Mr. Bruce retained his seat for Merthyr without interruption for a period of seventeen years. He had been ten years in the House of Commons when, in the November of 1862, he was nominated to office by Lord Palmerston; and it is worthy of remark that he was then appointed Under-Secretary of the very department over which he now presides—the post which was conferred the other day by Mr. Gladstone on the young and promising Member for Stroud. Mr. Winterbotham has not had to serve as long a political and administrative apprenticeship as his chief; for at the early age of twenty-seven, and after a Parliamentary career of only two years, he has leapt into the office which Mr. Bruce did not procure till he was twenty years older and a Member of ten years' standing. This significant fact seems to "point a moral." It shows that there is now-a-days a better chance for the man who is capable for an important political post, despite his circumstances and antecedents. Mr. Winterbotham is as staunch a Liberal and as pronounced a Nonconformist as any of his ancestors; and yet, as we have seen, he is appointed at twenty-seven by Mr. Gladstone to an office which Lord Palmerston did not bestow upon Mr. Bruce until the latter was verging on fifty; and it is not at all improbable that Lord Palmerston, when he made the appointment in 1862, took credit to himself for stretching a point in favour of a laborious and deserving man?
Mr. Bruce had been Under-Secretary at the Home Office for about a year-and-a-half when he was appointed Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. This office he held for more than two years. His tenure of it came to a close in 1866, when Lord Derby (or rather Derby-cum-Disraeli) returned to power. It was during these two years, in which he devoted himself to the subject of education, that he made the most impressive appearance which any portion of his career has yet presented either to the House of Commons or to the country. Though a nominee of Lord Palmerston, and like his patron anything but an advanced Liberal, he displayed an apparent breadth of view and an earnestness of purpose in his new sphere of Ministerial labour which were exceedingly creditable to him. Some of his speeches on education were admirable, and their tone may be guessed from the fact that they made him a favourite at the time with such organs of public opinion as Mr. Miall's Nonconformist.
It has been argued that Mr. Bruce had not the elevated motives which must inspire a thoroughly successful minister of education; that he was still the police magistrate in his ideas; and that he wished to call in the schoolmaster to aid in the repression of crime. But it is only fair to add that he never said a word to show that he did not value education for itself, and in his own locality he has been a constant patron of Mechanics' and other educational institutions. Again, it has been said that his rejection by the house-holders of Merthyr at the general election, indicated that he had not really succeeded in winning the confidence of the working classes. But there are other circumstances to account for this that ought not to be lost sight of. The constituency was suddenly increased from 1390 to 15,500, two-thirds of whom could neither read nor write. They chose, with great judgment, Mr. Richard, an eminent Nonconformist; with less judgment, Mr. Fothergill, an ironmaster, who had been conspicuous for the manner in which he had enforced "Truck," and opposed education. A new constituency naturally chose new members. But nearly 6,000 voted for Mr. Bruce, including, with very few exceptions, every man of education in the borough. One circumstance that was prejudicial to Mr. Bruce's interest, was his refusal to support the Ballot. Up to 1868 he had never voted either for or against that measure; but during the long contest which preceded the election of November, 1868, he saw much to recommend the Ballot, and to weaken his objections to it. Therefore, when he stood for Renfrewshire, on the death of Captain Spiers, he declared his devotion to the Ballot unsolicited.
