You must have snubbed —— at Lady Reay's. Or did he think you laughed at him? That, you know, is a possible error. There is no doubt that the opinion others have of us is one of the very many sources of subtle error in our judgments which have grown into such a prodigious catalogue since Bacon feebly began to enumerate them. People who study them, and stand on their guard against this particular temptation, fall easily by identifying themselves with their principles. It is almost an axiom in controversy that to attack one's adversary personally is to confess disbelief in one's cause, where doctrine and not conduct is in question. And I do see men who are personally attacked, conclude that their adversary is dishonest and knows that he is in the wrong. On the other hand, there is an institution in London founded on the belief that private acquaintance and good-fellowship softens the asperity of public conflicts. You know about Grillion's, where men dine without quarrelling, and where, by a pleasant fiction, no bore is supposed to live. There the effect is what your father says. People make opponents like them, and soften to their opponents, in consequence.
I write under the shadow of Disraeli's illness. Our last accounts are very threatening; and I, who think that the worst part of the man was his cause, and who liked him better than the mass of his party, look with dismay on the narrowness and the passion of those who will succeed him. He, at least, if he had no principles or scruples, had no prejudices or superstitions or fanaticism. You have heard it said of —— that he would have been a good fellow, if he had not been a drunkard, a liar, and a thief. With a few allowances ... a good deal may be said for the Tory leader who made England a Democracy. One must make so much allowance for so many public men besides Midhat.[[115]]
The Pope[[116]] probably had no clear view about policy. If he had, he would hardly be Pope. But he sees that the old spells have lost their power over men, and so he gives them up. It does not yet appear whether he knows that the power is gone for ever; but visibly, for the time, he is trying new arts, and endeavours to restore, by conciliation and management, what Pius ruined by authority. The attempt to disengage himself from the crash of the Legitimists is the most remarkable instance of the change. He explains that the Church must not be so committed to any political party as to stand or fall with it. But that has been, since 1849, the entirely unvarying policy of Rome, and has forced all the enemies of absolute power to turn their forces against Catholicism. If once the two things are separated, there will be a great change in the position of things in Europe. If the Pope does not maintain Legitimacy he gives up the temporal power. He has no legal or political claim to Rome that Chambord has not to France, for arguments derived from Canon Law are without validity in politics. By weakening his one resource, he shows that he thinks the game is up. And then there is no insuperable obstacle to reconciliation with the Powers. Solicitude for temporal sovereignty has been the cause of all the faults and disasters of our Church since the murder of Rossi.[[117]] To surrender it implies such a conversion that I shall not believe in it till I see clearer signs; for his chief confidant is the Archbishop of Capua, an old friend of mine, who is what Newman would be without his genius, his eloquence, and his instruction.
I don't know where to stop. Capua is a bad stopping place.
Cannes Palm Sunday April 10, 1881
Don't mind my weak handwriting and brief letter, but I have spent most of this great parliamentary week in bed, and this is my first attempt to write.
I so much want to hear from you that your father is well and happy. The achievement seems incomparable, and the policy wonderful.[[118]] But I am too confused in mind yet to understand the whole thing and the flight of the Thane.[[119]] Probably it has been long foreseen, and is taken almost as a victory from coming alone. It portends tremendous opposition in the Lords, unless Derby has succeeded him,[[120]] and even then. I have seen nothing but the Times—stormy weather delaying all English papers; and I read the peroration to my family as explaining why the speaker is in my eyes so much the best of statesmen. I wonder what an intelligent Socialist would make of the sentence which says that the Irish landlords would have been guilty of injustice by appropriating the results of tenant labour in improvement of the soil. In a rough and ready way they might apply the maxim to manufactories too. Then comes an extract from the ninth paragraph of the Bessbro' Report to the effect that Irish rents are lower than English, which might, I fancy, serve when they try to stop the way by getting up an agrarian movement in this country. I should add, having been so recalcitrant, that the Court ought to be able to effect what is substantially just in the Irish claims. I don't much believe in peasant proprietorship; but I should like much done for emigration, and have not been converted from what he said about that in 1845. The threatening close of the eleventh[[121]] Budget speech must not, I hope, be taken literally—not only because the Budget, laid down on partly Tory lines, is not a very great one; partly because the speech is full of promise and suggestion, and even menace; also because the only successor whose succession would not seriously weaken the Ministry, Goschen, declared his resolution not to join it when he returns....
You will not have had time to read French newspapers and academic speeches. They elected Rousse,[[122]] a lawyer, not famous, but much trusted by the expelled monks. Falloux was not ashamed to say to me: "au moins, c'est un honnete homme—chose precieuse aujourd'hui." His speech was an exquisite composition. But d'Aumale, in his reply, said that Cicero was a much better man than Demosthenes—in politics. I hope that sentiment would vex your father, the one man who has the right to pronounce between them. A good historian says of Demosthenes: "Er war Idealist und uberschätzte in gefahrvollen Zeiten die Wirkung sittlicher Kräfte."
I am anxiously watching the change of Ministry in Italy, where I saw this mischief brewing so lately. A worse administration than the present seemed to me almost inconceivable. They avowed the doctrine that there is no resisting the priesthood except by definite Spencerianism; and that whatever is given to God goes to the Pope....
La Madeleine April 14, 1881