Sir Howard returned to England from the Hague, to find the Government bent on equalising the duties on foreign and colonial timber, and thereby depriving the people of New Brunswick of one of the most lucrative branches of their trade. He could not sit still and see done what he himself regarded as an act of great injustice. He made immense exertions, therefore, personally and through the press, to defeat the Ministerial measure, and he succeeded. It was impossible, under such circumstances, to return to New Brunswick, and he therefore resigned the government. Not even their satisfaction at the victory which he had achieved for them could reconcile the New Brunswickers to the loss of their Governor; and they marked their gratitude for all that he had done by presenting him with a magnificent service of plate. Indeed, it is very touching to remember how, up to the latest day of his life, every person connected with New Brunswick, on visiting England, sought him out as if he had been a private friend, and laid open to him matters, not of public only, but of private business. The Whig Ministers, on the other hand, naturally piqued at their defeat, left him for four years without any employment. Hence it was not till 1835, when Sir Robert Peel acceded to office, that Sir Howard received the appointment of Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. It was again his fate to be mixed up with calamities brought on by natural causes, and with political difficulties of no common order. There arrived one day from Ireland, at Government House, a Right Rev. Dr Hynes, a protégé of Daniel O’Connell, who introduced himself to Sir Howard as Bishop of Corfu, and handed him a letter from Lord Glenelg, at that time Colonial Secretary.
“‘You seem not to be aware that there is already a Bishop in Corfu,’ remarked Sir Howard. Dr Hynes intimated that he was a Catholic Bishop appointed by the Pope. ‘I know of but one Bishop here, sir,’ replied Sir Howard, ‘and no other could be recognised.’ Dr Hynes remonstrated, and pointed out the importance to England of the Roman Catholic interest in the islands; but Sir Howard could not be persuaded that the British Government was not strong enough to hold its ground without this bulwark. The prelate appealed to the letter of the Minister of the Colonies, but was shown that this was no recognition, nor could such be given without the sanction of the Ionian Senate. He declared he would assume his functions, and abide the consequences; but met a firmness surpassing his own, and learned that he would not be permitted to remain on the island. He denied that he could be expelled, and warned the Lord High Commissioner that his conduct must be answered in England. ‘I have only to say,’ was the reply, ‘that you will be removed by the police if you are not gone within twenty-four hours.’”
The Bishop was unable to resist such an argument as this, and Papal aggression received a temporary check in Corfu. But Sir Howard had another battle to fight, and he fought it to a successful issue. Wherever he exercised authority, his great object seems to have been to promote the physical and moral wellbeing of society, and he applied himself with this view to compile a sound code of laws for the Ionians. Nothing could be more offensive to those who profited by bad laws; and the priests in particular, set on by the Patriarch of Constantinople, as he was set on by Russia, offered all the opposition in their power. Sir Howard’s mode of defeating this move of the Hellenistic faction proved at once novel and effective. He waited till the preparations for revolt (for open revolt was meditated) were complete; and then surrounded the house where the chief conspirators sat, arrested them all, and took possession of papers which placed the complicity of the Patriarch beyond doubt. These he sent to the British Minister at Constantinople, who obtained without difficulty the deposition of the Patriarch, and the setting up of a successor less disposed to become a tool in the hands of Russia.
Of the great earthquake which shook Zante to its centre the memory will not soon pass away. It began just as Sir Howard entered the harbour on one of his tours of inspection, and continued, with shocks recurring at narrow intervals, for a whole fortnight. The people, paralysed with terror, knew not what to do, or whither to betake themselves, till the Lord High Commissioner appeared among them, calm and collected. He gave the necessary orders for extricating the wounded from the ruins: he directed men, women, and children where to go; caused temporary barracks to be erected for their shelter; and appeared to them as a guardian angel in their hour of need. His good offices on that occasion, as well as a brief experience of the working of his laws, brought about a thorough change of opinion both with regard to them and to him. When he resigned his office, which he was obliged to do in consequence of the not very generous conduct towards him of Lord John Russell, then Colonial Secretary, he left scarce one enemy in the island, and had the honour of having an obelisk erected to him, by vote of the Senate, bearing this inscription: “Howard Douglas, Cavalier, and General, High Commissioner, Benefactor of the Ionian Islands.”
Sir Howard sat in Parliament for Liverpool during Sir Robert Peel’s last administration, and spoke and voted on all occasions like a sound yet thoughtful Conservative. In 1847 he retired from the House of Commons, and thenceforth applied his energies to the service of the country as a writer on professional and scientific subjects. His treatise on ‘Naval Gunnery’ had already gone through several editions, as did his volume on ‘Fortification;’ and he now compiled and published his ‘Military Bridges,’ perhaps the most generally interesting, if not the most important, of all his works. But it was not thus alone that he continued to be useful. His opinions were sought and freely given to each successive Government on every question connected with the improvement of arms, the selection of points to be fortified, the management of the navy, and the steps to be taken for putting the country in a state of defence. It is extremely interesting to know that, like the great Duke of Wellington, Sir Howard laid aside all party feeling whenever the honour or interests of the country came to be considered; and that he possessed, as he deserved, the entire confidence of Whigs not less than of Tories. His opinions as to the relative value of iron and wooden ships are well known; he was entirely opposed to the former, though he did not object to the process of casing the latter with mail; while in his ‘Naval Warfare with Steam’ he advocated a system of tactics which should bring the management of fleets very much into the same category with the management of armies in the day of battle.
Thus, honoured and beloved, Sir Howard grew old, without losing one jot of the elasticity of spirit which had characterised him in earlier days. He was very happy also in his family till death began to cut it short, and blow after blow fell so heavily, that, brave as he was, he sometimes reeled. In 1854 a grandson, the bearer of his own name, died; then came tidings of the decease of his eldest son, Charles, far away; then his second son left him; then two of his daughters, Mrs Harcourt and Mrs Murray Gartshore. The loss of Mrs Gartshore affected him very deeply; and well it might, for she was one of those gifted and beautiful creatures who shed light around them wherever they go, seeming too pure and noble for earth. And scarcely were his tears dry when Lady Douglas, his companion for fifty-seven years, followed her daughters. Two daughters and one son alone remained to him, and one of these daughters was a widow; the other kept his house, and was, indeed, everything to him. But she likewise was taken from him, in a manner as trying as could be to his Christian patience and courage. She had been in apparent health and cheerful with him at dinner one day, and next morning was found dead in her bed. If the old man’s head had fallen into the dust, who could have wondered? But it did not. “No one can tell,” he observed to Mr Bateman, the medical gentleman who was called in, “what a loss she is to me: she has devoted herself to me; but I must do what is to be done. She will sleep beside her mother, where I will soon join them.”
In this manner the sun went gradually down till it sank beneath the horizon. Not that he suffered himself to be unmanned by sorrow; quite otherwise. But the physical frame felt the shock, and yielded to it perceptibly.
“Sir Howard enjoyed excellent health up to Miss Douglas’s death. All his teeth were sound; he walked three or four miles a-day, and obtained eight hours’ sleep at night. But that event gave his system a shock, and the controversy about armour-ships wore it more, showing his friends a marked change. His sleep was less regular and composed, and he frequently recited the lines of our great poet—
‘Oh, sleep! oh, gentle sleep!
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,