Of the success of Mr. Bruce's administration at the Home Office, different and conflicting opinions are inevitably entertained. The post is one of great importance. Its holder stands above every other Secretary of State. He is the Minister who follows next after the First Lord of the Treasury. He is virtually the governor of Great Britain. But really the Home Secretary is not a man to be envied. He has a thousand things to decide which, decide them how he may, are sure to bring about his ears a nest of stinging critical hornets. He is responsible for so many things that his name is sure to be in the papers every day, and the notices of his words and actions are no less sure to be in the majority of instances unfavourable. Truly, it is a "fierce light" which beats upon the Home Secretary. It is a fine thing in its way to be a Cabinet Minister; but we can imagine some more enviable situations than the one which is at present occupied by the member for Renfrewshire. No doubt he gained the seat for that county by virtue of his position at the Home Office; but the same distinction has also made him one of the best-abused men of his day. The articles of almost savage ferocity which have been hurled against Mr. Bruce by the metropolitan newspapers would make, if brought together, one of the largest books in the world. He is assailed in books and pamphlets as well as in the newspapers. "Who could conscientiously envy Mr. Bruce?" asks a pungent critic who has recently been showering a series of "Sketches" upon the town, which have caused rather a sensation at Westminster. "Was there ever such an unmitigated mistake in any Cabinet as that man? He has proved himself weaker even than Mr. Walpole, and that was difficult." On every hand we hear it remarked that Mr. Bruce's solitary act of legislation has been the one relating to the London cabs, and even that is said to be an utter failure. It is true that, from no fault of the Home Secretary, but from political exigencies, Home Office Bills, being of a social and administrative and not of a political character, have been thrust aside. They have been obliged to give way to such measures as the Irish Church and Land Bills, Education, Army Organization, and the Ballot. As for the latter question, Mr. Bruce spontaneously handed it over to Mr. Forster, believing that it would be better treated by an old advocate than by a recent convert. In such small space of time as he could command, however, Mr. Bruce has carried the Habitual Criminals Act, which, in its proved results, has been the most successful measure for the repression of crime passed during the last thirty years. He has also successfully dealt with the difficult subject of Trades' Unions, and he has carried an important extension of the Factory Acts, besides many minor measures. As for the Cab Act, about which the Pall Mall Gazette has every now and again raised a cuckoo cry, it is altogether a municipal one, and ought not to be in the hands of a Secretary of State. As it was, Mr. Bruce tried the experiment of "Free Trade." It failed, because the London cab owners had not the enterprise to introduce better vehicles, which he could not impose upon them. The Licensing question and the Contagious Diseases Acts are two of the most important questions with which Mr. Bruce is now endeavouring to grapple. Upon the construction of both measures he has manifestly bestowed a great amount of labour.
For a Scotch Member to be also a Cabinet Minister is, at present, a conjunction of exceeding rarity; and no less exceptional is it to find the county of Renfrew returning to the House of Commons one who is not a politician of native growth. For its size it has been remarkably prolific in statesmen of ability. One of its burghs can point to such memorable names as Wallace of Kelly, and Murray Dunlop; and the county itself has, in our day, been represented (amongst others of its own gentry) by that brilliant scholar and historian, the late Colonel Mure of Caldwell, who was the lineal descendant of the Mures of Rowallan, one of the very oldest of our Scottish families, and who was an embodiment of many of the finest qualities which have characterised the members of that ancient and honourable house. Nor can we forget that the sad event which made way for the return of a stranger was the sudden death of Captain Spiers of Elderslie—one who was just beginning to be appreciated by the general public, as they saw the gradual development of qualities which were solid rather than brilliant, and in whom were united manliness and modesty in a degree which is rarely to be seen, and which now gives more than a touch of pathos to his memory. There was no want of local talent to supply the vacancy so unexpectedly and painfully made by the removal of Captain Spiers, but a combination of curious circumstances, and chiefly the state of transition which at the moment characterised the politics of the two most likely candidates, left the field open for a stranger, while the enthusiasm felt in this part of the island for the new Prime Minister made it almost a matter of course that the vacant seat should be conferred, on terms unexampled for magnanimity and ease, upon that statesman who had been singled out for the post of Home Secretary by Mr. Gladstone, but who, having been thrown overboard at the general election by the new constituency of Merthyr-Tydvil, was still destitute of the essential condition to the retention of the high honour to which he had been nominated by his political chief. The manner in which the constituencies of Scotland, and especially those of our northern shires, responded to Mr. Gladstone at the supreme moment of his political career, is a fact which cannot be overlooked by any one who shall hereafter trace the lines of his biography; and the most striking proof of the trust that was reposed in him at that critical epoch by the people of Scotland will be found in the facility with which his Home Secretary procured a seat for one of her counties. Mr. Bruce's return for Renfrewshire was perhaps the finest of all compliments paid by a generous and intelligent nation to Mr. Gladstone. One could wish to see some proof that it was duly appreciated in a little more attention being given to Scottish business in Parliament, and also in an increased measure of respect being shown to those measures of reform in which our agricultural population justly feel so great an interest. Thus far, it must be confessed, the farmers of Scotland have met with but a poor return for their fidelity; and we cannot wonder if we perceive amongst them symptoms of discontent that may ultimately lead to bitter estrangement.
