On Tuesday I breakfasted with Macaulay, very small party and nothing remarkable. Went in the afternoon to see Lord Beauvale.[81] He talked to me of Melbourne, and so did she. They are not at all pleased at Brougham's being his executor, which astonishes everybody. It would be mighty inconvenient to have Melbourne's papers overhauled by Brougham. Ellice has written to him to propose that they should all be delivered to Beauvale unseen by anybody. He left a letter for Beauvale. In this letter he gives certain pecuniary directions in favour of Lady Brandon and Mrs. Norton, and a solemn declaration that what he had instructed the Attorney-General to say on the trial as to her purity was true. He said that, as his indiscretion had exposed her to obloquy and suspicion, he was bound to renew this declaration.
ELECTION OF LOUIS NAPOLEON.
Bowood, December 20th.—The result of the French election for President has astonished the whole world.[82] Everybody thought Louis Napoleon would be elected, but nobody dreamt of such a majority. Great alarm was felt here at the probable consequences of Cavaignac's defeat and the success of his rival, and the French funds were to rise if Napoleon was beaten, and to fall if he won. The election has taken place: Napoleon wins by an immense majority, the funds rise, confidence recovers, and people begin to find out that the new President is a marvellous proper man. I really believe that the foolish affair of the tame eagle in 1840 was the principal cause of the contempt with which he was regarded here; added to this, he led an undistinguished life in this country, associating with no conspicuous people, and his miserable failure in the Chamber when he attempted to speak there, confirmed the unfavourable impression. But Van de Weyer, who is here, says that he has long known him and well, that he is greatly underrated here, and is really a man of considerable ability. He crossed the water with him when he went to take his seat after his election to the Assembly, and he then expressed the most undoubting confidence in his own success at the Presidential election, and said that he had every reason to believe, if he chose to put himself forward, he would be supported by an immense force, and that he might assume any position he pleased; but that he should do nothing of the kind, that he had a legal position beyond which he would not force himself, but that he was prepared to accept all the consequences to which it might lead. And now there is a pretty general opinion that he will be Emperor before long. The ex-Ministers and Legitimists, who were hot for his election, considering him merely as a bridge over which the Bourbons might return to power, begin to think the success greater than is agreeable, and that such a unanimous expression of public opinion may lead to the restoration of the Bonapartes instead of to that of the Bourbons.
London, January 2nd, 1849.—The past year, which has been so fertile in public misfortunes and private sorrows, wound up its dismal catalogue with a great and unexpected calamity, the death of Auckland, who went to the Grange in perfect health on Friday last, was struck down by a fit of apoplexy on his return from shooting on Saturday, and died early on Monday morning, having only shown a slight and momentary consciousness on seeing his sister Fanny in the course of Sunday. His loss to the Government is irreparable, and to his family it is unspeakably great. To his sisters he was as a husband, a brother, and a friend combined in one, and to them it is a bereavement full of sadness almost amounting to despair. He was a man without shining qualities or showy accomplishments, austere and almost forbidding in his manner, silent and reserved in society, unpretending both in public and in private life, and in the House of Lords taking a rare and modest part in debate, and seldom speaking but on the business of his own department. Nevertheless he was universally popular, and his company more desired and welcome than that of many far more sprightly and brilliant men. His understanding was excellent, his temper placid, his taste and tact exquisite; his disposition, notwithstanding his apparent gravity, cheerful, and under his cold exterior there was a heart overflowing with human kindness, and with the deepest feelings of affection, charity, and benevolence. Engaged from almost his earliest youth in politics and the chances and changes of public life, he had no personal enemies and many attached friends amongst men of all parties. His colleagues in office were fully sensible of the merits which he never endeavoured to push forward, and he was successively raised to the posts of President of the Board of Trade, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Governor-General of India; and he was a second time First Lord of the Admiralty on the formation of John Russell's Administration in 1846.
DEATH OF LORD AUCKLAND.
His government of India was the subject of general applause till just as it was about to close, when the unfortunate Cabul disaster tarnished its fame, and exposed him to reproaches which he did not deserve. Whether that expedition was wisely or unwisely undertaken, it is incontestable that it was suggested or sanctioned by some of the greatest authorities both in England and in India; that the military operations were completely successful, and that the subsequent misfortunes were not attributable to any neglect or impolicy on the part of the civil government. But rage and shame took possession of the public mind at the bloody and discreditable reverse which befel our arms, and without any discrimination all who were concerned in the invasion were involved in a common sentence of indignant reprobation. Lord Auckland bore this bitter disappointment with the calmness and dignity of a man who felt that he had no cause for self-reproach, probably trusting to an ultimate and unprejudiced estimate of the general merits of his laborious and conscientious administration.
