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    deen has not had the good fortune to connect himself with a single great measure , good or bad . Except perhaps , the last—the Coalition—a comprehensive measure : and , no doubt , Englishmen admire adequately the statesman who induced a dozen other statesmen to sink their differences for the purpose of securing to each an average' 40001 . per annum . There is a vague belief that the man who heads such an Administration

    must be a good man , and an able man : and , from logical inferences , the country trusts Lord Aberdeen . But the country knows nothing about Lord Aberdeen . These are facts which comment startlingly upon the governmental system of Great Britain . In this governmental system it is clearly not necessary that a man should be known to the country to be successful . There are governing classes in this country ; and Lord Aberdeen has evidently considered it sufficient to be known to them . They know him , and trust him : and hence he is Premier of Great Britain .

    Yet , no doubt , so unknown a man has not before m this century occupied such a position . Other Premiers have not only consulted the governing classes , but have managed the governed . They have been respected or loved : or if they have neither been respected nor loved , they have been understood , and their policy has been appreciated ; they have , in short , held a national position , and have had national influence , as representing party and principles . Lord Aberdeen represents neither a party nor a principle , which is the reason why in an age of negotiations he leads a coalition government .

    Two causes have prevented Lord Aberdeen being known in -England . First : he has not a popular genius : second : he has filled , in the state , those offices only which deal with the government of England outside England . A man who fills the Foreign Office has great advantages in making the acquaintance of , and gaining that sort of knowledge and prestige which influences , the Governing Classes . But the disadvantage is , that a Secretary for Foreign Affairs is kept out of domestic affairs . A Home Secretary or a Colonial

    Secretary , or a Chancellor of the Exchequer , is forced into contact with his countrymen ; and deputations are like petitions , it is assumed that they have no results , but they direct statesmen . Lord Aberdeen , until this year , never received a deputation of Great Britons ; and thus it is that , as his countrymen know nothing of him , he has had but a very indistinct notion of his countrymen . With the history of his country in his lifetime , ho has had nothing whatever to do ; and that cannot be said of any other man who ever held his

    post . First Minister , without tho slightest mflnencethat is an extraordinary position . Our statesmen generally have some influence : even Mr . Disraeli , who is always acting , and is known to be an actor , and to whose opinions , expressed in speech , nobody affects to pay that attention which is paid to realities nnd individualities : —even Colonel Sibthorpe has his influence , derived from hia looks . Tho most derided of our governing classes have their distinct position ; and in that position are tangible and comprehensible . The Earl of Derby is felt to be an utterly unreliable man , who was turned out of oflico in

    contonipt ; but the Earl of Derby has his beliovers , and his creed ; and ho ban his influence . It in not equal to the influence of Mr . Tennyson , or Mr . Thackeray , who shape thoughts , and mould and modulate national history ; but it is distinct , aseertainablo , and visible . Lord Aberdeen , in this respect , i « far inferior to the man he supplanted , and convicted of impossibility , the Earl of Derby . 1 ' erhaps tho Coalition could not exist withqut Lord Aberdeen ; but thon tho key-stone of an arch is an unimportant fragment out of an arch ; and , in fact , Lord Aberdeen is suatained in his Premiership not by his individuality , but by the reputations of other men , who are known and understood .

    Lord Aberdeen , then , was not selected for Premier by the country , but by tho ( Jovorning Clauses , among whom wo have , without disrespect , counted J ' rineo Albert . And ho wan selected by tho Court because ho was not , known to the country ; for tho vory moritji which re-Kiiltud from bis novor having , as statesman , been brought in contact with hia countrymen . Lord Aberdeen , luul

    he been Colonial Secretary , or Chancellor of the Exchequer , would have been like most ordinary British statesmen—narrow in view , parochial in patriotism , and devoted to the Bermondsey policy . But educated as a diplomatist , conversant with foreign affairs , and in office only at the Foreign Office , he became the least British of British Statesmen , and eminently fitted , in the circumstances , for the great station to which he has been appointed . Least British , he is the most largeminded of our statesmen , and is thoroughly competent

