My brother's whole life was profoundly affected, as he fully recognised, by his father's influence. Fitzjames prefixed a short life of my father to a posthumous edition of the 'Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography.' The concluding sentence is significant of the writer's mood. 'Of Sir James Stephen's private life and character,' he says, 'nothing is said here, as these are matters with which the public has no concern, and on which the evidence of his son would not be impartial.' My brother would, I think, have changed that view in later years. I, at any rate, do not feel that my partiality, whatever it may be, is a disqualification for attempting a portrait. And, though the public may have no right to further knowledge, I think that such part of the public as reads these pages may be the better for knowing something more of a man of whom even a son may say that he was one of the conspicuously good and able men of his generation.
The task, however, is no easy one. His character, in the first place, is not one to be defined by a single epithet. 'Surely,' said his friend Sir Henry Taylor to him upon some occasion, 'the simple thing to do is so and so.' He answered doubtfully, adding, 'The truth is I am not a simple man.' 'No,' said Taylor, 'you are the most composite man that I have met with in all my experience of human nature.'[31] Taylor entered the Colonial Office in the beginning of 1824, and soon formed an intimate and lifelong friendship with his colleague. His autobiography contains some very vivid records of the impression made by my father's character upon a very fine observer in possession of ample opportunities for knowledge. It does something, though less than I could wish, to diminish another difficulty which encounters me. My father's official position necessarily throws an impenetrable veil over the work to which his main energies were devoted. His chief writings were voluminous and of great practical importance: but they repose in the archives of the Colonial Office; and even such despatches of his as have seen the light are signed by other names, and do not necessarily represent his opinions. 'The understanding,' says my brother in the 'Life,' 'upon which permanent offices in the civil service of the Crown are held is that those who accept them shall give up all claim to personal reputation on the one hand and be shielded from personal responsibility on the other.' Of this compact, as Fitzjames adds, neither my father nor his family could complain. His superiors might sometimes gain credit or incur blame which was primarily due to the adoption of his principles. He was sometimes attacked, on the other hand, for measures attributed to his influence, but against which he had really protested, although he was precluded from any defence of his conduct. To write the true history of our colonial policy in his time would be as much beyond my powers as it is outside my purpose; to discriminate his share in it would probably be now impossible for anyone. I can only take a few hints from Sir Henry Taylor and from my brother's account which will sufficiently illustrate some of my father's characteristics.
'For a long period,' says Taylor,[32] 'Stephen might better have been called the "Colonial Department" itself than "Counsel to the Colonial Department."' During Lord Glenelg's tenure of office (1835-1839), and for many years before and after, 'he literally ruled the Colonial empire.'[33] This involved unremitting labour. Taylor observes that Stephen 'had an enormous appetite for work,' and 'rather preferred not to be helped. I,' he adds, humorously, 'could make him perfectly welcome to any amount of it.' For years he never left London for a month, and, though in the last five years preceding his retirement in 1847, he was absent for rather longer periods, he took a clerk with him and did business in the country as regularly as in town.
His duties were of the most various kind. The colonies, as my brother observes, were a collection of states varying from youthful nations like Canada down to a small settlement of Germans on the rock of Heligoland; their populations differed in race, laws, religion, and languages; the authority of the Crown varied from absolute power over an infant settlement to supremacy over communities in some essential respects independent. My father's duty was to be familiar with every detail of these complicated relations, to know the state of parties and local politics in each colony, and to be able to advise successive Secretaries of State who came without special preparation to the task. He had to prepare drafts of all important despatches and of the numerous Acts of Parliament which were required during a period of rapid and important changes. 'I have been told,' says my brother, elsewhere,[34] that 'he was a perfectly admirable Under-Secretary of State, quick, firm, courageous, and a perfect master of his profession and of all the special knowledge which his position required, and which, I believe, no other man in England possessed to anything like the same extent.'
A man of long experience, vast powers of work, and decided views naturally obtained great influence with his superiors; and that such an influence was potent became generally believed among persons interested in and often aggrieved by the policy of the Government. Stephen was nicknamed as 'King Stephen,' or 'Mr. Over-Secretary Stephen,' or 'Mr. Mother-Country Stephen.' The last epithet, attributed to Charles Buller, meant that when the colonies were exhorted to pay allegiance to the mother country they were really called upon to obey the irrepressible Under-Secretary. I dimly divine, though I am not much of a politician, that there is an advantage in criticising the permanent official in a department. He cannot answer an attack upon him, and it is also an attack upon the superior who has yielded to his influence. At any rate, though my father received the warmest commendation from his official superiors, he acquired a considerable share of unpopularity. For this there were other reasons, of which I shall presently speak.
