rather fitted to be a reformer and
agitator than a statesman. He has all that enthusiasm, all that energy,
all that courage, all that stubborn perseverance in the pursuit of his
purpose, which distinguish the characters of those men who have
conducted the great revolutions of society to a successful issue.
Perhaps he would be found deficient in judging how far to proceed in
innovation; but this, though an important, is not an essential element
in the composition of the mere reformer. It is for him to lead on the
people to great and startling changes, to overturn tyrannies, to break
down old forms, to inculcate novel precepts, to regenerate public
sentiment. These rather require an impetuous spirit, a bold heart, an
active and restless mind, than calmness, judgment, and deliberation. It
is when a new polity is to be erected, when revolution has passed away,
and the crisis reached and left, when a constitution is to be framed,
and new principles are to be brought to their test, that the steady
process of a sound judgment is called into requisition. Then it is that
the reformer yields to the statesman; that impulse retires before
reason; that passion and confusion become subordinated to the elements
of order and the authority of intellect. Many have been both the
reformers producing and the statesmen correcting, revolutions; minds
which, with the fire of ent