lem yet undecided; the sanitary condition of our towns and villages
has been grossly neglected. Our recent discussions have laid bare the
misery, the discontent, and outrages of Ireland; they are too clearly
authenticated to be denied, too extensive to be treated by any but the
most comprehensive means.'

[Sidenote: EVER A FIGHTER]

Lord John had been thirty-three years in the House of Commons when he
became for the first time Prime Minister. The distinction of rank and of
an historic name gave him in 1813, when government by great families
was still more than a phrase, a splendid start. The love of liberty
which he inherited as a tradition grew strong within him, partly through
his residence in Edinburgh under Dugald Stewart, partly through the
generous and stimulating associations of Holland House, but still more,
perhaps, because of the tyranny of which he was an eye-witness during
his travels as a youth in Italy and Spain at a period when Europe lay
under the heel of Napoleon. Lord John was ever a fighter, and the
political conflicts of his early manhood against the triple alliance of
injustice, bigotry, and selfish apathy in the presence of palpable
social abuses lent ardour to his convictions, tenacity to his aims, and
boldness to his attitude in public life. Although an old Parliamentary
hand, he was in actual years only fifty-four when he came to supreme
office in the service of the State, but he had already succeeded in
placing great measures on the Statute Book, and he had also won
recognition on both sides of the House as a leader of fearless courage,
open mind, and great fertility of resource alike in attack and in
defence. Peel, his most formidable rival on the floor of the Commons,
hinted that Lord John Russell was small in small things, but, he added
significantly that, when the issues grew great, he was great also.
Everyone who looks at Lord John's career in its length and breadth must
admit the justice of such a criticism. On one occasion he himself said,
in speaking of the first Lord Halifax, that the favourite of Charles II.
had 'too keen a perception of errors and faults to act well with
others,' and the remark might have been applied to himself. There were
times when Lord John, by acting hastily on the impulse of the moment,
landed his colleagues in serious and unlooked for difficulties, and
sometimes it happened that in his anxiety to clear his own soul by
taking an independent course, he compro