Upon this I need insist no further. I shall only say that he always regarded the British rule in India as the greatest achievement of the race; that he held it to be the one thoroughly satisfactory bit of work that we were now doing; and, further, that he held Lytton to be a worthy representative of our true policy. A letter which strikingly illustrates his enthusiasm was written in prospect of the great durbar at Delhi when the Queen was proclaimed Empress of India (January 1, 1877). No man, he thinks (September 6, 1876), ever had before or ever will have again so splendid an opportunity for making a great speech and compressing into a few words a statement of the essential spirit of the English rule, satisfactory at once to ourselves and to our subjects. 'I am no poet,' he says, 'as you are, but Delhi made my soul burn within me, and I never heard "God save the Queen" or saw the Union Jack flying in the heart of India without feeling the tears in my eyes, which are not much used to tears.' He becomes poetical for once; he applies the lines of 'that feeble poem Maud' to the Englishmen who are lying beneath the Cashmire Gate, and fancies that we could say of Hastings and Clive, and many another old hero, that their hearts must 'start and tremble under our feet, though they have lain for a century dead.' Then he turns to his favourite 'Christmas Hymn,' and shows how, with certain easy emendations, Milton's announcement of the universal peace, when the 'Kings sate still with awful eye,' might be applied to the Pax Britannica in India. He afterwards made various suggestions, and even wrote a kind of tentative draft, from which he was pleased to find that Lytton accepted some suggestions. A rather quaint suggestion of a similar kind is discussed in a later letter. Why should not a 'moral text-book' for Indian schools be issued in the Queen's name? It might contain striking passages from the Bible, the Koran, and the Vedas about the Divine Being; with parables and impressive precepts from various sources; and would in time, he thinks, produce an enormous moral effect. In regard to Lytton himself, he was never tired of expressing the warmest approbation. He sympathises with him even painfully during the anxious times which followed the murder of Cavagnari. He remarks that, what with famine and currency questions and Afghan troubles, Lytton has had as heavy a burthen to bear as Lord Canning during the mutiny. He has borne it with extraordinary gallantry and cool judgment, and will have a place beside Hastings and Wellesley and Dalhousie. He will come back with a splendid reputation, both as a statesman and a man of genius, and it will be in his power to occupy a unique position in the political world.
Fitzjames's letters abound with such assurances, which were fully as sincere as they were cordial. I must also say that he shows his sincerity on occasions by frankly criticising some details of Lytton's policy, and by discharging the still more painful duty of mentioning unfavourable rumours as to his friend's conduct as Viceroy. The pain is obviously great, and the exultation correspondingly marked, when Lytton's frank reply convinces him that the rumours were merely the echo of utterly groundless slander. I will only add that the letters contain, as might be expected, some downright expressions of disapproval of some persons, though never without sufficient reason for speaking his mind; and that, on the other hand, there are equally warm praises of the many friends whom he heartily admired. He can never speak warmly enough of Sir John Strachey, Sir Robert Egerton, and others, in whom he believed with his usual fervour. Fitzjames's belief in his friends and his estimate of their talents and virtues was always of the most cordial. I will quote a few phrases from one of his letters, because they refer to a friendship which I shall elsewhere have no opportunity of mentioning. Alfred Lyall, he says, 'is one of the finest fellows I ever knew in my life. If you cultivate him a little you will find him a man of more knowledge, more imagination (in the lofty and eminently complimentary sense of the word), more intelligent interest in the wonders of India, than almost anyone else in the country.' 'I talked to him last Sunday for nearly two hours incessantly on Indian matters and on religion and morals, and left off at last only because I could not walk up and down any longer in common duty to my wife, who was waiting dinner. It will be, as Byron says of Pope, a sin and a shame and a damnation if you and he don't come together. He is the one man (except Maine) I ever met who seemed to me to see the splendour of India, the things which have made me feel what I have so often said to you about it, and which make me willing and eager to do anything on earth to help you.'
I have dwelt at length upon these letters, because they seem to me eminently characteristic, and partly also because they explain Fitzjames's feelings at the time. He was becoming more and more conscious of his separation from the Liberal party. 'Why are you,' asked one of his friends, who was a thorough partisan, 'such a devil in politics?' It was because he was becoming more and more convinced that English political life was contemptible; that with some it was like a 'cricket-match'—a mere game played without conviction for the sake of place or honour; that even where there were real convictions, they were such as could be adapted to the petty tastes of the vulgar and commonplace part of society; and that it was pitiable to see a body of six or seven hundred of the ablest men in the country occupied mainly in thwarting each other, making rational legislation impossible, and bowing more and more before the 'sons of Zeruiah,' who would be too strong for them in the end. For behind all this was arising a social and religious revolution, the end of which could be foreseen by no one. I dread, he says, the spread of my own opinions. The whole of society seems to be exposed to disintegrating influences. Young men have ceased to care for theology at all. He quotes a phrase which he has heard attributed to a very clever and amiable undergraduate whose tutor had spoken to him about going to chapel. If, said the pupil, there be really such a deity as you suppose, it appears to me that to praise him would be impertinent and to pray to him superfluous. What is to happen when such opinions are generally spread, and when the populace discovers that their superiors do not really hold the creeds which they have declared to be essential to society?