Little as I can say of the details of this policy in which he was concerned, there are one or two points of which I must speak. My father had accepted the appointment, according to Taylor, partly with the view of gaining an influence upon the slavery question. In this, says Taylor, he was eminently successful, and his success raised the first outcry against him.[35] His family and friends were all, as I have shown, deeply engaged in the anti-slavery agitation. As an official he could of course take no part in such action, and his father had to give solemn assurances that the son had given him no information. But the power of influencing the Government in the right direction was of equal importance to the cause. The elaborate Act, still in force, by which previous legislation against the slave trade was finally consolidated and extended was passed in 1824 (5 George IV. cap. 113). It was drawn by my father and dictated by him in one day and at one sitting.[36] It fills twenty-three closely printed octavo pages. At this time the Government was attempting to adopt a middle course between the abolitionists and the planters by passing what were called 'meliorating Acts,' Acts, that is, for improving the treatment of the slaves. The Colonial Assemblies declined to accept the proposals. The Colonial Office remonstrated, obtained reports and wrote despatches, pointing out any abuses discovered: the despatches were laid before Parliament and republished by Zachary Macaulay in the 'Anti-slavery Reporter.' Agitation increased. An insurrection of slaves in Jamaica in 1831, cruelly suppressed by the whites, gave indirectly a death blow to slavery. Abolition, especially after the Reform Bill, became inevitable, but the question remained whether the grant of freedom should be immediate or gradual, and whether compensation should be granted to the planters. The problem had been discussed by Stephen, Taylor, and Lord Howick, afterwards Earl Grey (1802-1894), and various plans had been considered. In March 1833, however, Mr. Stanley, afterwards Lord Derby, became head of the Colonial Office; and the effect was at first to reduce Stephen and Taylor to their 'original insignificance.' They had already been attacked in the press for taking too much upon themselves, and Stanley now prepared a measure without their assistance. He found that he had not the necessary experience for a difficult task, and was soon obliged to have recourse to Stephen, who prepared the measure which was finally passed. The delay had made expedition necessary if slavery was not to continue for another year. My father received notice to draw the Act on Saturday morning. He went home and completed his task by the middle of the day on Monday. The Act (3 & 4 William IV. c. 73) contains sixty-six sections, fills twenty-six pages in the octavo edition of the Statute-book, and creates a whole scheme of the most intricate and elaborate kind. The amanuensis to whom it was dictated used to tell the story as an illustration of his own physical powers. At that time, as another clerk in the office tells my brother, 'it was no unusual thing for your father to dictate before breakfast as much as would fill thirty sides of office folio paper,' equal to about ten pages of the 'Edinburgh Review,' The exertion, however, in this instance was exceptional: only upon one other occasion did my father ever work upon a Sunday; it cost him a severe nervous illness and not improbably sowed the seed of later attacks.[37]
I can say little of my father's action in later years. On September 17, 1834, he was appointed to the newly created office of Assistant Under-Secretary of State. He had, says Taylor, for many years done the work of the Under-Secretary, and he objected to doing it any longer on the same terms. The Under-Secretary complained to Lord Melbourne that his subordinate desired to supplant him, and got only the characteristic reply, 'It looks devilishly like it.'[38] In 1836 he had to retire, and my father became Under-Secretary in his place, with a salary of 2,000l. a year, on February 4 of that year, and at the same time gave up his connection with the Board of Trade. He was actively concerned in the establishment of responsible government in Canada. The relations with that colony were, as my brother says, 'confused and entangled in every possible way by personal and party questions at home and by the violent dissensions which existed in Canada itself.' The difficulty was aggravated, he adds, by the fact that my father, whatever his personal influence, had no authority whatever; and although his principles were ultimately adopted he had constantly to take part in measures which he disapproved. 'Stephen's opinions,' says Taylor, 'were more liberal than those of most of his chiefs, and at one period he gave more power than he intended to a Canadian Assembly from placing too much confidence in their intentions.'[39] Upon this matter, however, Taylor admits that he was not fully informed. I will only add that my father appears to have shared the opinions then prevalent among the Liberal party that the colonies would soon be detached from the mother country. On the appointment of a Governor-General of Canada, shortly before his resignation of office, he observes in a diary that it is not unlikely to be the last that will ever be made.[40]
I have already noticed my father's unpopularity. It was a not unlikely result of exercising a great and yet occult influence upon a department of Government which is likely in any case to be more conspicuous for its failures than for its successes. There were, however, more personal reasons which I think indicate his peculiar characteristics. I have said enough to illustrate his gluttony of work. I should guess that, without intending it, he was also an exacting superior. He probably over-estimated the average capacity for work of mankind, and condemned their indolence too unsparingly. Certainly his estimate of the quantity of good work got out of officials in a public office was not a high one. Nor, I am sure, did he take a sanguine view of the utility of such work as was done in the Colonial Office. 'Colonial Office being an Impotency' (as Carlyle puts it in his 'Reminiscences,' 'as Stephen inarticulately, though he never said or whispered it, well knew), what could an earnest and honest kind of man do but try [to] teach you how not to do [it]?'[41] I fancy that this gives in Carryle's manner the unpleasant side of a true statement. My father gave his whole life to work, which he never thought entirely satisfactory, although he did his duty without a word of complaint. Once, when advising Taylor to trust rather to literature than to Government employment, he remarked, 'You may write off the first joints of your fingers for them, and then you may write off the second joints, and all that they will say of you is, "What a remarkably short-fingered man!"'[42] But he had far too much self-respect to grumble at the inevitable results of the position.
