Portraits of the Nineties

by E. T. Raymond

CHAPTER XX
LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH

When any man declaims “Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum,” it is not easy to avoid the suspicion that (whatever his passion for principle) he is pretty sure that the heavens will not fall. If the heavens did fall he would forget all about the fine “quillets of the law.” Any woman, according to Beckie Sharp, can be good on a sufficient income; and with men, also, the love of principle thrives best in comfortable surroundings. The true test of honesty is not whether a man will resign an Under-Secretaryship rather than give his vote for a measure he disapproves: he may be rather tired of being an Under-Secretary. The true test is whether he will pay a bill when he has to go without a week’s dinners to do it. There are no doubt men who pass that test; they should be honoured, though by the nature of things they seldom are: it is not that kind of principle which wins fame or money. The kind of sacrifice to principle which wins reverence is that which is often really not much sacrifice at all. We applaud a man for being specially and splendidly honest when the fact is only that he can afford to be unusually stubborn.

LORD COURTNEY OF PENWITH.

Lord Courtney of Penwith is an example of inflexible principle in politics. In these days we are apt to think of him as representing a rare type. But it is in fact a quite common type in certain conditions; that it is not commoner to-day may be explained not by any general deterioration of human nature, but by the excessive seriousness of the times. When we condemn an age as immoral we should often be more just to call it unfortunate. There is no reason, for example, to believe that the general character of upper-class Englishmen in 1665 was really baser than that of upper-class Englishmen in 1635. But in the singularly peaceful and prosperous atmosphere of the early years of Charles I people were able to indulge their consciences to the point of faddism; the time was one of what we should call cranks—Calvinistic cranks, ritualistic cranks, anti-Shipmoney cranks, Filmerite cranks—all so stiff with principle that they rejected the very notion of compromise on matters essentially capable of accommodation. On the other hand, after painful experience of what principle carried to extremes may mean, the men of 1665 erred in the opposite direction of believing all principle to be a mistake: a generation of opportunists succeeded that of purists. In the same way the long Victorian peace produced a race of public men who, like John Bright, made of principle an idol, and were constantly dodging in and out of office, like the figures in an old-fashioned weather-glass, according as their love of influence or their dislike of certain things happened to be uppermost. They gained a great fame as specially honest men; and they are constantly quoted against their successors, as Pitt was quoted against Walpole. But Lord Rosebery was right in thinking of Pitt as a luxury only to be afforded once in a way, and we could ill bear the expense of many Brights. The moral splendour of him is no doubt a national asset, but it had to be paid for; his fame as the man of conscience was achieved at some cost to the community; many a question bequeathed to us from that time might have been settled had he and some others denied themselves one of their two great luxuries—the enjoyment of being powerful and the enjoyment of feeling sinless. When we compare the robust honesty of some great Victorians with the supple temper of present-day politicians, we should be just to our own people. We should remember that the heavens appeared to be quite a fixture in Victoria’s time, while latterly they have really looked like tumbling about our ears.

Should an intellectual conviction be always regarded as a moral imperative? If we think a thing is wrong in the sense of being politically inexpedient, should we risk the existence of all sorts of other things, which we think right, in order to save ourselves from the stigma of inconsistency or lack of principle? On the answer depends largely our judgment of men like Lord Courtney. To a certain class of mind he represented, almost more than any man after the death of Bright, the unspoiled hero in politics. To me he is not a hero. I have tried extremely hard to think of him as one, and indeed he was not deficient in something closely resembling heroism. After he had made himself modestly comfortable in life, he scorned worldly advantage if it could only be gained at the cost of conscience. He might have been all sorts of things with a little more compliance, a little less loyalty to his tyrannical inward monitor. On all questions he took his own view, and if that view led him into the wilderness, into the wilderness he went, sturdy and uncomplaining. His abilities entitled him to look forward to the very highest positions in the State. The Chancellorship of the Exchequer was easily within his reach, and he might even have become, in due course, Prime Minister. Instead, he filled one or two minor places in a Liberal Administration, was for a few years Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons, failed to get elected Speaker, and finally accepted that coronet which is for larger men something like the link-extinguisher still seen on old London houses—it marks the end of the journey. The career, relatively to the man, was a failure. Of course, it was in some sense a failure far more honourable than many glittering successes, for Courtney failed because he would not succeed by embracing the philosophy expressed in the lines:

“The Lord in His mercy He fashioned us holler

In order we might our principles swaller.”

But the question of proportion always arises, even in questions of morals. One honours a man who yields his own life rather than consent to be a liar in the real sense of being a betrayer. But one does not honour a man who sacrifices, not merely himself, but others, because he will not sully his lips with a very innocent fib. The Early Christian who went to the lions rather than deny his faith was admirable. The Early Christian who sent a comrade to the lions because he would not say “Not at home” to the Prætorian centurion was less admirable. So, before we are quite lost in admiration over Lord Courtney’s renunciation, it is just as well to recall what was the cause of it. It was his enthusiasm for Proportional Representation, which politicians generally shorten into “P.R.” because the name is as difficult of pronunciation as the thing itself is of popular comprehension. In 1884 Mr. Gladstone brought in a Redistribution Bill; Mr. Courtney wanted it to be accompanied or preceded by a measure embodying the “true principle of representation,” of which his appreciation was even then “more than thirty years old.” So while Mr. Gladstone went his own course, Mr. Courtney would not go with him; and the two parted with mutual compliments; those on Courtney’s side contrast rather piquantly, in their almost exaggerated respect, with his downright statement a few years later that Mr. Gladstone was a “superannuated old goose.”