RACING RECOLLECTIONS.
Then commenced his astounding career of success on the turf; he soon enlarged the sphere of his speculations, increased his establishment, and ultimately transferred it all to John Day at Danebury, where he trained under all sorts of different names, it being a great object with him to keep his father in ignorance of his proceedings.[71] He and I met upon civil but cool terms, according to the agreement; but in about two years we began to jumble into intimacy again, and at length an incident happened which in great measure replaced our relations on their former footing. My horse Mango was in the St. Leger, and I wanted to try him. John Day told me he was sure Lord George would gladly try him for me. I proposed it to him, and he instantly assented. We went down together and tried the horse. Mango won his trial, won the St. Leger, and George won 14,000l. on the race. All this contributed to efface the recollection of past differences, and we became mutually cordial again.[72] With me the reconciliation was sincere. I had forgiven his behaviour to me, and desired no better than to live in amity with him for the rest of my life; whether it was equally sincere on his part he alone knew, but I very much doubt it. We continued, however, to live very well together up to the time when he brought out the famous 'Crucifix,' when, without any fresh quarrel, our intimacy became somewhat less close in consequence of my perceiving a manifest intention on his part to keep all the advantage of her merits to himself without allowing me to participate in them. Still we went on, till the occurrence of the notorious 'Gurney affair,' on which he and I took opposite sides, and in which he played a very conspicuous and violent part. While this was going on we were brought into personal collision at Newmarket in a matter relating to the revision of the rules of the Jockey Club, when his arrogance and personal animosity to me broke out with extraordinary asperity. There was still no regular and avowed quarrel till the spring following, when at a meeting of the Jockey Club I made a speech in opposition to him which he chose to construe into an intentional insult, and the next time he met me he cut me dead. I made several attempts, as did our mutual friends, to do away with this impression and to effect a reconciliation, but he refused to listen to any explanation or overture, and announced his resolution not to make it up with me at all. From that time our estrangement was complete and irreparable. He was now become the leviathan of the turf; his success had been brilliant, his stud was enormous, and his authority and reputation were prodigiously great.
In 1844 he became still more famous by his exertions in detecting the 'Running Rein' fraud, and in conducting the 'Orlando' trial. There can be no doubt that the success of that affair was in great measure attributable to his indefatigable activity, ingenuity, and perseverance. The attorney in the cause was amazed at the ability and dexterity he displayed, and said there was no sum he would not give to secure the professional assistance of such a coadjutor. He gained the greatest credit in all quarters by his conduct throughout this affair, which was afterwards increased by his manner of receiving a valuable testimonial, subscribed for the purpose of honouring and rewarding his exertions: he refused to accept anything for himself, but desired the money might be applied towards the establishment of a fund to reward decayed and distressed servants of the turf, which was eventually denominated 'The Bentinck Fund.'[73] He was exceedingly self-willed and arrogant, and never could endure contradiction; and whatever he undertook he entered into with an ardour and determination which amounted to a passion. As he plunged into gaming on the turf, he desired to win money, not so much for the money, as because it was the test and the trophy of success; he counted the thousands he won after a great race as a general would count his prisoners and his cannon after a great victory; and his tricks and stratagems he regarded as the tactics and manœuvres by which the success was achieved. Not probably that the money itself was altogether a matter of indifference to him: he had the blood of General Scott in his veins, who won half a million at hazard, and the grandson most likely chassait un peu de sa race. But to do him justice, if he was 'alieni appetens,' he was 'sui profusus.' Nobody was more liberal to all his people, nor more generous and obliging in money matters to his friends, and I am inclined to think that while he was taking to himself the mission of purifying the turf, and punishing or expelling wrongdoers of all sorts, his own mind became purified, and (though I do not know it) I should not wonder if he looked back with shame and contrition to all the schemes, plots, and machinations to which, in the ardour of his racing pursuit, he had been a party. What makes me think that it was less the base desire of pecuniary gain than the passionate eagerness of immense success which urged him on, is the alacrity with which he cast away his whole stud, at a moment when it promised him the most brilliant results and most considerable profits, as soon as another passion and another pursuit had taken possession of his mind; one in which there was not only no pecuniary benefit in view, but the occupation of which obliged him to neglect his turf concerns so entirely that he lost a great deal of money in consequence.
LORD GEORGE SELLS HIS STUD.
This brings me to his very extraordinary political career. I well remember, in the winter of 1845, when Peel's intentions began to be known or suspected, what indignation he expressed and what violent language he used about him. As soon as Parliament met he began to take an active part amongst the Protectionist malcontents, and he devoted much time to getting up the pro Corn Law case. He had never studied political economy, and knew very little on the subject, but he was imbued with the notions common to his party that the repeal of the Corn Laws would be the ruin of the landed interest; he therefore hated the Anti-Corn Law League, and—considering that the first and most paramount of duties was to keep up the value of the estates of the order to which he belonged, and that Peel had been made Minister and held office mainly for this purpose—he considered Peel's abandonment of Protection, and adoption, or rather extension, of Free Trade, as not only an act of treachery, but of treason to the party which claimed his allegiance, and he accordingly flung himself into opposition to him with all his characteristic vehemence and rancour. Still neither he himself nor any one else anticipated the part he was about to play, and the figure he was destined to make. One of the men whom he was in the habit of talking to, was Martin, Q.C.,[74] and he told him that he had a great mind to speak on the Corn Law debate, but that he did not think he could; he had had no experience and could not trust himself.[75] Martin told me this. I said I thought he could; that I had been much struck with a speech he had made at the Jockey Club, when he had spoken for two hours, and in a way which satisfied me he had speaking in him. Martin went and told him this, which struck him very much, and it decided him (so Martin told me) to make the attempt. His début in the House of Commons was a remarkable exhibition, and made a great impression at the time: not that it was a very good, still less an agreeable speech; quite the reverse. He chose the worst moment he possibly could have done to rise; the House was exhausted by several nights of debate and had no mind to hear more. He rose very late on the last night, and he spoke for above three hours; his speech was ill-delivered, marked with all those peculiar faults which he never got rid of; it was very tiresome; it contained much that was in very bad taste; but in spite of all defects it was listened to, and it was considered a very extraordinary performance, giving indications of great ability and powers which nobody had any idea that he possessed.