His conduct of affairs at the Admiralty, his diligence, his urbanity, his fairness and impartiality have been the theme of loud and general praise. In an office in which jobbing and partiality have so often prevailed, in which from the nature of the service the Minister is compelled to disappoint many fair hopes and just expectations, and to wound the pride, the vanity, and the feelings of many brave and honourable men, it requires the greatest firmness to be just, and the nicest tact and delicacy to avoid giving offence. In this most difficult function no First Lord ever was more successful than Auckland. Always patient and affable, holding out none of the false hopes which in the end make sick hearts, dealing openly and frankly with his officers, he inspired the whole profession with confidence and esteem. Such a character and such a career may well be envied by every well-regulated mind; nor can the termination of that career, however grievous and deplorable to all who loved him, be regarded as an unhappy destiny for himself, for if the pursuits and pleasures of existence were suddenly and prematurely cut off, he was spared from sickness and infirmity with their train of suffering and sorrow, and from the privations which attend the approaches of old age and the gradual decay of the bodily and mental powers. He closed a useful, honourable, and prosperous life with his faculties unimpaired, leaving behind him a memory universally honoured and regretted, and cherished by the tender affection and inconsolable grief of his family and his friends.
RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR.
This Annus Mirabilis, as it may well be called, is at last over, and one cannot but feel glad at getting rid of a year which has been so pregnant with every sort of mischief. Revolutions, ruin, sickness, and death have ravaged the world publicly and privately; every species of folly and wickedness seems to have been let loose to riot on the earth. It would be easy to write a great deal of wise matter, but very little that is new, on these topics. If ever mankind is destined to learn by its own experience, to look at beginnings, middles, and endings, to see what comes of what, and to test the virtue, wisdom, and utility of plausible maxims and high-sounding phrases, this has been the time for mankind's going to school and studying the lessons put before it. We have seen such a stirring up of all the elements of society as nobody ever dreamt of; we have seen a general Saturnalia—ignorance, vanity, insolence, poverty, ambition, escaping from every kind of restraint, ranging over the world and turning it topsy-turvy as it pleased. Every theory and crotchet has had full swing, and powers and dominations have bowed their necks to the yoke and cowered under the misbegotten tyranny which has suddenly changed places with them. Democracy and philanthropy have never before (or hardly ever) had their own way without let or hindrance, carte blanche to work out their own great and fancy designs. This time they leave behind them—and all Europe exhibits the result—a mass of ruin, terror, and despair. Nothing strikes one more than the poverty of invention as well as the egregious folly of the new patriots all over the world. They can think of nothing but overturning everything that exists, and of reconstructing the social and political machine by universal suffrage. To execute the most difficult task which the human mind can have set before it, the task which demands the highest qualities of knowledge, experience, and capacity, it is thought enough to invite masses of men with strong passions and prejudices, without even any of that practical knowledge which might serve, though inadequately, to enable them to play their part in this prodigious operation. Universal suffrage is to pick out the men fit to frame new Constitutions, and when the delegates thus chosen have been brought together—no matter how ignorant, how stupid, how in every way unfit they may be—they expect to be allowed to have their own absurd and ruinous way, and to break up at their caprice and pleasure all the ancient foundations, and tear down the landmarks of society; and this havoc, and ruin, and madness, are dignified with the fine names of constitutional reform. Nor can the excuse be urged that this inundation of wickedness and folly has been brought about by a resistance which stood out too long, and was at last swept away by the effects of its own obstinacy.
Leaving out France altogether, whose Revolution was an accident—and France is retracing her steps as fast as she can, scrambling, crestfallen, perplexed, and half-ruined, out of the abyss into which she suffered herself to be plunged—let us look at Prussia and Rome. In both places the sovereigns spontaneously advanced to meet the wishes and promote the interests of the people: they went to work in the right way. In countries where the people had never exercised political rights and privileges, where self-government was unknown, it was clear that the masses were not capable of legislating or taking an immediate part in framing Constitutions for themselves; but in every country, even in the Roman States, there were some men of education, knowledge, genius, who were more or less qualified to undertake the great work, and the Pope called such men to his councils, and gave the Romans the framework of a Government as liberal as was compatible with the working of any government at all. This was what sense and reason suggested; but, though it pleased his foolish and despicable people for a moment, they soon got tired of such safe and gradual progress as this, ran riot, flung off all control, and proceeded from one excess to another, constantly rising in the scale of democracy, till they reached their climax by assassinating the Pope's Minister, and forcing the Pope himself to escape in disguise from Rome. Nobody knows what they want, nor do they know themselves how they are to recover from the anarchy and ruin in which they are so deeply plunged.