My father, however, was a man of exquisitely sensitive nature—a man, as my mother warned his children, 'without a skin,' and he felt very keenly the attacks of which he could take no notice. In early days this had shown itself by a shyness 'remarkable,' says Taylor, beyond all 'shyness that you could imagine in anyone whose soul had not been pre-existent in a wild duck.'[43] His extreme sensibility showed itself too in other ways. He was the least sanguine of mankind. He had, as he said in a letter, 'a morbidly vivid perception of possible evils and remote dangers.' A sensitive nature dreads nothing so much as a shock, and instinctively prepares for it by always anticipating the worst. He always expected, if I may say so, to be disappointed in his expectations. The tendency showed itself in a general conviction that whatever was his own must therefore be bad. He could not bear to have a looking-glass in his room lest he should be reminded of his own appearance. 'I hate mirrors vitrical and human,' he says, when wondering how he might appear to others. He could not bear that his birthday should be even noticed, though he did not, like Swift, commemorate it by a remorseful ceremonial. He shrank from every kind of self-assertion; and in matters outside his own province often showed to men of abilities very inferior to his own a deference which to those who did not know him might pass for affectation. The life of a recluse had strong attractions for him. He was profoundly convinced that the happiest of all lives was that of a clergyman, who could devote himself to study and to the quiet duties of his profession. Circumstances had forced a different career upon him. He had as a very young man taken up a profession which is not generally supposed to be propitious to retiring modesty; and was ever afterwards plunged into active business, which brought him into rough contact with politicians and men of business of all classes. The result was that he formed a manner calculated to shield himself and keep his interlocutors at a distance. It might be called pompous, and was at any rate formal and elaborate. The natural man lurked behind a barrier of ceremony, and he rarely showed himself unless in full dress. He could unbend in his family, but in the outer world he put on his defensive armour of stately politeness, which even for congenial minds made familiarity difficult if it effectually repelled impertinence. But beneath this sensitive nature lay an energetic and even impetuous character, and an intellect singularly clear, subtle, and decisive. His reasons were apt to be complicated, but he came to very definite results, and was both rapid and resolute in action. He had 'a strong will,' says Taylor, 'and great tenacity of opinion. When he made a mistake, which was very seldom considering the prodigious quantity of business he despatched, his subordinates could rarely venture to point it out; he gave them so much trouble before he could be evicted from his error.' In private life, as Taylor adds, his friends feared to suggest any criticisms; not because he resented advice but because he suffered so much from blame.
Another peculiarity was oddly blended with this. Among his topics of self-humiliation, sufficiently frequent, one was his excess of 'loquacity.' A very shy man, it is often remarked, may shrink from talking, but when he begins to talk he talks enormously. My father, at any rate, had a natural gift for conversation. He could pour out a stream of talk such as, to the best of my knowledge, I have never heard equalled. The gift was perhaps stimulated by accidents. The weakness of his eyes had forced him to depend very much upon dictation. I remember vividly the sound of his tread as he tramped up and down his room, dictating to my mother or sister, who took down his words in shorthand and found it hard to keep pace with him. Even his ordinary conversation might have been put into print with scarcely a correction, and was as polished and grammatically perfect as his finished writing. The flow of talk was no doubt at times excessive. Taylor tells of an indignant gentleman who came to his room after attempting to make some communication to the Under-Secretary. Mr. Stephen, he said, had at once begun to speak, and after discoursing for half an hour without a moment's pause, courteously bowed the gentleman out, thanking him for the valuable information which still remained unuttered. Sir James Stephen, said Lord Monteagle to Carlyle, 'shuts his eyes on you and talks as if he were dictating a colonial despatch.'[44] This refers to a nervous trick of shyness. When talking, his eyelids often had a tremulous motion which concealed the eyes themselves, and gave to at least one stranger the impression that he was being addressed by a blind man.