LORD GEORGE'S POLITICAL CAREER.
The rest of his career is well known. He brought into politics the same ardour, activity, industry, and cleverness which he had displayed on the turf, and some of the same cunning and contrivances too. He never was and never would have been anything like a statesman; he was utterly devoid of large and comprehensive views, and he was no pursuer and worshipper of truth. He brought the mind, the habits, and the arts of an attorney to the discussion of political questions; having once espoused a cause, and embraced a party, from whatever motive, he worked with all the force of his intellect and a superhuman power of application in what he conceived to be the interest of that party and that cause. No scruples, moral or personal, stood for a moment in his way; he went into evidence, historical or statistical, not to inform himself and to accept with a candid and unbiassed mind the conclusions to which reason and testimony, facts and figures, might conduct him, but to pick out whatever might fortify his foregone conclusions, casting aside everything inimical to the cause he was advocating, and seizing all that could be turned to account by any amount of misrepresentation and suppression he might find it convenient to employ. It was thus he acted in the West India Committee; his labour and application were something miraculous; he conducted the enquiry very ably, but anything but impartially; having had no political education, and being therefore unimbued with sound principles on fiscal and commercial questions, he had everything to learn; and having flung himself headlong into the Protectionist cause, he got up their case just as he did that of 'Orlando' or 'Running Rein,' and ran amuck against everything and everybody on the opposite side.
Against Peel he soon broke out with indescribable fury and rancour. Such was the attack he made upon him about his conduct to Canning, which has been since ascribed to his attachment to the latter, and a long cherished but suppressed resentment at Peel's behaviour to him. Nothing could be more ridiculously untrue; he did not care one straw for Canning, alive or dead, and he did not himself believe one word of the accusations he brought against Peel; but he thought he had found materials for a damaging attack on the man he detested, and he availed himself of it with all the virulence of the most vindictive hatred. It was a total failure, and he only afforded Peel an opportunity of vindicating himself once for all from an imputation which had been very generally circulated and believed, but which he proved to be altogether false. The House of Commons gave Peel a complete triumph, and George Bentinck was generally condemned; nevertheless, with more courage and bull-dog perseverance than good taste and judgement, he returned to the charge, and instead of withdrawing his accusations, renewed and insisted on them in his reply. This was just like him; but though his conduct was very ill advised, I well remember thinking his reply (made too against the sense and feeling of the House) was very clever.
LORD GEORGE'S POPULARITY.
I have always thought that his conduct in selling his stud all at one swoop, and at once giving up the turf, to which he had just before seemed so devoted, was never sufficiently appreciated and praised. It was a great sacrifice both of pleasure and profit, and it was made to what he had persuaded himself was a great public duty. It is true that he had taken up his new vocation with an ardour and a zeal which absorbed his old one, but still it was a very fine act, and excessively creditable to him. He never did anything by halves, and having accepted the responsible post of leader of his party, he resolved to devote himself to their service, and he did so without stint or reserve; and when he had ceased to be nominally their leader, a transaction in which his behaviour was honourable and manly, he still voluntarily and gratuitously imposed upon himself an amount of labour and anxiety on particular questions, which beyond all doubt contributed to the accident which terminated his life. Notwithstanding his arrogance and his violence, his constant quarrels and the intolerable language he indulged in, he was popular in the House of Commons, and was liked more or less wherever he went. He was extremely good-looking and particularly distinguished and high-bred; then he was gay, agreeable, obliging, and good-natured, charming with those he liked, and by whom he was not thwarted and opposed. His undaunted courage and the confident and haughty audacity with which he attacked or stood up against all opponents, being afraid of no man, inspired a general sentiment of admiration and respect, and his lofty assumption of superior integrity and his resolute determination to expose and punish every breach of public honour and morality were quietly acquiesced in, and treated with great deference by the multitude who knew no better, and were imposed on by his specious pretensions. The sensation caused by his death, the encomiums pronounced on his character, and the honours paid to his memory, have been unexampled in a man whose career has been so short, and who did not do greater things than he had it in his power to accomplish. He had become, however, the advocate of powerful interests, and of vast numbers of people whose united voices make a great noise in the world, and there is something in the appalling suddenness of the catastrophe which excites general sympathy and pity, and makes people more inclined to think of his virtues, his powers, and his promise, than of his defects. Of the latter perhaps the greatest was his constant disposition to ascribe the worst motives to all those to whom he found himself opposed;