I had much to tell Lady Russell of the various impressions made on me during my wanderings through the States, and by the distinguished American authors, statesmen, soldiers--Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, General Grant, General Sherman. With the public career of each of these men Lady Russell was thoroughly acquainted, but she was much interested in hearing all that I could tell her about their ways of life and their personal habits and characteristics.
Then there were, of course, political questions at home concerning which there was deep sympathy between Lady Russell and me, and on which we had many long conversations. She had the most intense and enlightened sympathy with the great movements going on in these countries for the spread of political equality and of popular education.
Every statesman who sincerely and actively supported the principles and measures tending towards these ends was regarded as a friend by this noble-hearted woman.
I had been for many years a leader-writer and more recently editor of the Morning Star, the London daily newspaper which advocated the views of Cobden and Bright, and I had more recently still been elected to the House of Commons as a member of the Irish Nationalist Party, and thus again I found myself in thorough sympathy with the opinions and the feelings of my hostess.
Lady Russell had long been an advocate of that truly Liberal policy towards Ireland which is now accepted as the only principle by all really enlightened Liberal English men and women; and she thoroughly understood the condition, the grievances, the needs, and the aspirations of Ireland. The readers of this volume will see in some passages extracted from Lady Russell's diaries and letters how deep and strong were her feelings on the subject. She followed with the most intense interest and with the most penetrating observation the whole movement of Ireland's national struggle down to the very close of her life. Her letters on this question alone--letters addressed to me--would in themselves serve to illumine even now the minds of many English readers on this whole subject. Lady Russell was in no sense a partisan on any political question--I mean she never gave her approval to everything said or done by the leaders of any political party merely because the one main object of that party had her full sympathy and approval. Reading over many of her letters to me on various passages of the Home Rule agitation inside and outside Parliament, I have been once again filled with admiration and with wonder at the keen sagacity, the prophetic instinct, which she displayed with regard to this or that political movement or political man.
All through these letters it becomes more and more manifest that Lady Russell's devotedness was in every instance to principle rather than to party, to measures rather than to men. By these words I do not mean to convey the idea that her nature led her habitually into any cold and over-calculating criticism of political leaders whom she admired, and in whom she had been led to feel confidence.
Her generous nature was enthusiastic in its admiration of the men whose leadership in some great political movement had won her sympathy from the first; but even with these her admiration was overruled and kept in order by her devotion to the principles which they were undertaking to carry into effect, and by the fidelity with which they adhered to these principles. Even among intelligent and enlightened men and women we often find in our observation of public affairs that there are instances in which the followers of a trusted leader are carried away by their personal devotion into the championship of absolute errors which the leader is committing--errors that might prove perilous or even, for the time, fatal to the cause of which he is the recognised advocate.
Lady Russell always set the cause above the man, regarding him mainly as the instrument of the cause; and if the alternative were pressed upon her, would have withdrawn from his leadership rather than tacitly allow the cause to be misled. This, however, would have been done only as a last resort and after the most full, patient, and generous consideration of the personal as well as the public question.