HENRY GLASSFORD BELL.
Of Henry Glassford Bell, the Sheriff of Lanarkshire, we may say, as Macaulay said of Johnston, "We are familiar with his personal appearance, as with the faces that have surrounded us from childhood." For nearly half-a-century he has been a foremost citizen in Glasgow. During that long period he has taken an active interest in all that relates to the welfare of the city. Not in Law alone, but in Music, Literature, Painting, and the Fine Arts generally, he is regarded as an authority. In short, he is the intellectual king of the city, although he differs from a monarch de juré in his accessibility to all ranks and conditions of men, and in the homage and respect which are universally and spontaneously paid to his high personal qualities. His experience is a direct reversal of the ordinary rule, that "a prophet hath honour save in his own country and in his own house." In tracing the lines of Sheriff Bell's biography, we are entering upon a fertile but hitherto unoccupied field. A man of rare gifts, and one of whose happiest literary productions it may safely be predicated that they will live in the literature of his country, he has now for upwards of thirty years relinquished the pursuit of belles lettres, thereby sacrificing the world-wide fame as an author to which, in the early part of his career, he seemed likely to attain. But if he has failed to achieve a niche in the Temple of Fame, he has at least secured a permanent place in the respect of the legal profession, and in the esteem of his fellow-citizens. If the scope of his mind has been narrowed by the arduous and incessant labour devolved upon him by his official position, he has yet been enabled to lead a life of more than ordinary usefulness; and future generations will probably listen with wonder and admiration, when they hear of the extraordinary amount of hard and irksome labour which, when the eight or nine hours' movement was yet in embryo, the Sheriff of a county embracing a third of the population of Scotland was able to accomplish.
Born in Glasgow in 1805, Sheriff Bell is descended from an honourable and honoured family. His father followed the practice of the law, and educated Henry to the same career. It did not seem, however, as if the son cared to have his father's mantle falling upon him. After receiving the rudiments of his education at the High School of Glasgow, he proceeded to Edinburgh, where he commenced to go through a regular University curriculum. So far as the Scottish metropolis was concerned, the first quarter of the present century was the Augustan age of literature. Sir Walter Scott was in his meridian. De Quincey, under the influence of the "Circean spells" of opium, was making Blackwood a power in the land. Sir William Hamilton, the greatest British supporter of à priori philosophy in this century, had just been appointed to the Chair of Civil History. Through the columns of the Edinburgh Review, Francis Jeffrey was "propounding heresies of all sorts against the ruling fancies of the day, whether political, poetical, or social." John Wilson, "Christopher North," that "monster of erudition," was acting as the animating soul of his celebrated magazine. Amid such a galaxy of brilliant constellations, Henry Bell graduated for a literary career, and he was not esteemed the least of the parhelions that shone around the fixed stars in that spacious intellectual firmament. By contact and association with such men, he enjoyed exceptional facilities for qualifying himself as an author; and having the "root of the matter" in him, he published, in rapid succession, poems, sketches, and reviews that were more than sufficient to justify the compliment which the Ettrick Shepherd years afterwards pronounced upon them, when he said, "Man, Henry, it was a great pity ye didna stick to literature; 'od, Sir, ye micht hae done something at literature."
Finding, perhaps, that his tastes were literary rather than legal—that he had a greater aptitude for belles lettres than jurisprudence—young Bell, on the 15th November, 1828, undertook the Editorship of the Edinburgh Literary Journal. He was then twenty-three years of age. The Journal professed to be a "weekly register of criticism and belles lettres." It contained fourteen pages of royal octavo, and its price was sixpence. The motto of the Literary Journal—it was often the custom in those days to select a motto for periodical publications—was the following taken from Bruyere:—