Edward Castlereagh

“ Castlereagh, now marquess of Londonderry, was again to be the British representative, and he drew up for himself instructions that were handed over unaltered by Canning, his successor at the Foreign Office, to the new plenipotentiary, Wellington. In the threatened intervention of the continental powers in Spain, as in their earlier action towards Naples and Sardinia, England refused to take part. The Spanish revolutionary movement, Castlereagh wrote, “was a matter with which, in the opinion of the English cabinet, no foreign power had the smallest right to interfere.” ”

“ Castlereagh’s conviction was that, in presence of threatened invasion and rebellion, Ireland could only be made safe by union with Great Britain. In Lord Camden, as afterwards in Lord Cornwallis, Castlereagh found a congenial chief; though his favour with these statesmen was jealously viewed both by the Irish oligarchy and by the English politicians who wished to keep the machine of Irish administration in their own hands. Pitt himself was doubtful of the expediency of making an Irishman chief secretary, but his view was changed by the influence of Cornwallis. ”

“ When Canning published a lengthy explanation of his conduct, many who had sided with him were convinced that Castlereagh had been much wronged. The excuse that the protest upon which the cabinet decided against Castlereagh did not mention the minister’s name was regarded as a quibble. Men widely differing in character and opinions—Walter Scott, Sidney Smith, Brougham and Cobbett—took this view. Castlereagh loyally supported the government in parliament, after Lord Wellesley’s appointment to the Foreign Office. ”

“ The poor King has taken much to heart the injustice with which he has been treated by the coalition, and no doubt will not easily forget the ill-bred and insolent letter of Castlereagh to the Congress, wherein he said that the King of Saxony deserved to lose his dominions for adhering to Napoleon. ”

“ Castlereagh will have the Treasury Lordship—that is, 600£ a year more for having been careless.
February 13.
After seeing the Chairs spoke to the Duke about the Bombay succession. He asked what I meant to do with Elphinstone? I considered he had left India altogether. The Duke thought he must return—that he would go to Bombay again with the expectation of afterwards going to Madras. I think the Duke has an idea of making him Governor-General. I mentioned Mr. Chaplin. The Duke mentioned Mr. Jenkins, of whom he thought highly. ”

“ All the celebrity which my writings have obtained, and which they will preserve long and long after Lords Liverpool, and Sidmouth, and Castlereagh are rotten and forgotten, I owe less to my own talents than to that discernment, and that noble spirit in you, which have at once instructed my mind and warmed my heart: and, my beloved countrymen, be you well assured that the last beatings of that heart will be, love for the people, for the happiness, and the renown of England ”

“ All Essex, we are told, was represented at the funeral, or followed the coffin to its last resting-place. Captain Harvey, during the time that he commanded the Téméraire, had also a seat in Parliament for the county of Essex, in accordance with a political usage of those days which enabled officers on active service to represent constituencies at Westminster, although Ministers apparently did not always find it satisfactory. 'I don't like your M.P. Navy Captains,' said Castlereagh once ”

“ Few men have taken part in so many important events as did Lord Castlereagh in the quarter of a century that covers his public career; few men have been the victims of such constant and intense unpopularity. ”

“ Buster shook his head sadly.
"Halas!" he observed in a melancholy tone. "That hole gladheateral spirit hof yourn his never horf tap. You h'are a blooming hole pugilist, that's wot you h'are. You horter be hashamed of yourself for wantin' to happropriate somebody else's private row."
Lord Castlereagh felt unjustly rebuked and retired to his favorite corner, apparently losing all interest in the hubbub, which continued below, growing gradually less noisy as though the cause were slowly departing from the immediate neighborhood. ”

“ Still the great air with which he rose from the Treasury Bench, threw back his blue coat, and showed his broad chest and white waistcoat, looking defiance on the ranks of the Opposition, won him the hearts of the rank and file of the government adherents. In affairs, he got through the details of office so as to satisfy forms, but not so as to produce results: for if the official men who can manufacture plans on paper are numerous, the statesmen who can give them vitality in action are rare; and Lord Castlereagh was not one of them. ”

“ It is not our wish to offer a rash and groundless panegyric to any man. We refer simply to the facts—to the eminence of England under his policy, and to its sudden difficulties under the abandonment of his principles. We think Lord Castlereagh entitled to the full tribute which can be paid by national respect to the memory of a statesman distinguished by courage and conduct, by unblemished honesty, and by unfailing honour. We think him fully entitled to bear upon his monument the name of—A Great British Minister. ”

“ He commits dulness with greater vivacity, and flounders more briskly in an argument. He has enhanced the loose dangling slip-shod manner which so well accords with his person and understanding, into something positive and dogmatical; and is even grown tenacious of the immaculateness of his maiden treaty, which he will not have so much as suspected: In this alteration of tone we think him wrong. We have always looked upon Lord Castlereagh as an excellent taffeta lining to a court dress; but he should leave the buckram of office to his friend the secretary of the Admiralty. ”

“ He had accepted the governor-generalship of India, which would have implied his retirement from public life at home, and refused to remain unless he was promised “the whole inheritance” of Castlereagh,—the foreign office and the leadership of the House of Commons. His terms were accepted, and he took office in September 1822. He held the office from that date till April 1827, when he became prime minister in succession to Lord Liverpool, whose health had broken down. Even before this he was the real director of the policy of the cabinet—as Castlereagh had been from 1812 to 1822. ”

“ Irishmen are naturally brave; but it is no dishonour to the nation to know that treason degrades the qualities of nature, and that conscience sinks the man of nerve into the poltroon.
It was among the singular instances of good fortune which saved Ireland in her crisis, that Lord Castlereagh assumed the duties of Irish Secretary. Uniting mildness of address with known determination, he was a favourite in the House of Commons, which in those days was proud of its character alike for manners and intrepidity. ”