IX. APPOINTMENT TO A JUDGESHIP
Meanwhile, Fitzjames had been receiving various proofs of rising reputation. In January 1877 he was made K.C.S.I. He expresses his pleasure at having the name of India thus 'stamped upon him'; and speaks of the very friendly letter in which Lord Salisbury had announced the honour, and of his gratitude for Lord Lytton's share in procuring it. The University of Oxford gave him the honorary D.C.L. degree in 1878. He was member of a Commission upon fugitive slaves in 1876, and of a Commission upon extradition in 1878.[175] He was also a member of the Copyright Commission appointed in October 1875, which reported in 1878. He agreed with the majority and contributed a digest of the law of copyright. He had occasional reasons to expect an elevation to the bench; but was as often disappointed. Upon the death of Russell Gurney (May 31, 1878) there was some talk of his becoming Recorder of London; but he did not much regret the speedy disappearance of this prospect, though it had its attractions. He was three times (1873, 1877, and 1878) appointed to act as judge upon circuit. When at last he was entrusted with the preparation of the Criminal Code in 1877, the Attorney-General expressed the opinion that a satisfactory execution of the task would entitle him to a judgeship, but could not give any definite pledge. When, however, in July 1878, it was determined to appoint a Commission to prepare a code for Parliament, Fitzjames said that he would be unable to undertake a laborious duty which would make practice at the bar impossible for the time, without some assurance of a judgeship. The Chancellor thereupon wrote a letter, which, though an explicit promise could not be made, virtually amounted to a promise. In accordance with this he was appointed on January 3, 1879, to a judgeship which had become vacant by the resignation of Sir Anthony Cleasby. A notorious journalist asserted that the promise had been made on consideration of his writing in the papers on behalf of the Indian Government. The statement is only worth notice as an ingenious inversion of the truth. So far from requiring any external impulse to write on Lytton's behalf, Fitzjames could hardly refrain from writing when its expediency was doubtful. When the occasion for a word in season offered itself, hardly any threats or promises could have induced him to keep silence. 'Judge or no judge,' he observes more than once, 'I shall be forced to write' if certain contingencies present themselves.
I give the letter in which he announced his appointment to his sister-in-law (January 4, 1879):—'My dearest Emily, I write to tell you that I am out of all my troubles. Cleasby has unexpectedly resigned, and I am to succeed him. I know how this news will delight you, and I hasten to send it, though I hope to see you to-morrow. It gives me a strange, satisfied, and yet half-pathetic feeling. One great battle is won, and one great object obtained; and now I am free to turn my mind to objects which have long occupied a great part of it, so far as my leisure will allow. I hope I have not been anxious to any unworthy or unmanly extent about the various trials which are now over.
'In such moments as this, one's heart turns to those one loves. Dearest Emily, may all good attend you, and may I and mine be able to do our shares towards getting you the happiness you so pre-eminently deserve. I don't know what to wish for; but I wish for all that is best and most for your good in the widest sense which the word can have. Ever your loving brother, J. F. S.'
In giving the news to Lord Lytton, he observes that he feels like a man who has got into a comfortable carriage on a turnpike road after scrambling over pathless mountain ranges. His business since his return has been too irregular and capricious to allow him to feel himself at his ease. That being over, he is resolved to make the bench a 'base of operations' and 'not a mere shelf.'
The hint about 'leisure' in the letter to Lady Egerton will be understood. Leisure in his mouth meant an opportunity for doing more than his duties required. He calculated on a previous occasion that, if he were a judge, he should have at his disposal three or, by good management, four working hours at his own disposal. I find him, characteristically enough, observing in an article of about the same date that the puisne judges have quite enough work without imposing any extra labour whatever upon them. But he tacitly assumed that he was to carry a double burthen. How he turned his time to account will appear directly. I need only say here that he unfeignedly enjoyed his new position. He often said that he could imagine nothing more congenial to all his wishes. He observes frequently that the judicial work is the only part of our administrative system which is still in a thoroughly satisfactory state. He felt as one who had got into a safe place of refuge, from which he could look out with pity upon those who were doomed to toil and moil, in an unhealthy atmosphere, as politicians, public officials, and journalists. He could learn to be philosophical even about the fate of his penal code.