“ But he succeeded in obtaining, towards the close of his stay, some slight remission of the severe restrictions placed by England upon our trade with her West Indian colonies. His relations with a cabinet in which the principles of Castlereagh and Canning predominated could hardly be cordial, yet he seems to have been treated with perfect civility. Indeed, he was not a man whom it was easy even for an Englishman to insult. He remarks of Castlereagh, after one of his first interviews with that nobleman: "His deportment is sufficiently graceful, and his person is handsome. ”

“ The vessel of the state in these sudden squalls requires that those at the helm should govern it with a calm heart and a steady hand. Anger and fear are equally to be avoided, for they lead equally to violent measures, and the excitement of one party only feeds the excitement of the other.
Lord Castlereagh, the leading spirit at this time in the Cabinet, vapid and incorrect as an orator, inefficient as an administrator, was still, as I have elsewhere said, not without qualities as a statesman—for he was cool and he was courageous ”

“ On 25 Sept. 1803 he was made aide-de-camp to the king and colonel in the army. Shortly afterwards he was appointed under-secretary in Ireland. He had been elected member for Thomastown to the Irish parliament in 1798, and after the union he was member for co. Derry in the imperial parliament till 1814. In 1805, when invasion was threatened, he published ‘Suggestions for the Improvement of the Force of the British Empire.’ In 1807 he became under-secretary for war, Castlereagh being the secretary of state. The two brothers were always most warmly attached to each other. ”

“ Ld. Castlereagh, though labouring under many heavy charges for his conduct towards the Irish Catholics, has still maintained a sort of integrity of reputation for private honour; he also has the advantage of being a person whom the Prince would prefer if any junction were to be made with new men, and his ambition is of a limited nature, as he would confine himself to his department and only promote persons either from goodwill towards them, or for the general advantage of the Administration to which he belonged. ”

“ But the true biography of a public man is to be found in his public career. There flattery can deceive no longer, and panegyric is brought to the test of posterity. It fell to the lot of Lord Castlereagh to take a lead in the four most memorable transactions of his time;—in the overthrow of the Irish Rebellion; in the establishment of the Union; in the downfall of the French empire; and in the settlement of the peace of Europe at the Congress of Vienna. ”

“ Peter Finnerty received the judgment of the Court of King's Bench, for a libel upon Lord Castlereagh. There never was a man who stood upon the floor of the Court for judgment who made a more able or a more brave defence than he did; he did not retract one sentence, one syllable of the original publication, but, on the contrary, he produced affidavits to prove the truth of every word that he had published about Lord Castlereagh's cruelty to the people of Ireland, when he was in power, at the Castle of Dublin. ”

“ Like most men who cultivate mere cunning, he underrated all who do not place the greatest reliance upon it, and in this way conceived a very depreciating estimate of Lord Castlereagh's ability. Knowing how deeply he had himself been trusted, and how much employed in state transactions, he speculated on a long career of political influence, and that, while his Lordship remained as Secretary, his own skill and dexterity would never be dispensed with. ”

“ Two more years of life, two more years of change in the relations of England to the Continent, would have given Castlereagh a different figure in the history both of Greece and of America. No English statesman in modern times has been so severely judged. Circumstances, down to the close of his career, withheld from Castlereagh the opportunities which fell to his successor; ties from which others were free made it hard for him to accelerate the breach with the Allies of 1814. ”

“ Castlereagh soon came into intimate relations with Pitt again, and adopted his plans and policy, especially in foreign affairs. Though he held no official position, the Addington administration entrusted to him the conduct of its two chief Irish measures in the House of Commons in 1801—the Suppression of Rebellion Act and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act. He prepared and submitted to the government elaborate memoirs upon the danger of continuing the exclusion of catholics from parliament in view of a French invasion, and of levying tithes for the protestant clergy in kind. ”

“ Government at home had sunk to a narrow and unfeeling opposition to the attempts made from time to time to humanise the mass of the people, to reform an atrocious criminal law, to mitigate the civil wrongs inflicted in the name and the interest of a State-religion. No one in the Cabinet doubted that authority, as such, must be wiser than inexperienced popular desire, least of all the statesman who now, in conjunction with the Duke of Wellington, controlled the policy of Great Britain upon the Continent. Lord Castlereagh had no sympathy with cruelty or oppression in Continental rulers ”

“ Faction had calumniated Lord Castlereagh throughout a large portion of his career. The man who breaks down a fierce rebellion, and who extinguishes a worthless legislature, must be prepared to encounter the hostility of all whose crimes he has punished, or whose traffic he has put to shame. The felon naturally hates the hand which holds the scales of justice, and, if he cannot strike, is sure to malign. The contemptuous dignity with which Lord Castlereagh looked down upon his libellers, and his equally contemptuous disregard of defence, of course only rendered libel more inveterate ”

“ England alone was capable of reconciling all their wishes, and restoring to the various forces the unity which, like the bundle of sticks in the fable, rendered them invincible when united, though each separately would be easily overcome.
Lord Castlereagh arrived on the Continent to confer with Lord Aberdeen, Lord Cathcart, and his own brother Sir Charles Stewart; and from this time the influence of the British legation was complete and paramount. ”

“ If you do not understand the consular exceptions, I do; and it is right that a man of honour, and a woman of probity, should find it so, particularly in a place where there are not 'ten righteous.' As to nobility—in England none are strictly noble but peers, not even peers' sons, though titled by courtesy; nor knights of the garter, unless of the peerage, so that Castlereagh himself would hardly pass through a foreign herald's ordeal till the death of his father.
"The snow is a foot deep here. There is a theatre, and opera,—the Barber of Seville. Balls begin on Monday next. ”