    to sympathise with the extensive dynastic preoccupations of Prince Albert . We can all remember Lord John Russell ' s greatly cheered insinuation at him that he was , in office , not the Minister of England alone , but also the Minister Of Austria , and Russia , and France ; and , properly con . sidered , such a sneer from so merely British a man is a great compliment to Lord Aberdeen , as showing how large and lofty are his considerations in political action . He has , besides , himself illustrated the mental grandeur

    of his own point of view . He it was who discovered that in the English political world there were no parties , as we had long supposed , but that our differences were merely differences without distinctions ; and upon that discovery , which , a narrow-minded , purely British Statesman would never have discovered , he based his project of a coalition . Intense and philosophic must be the contempt with which he regards the traditions of our historic party Government ; he himself seeing , even more vividly than Lord Shelburne saw , that if the

    great families would only agree to agree , they might divide the Government of Great Britain , including its patronage , and the management of human destinies between them . He cannot understand British rage incontroversiesaboutthe difference betweenTweedledum and Tweedledee . "Very likely he thinks the Whigs , after being out so long , were clever fellows to discover that a Reform Bill was necessary ; and he would candidly

    admire Mr . pisraeli now , if Mr . Disraeli endeavoured to re-create the Tory party by appealing to them to do what the Whigs did in 1830 . But intensity about such small local matters is not congenial to the Earl of Aberdeen . Watching always all Europe , he only has a sectional regard for England . In a remarkable way , for those who observe and study him , he showed this in the discussions on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill : and

    ho it was who made the Peelites powerful , by liftin g them above the petty parochial passions swaying British statesmanship at that epoch . But more rilomorably was his character developed in the discussions on tho Scotch Church crisis : and he failed in that settlement simply because hia intellect was too comprehensive to understand the earnestness on small points which influenced parish heroos such as Dr .

    Chalmers on that oceasion . Often it is mado a ground of attack on Lord Aberdeen , that ho disgusted all parties in that singular transaction : but , fairly con-Bidered , he broke down merely because ho was so magnificently above all parties . He understands precisely what was moant in him for mankind ; and ho permits neither England , nor oven Scotland , to have more t . lifm if . s slisim .

    Lord Aberdeen was always a Tory statesman , becauso ho is so essentially a liberal man . British liberalism i » a very parochial affair : and tho men who got their minds out of English routino are generally Tories . A Tory in a inan who despises mankind : and it unfortunately happens that as mou know mankind they ccoho to bo ardent philanthropists . Lord Aberdeen wont tho grand tour at a remarkablo moment , and studied tho world under peculiar circumstancoH . Tho great ovont of his life—it was bin anticipation of Waterloo—was tho

    destruction of Napoleon ; and ho accomplished that destruction by inducing half-adozon people , principally sovereigns , to bocomo RcoundrolH . it wa » hi » niiHrtion from Hie British governing classes ; and what was he to think of humanity after succeeding P History has no parallel for tho villany of tho Austrian Emperor who wot on Motternich to torture Napoleon into a rupture of his alliance with Austria—that allianoo having boon ratified by Mario Louino , that Austrian Kmperor ' ri daughter ; and Mettornich wart taught hia butfincHw , in tluvt transaction , by Lord Aberdeen .

    lovingly or highly of the country which was gratified with the Reform Act , and endured the Corn Laws ? You can see , watching Lord Aberdeen , that he is a cynical peer of the realm ; and nothing he has ever done or said indicates a patriotic appreciation of Great Britons . Virulent was he always in detestation of the pretentious Britishisms of Lord Palmerston , while that distinguished statesman was at the Foreign Office between 1833 and 1846 , cleverly contriving to talk the Bermondsey policy > and act the Russian system . Lord Aberdeen , dignified , philosophic , and honest , could never understand Lord Palmerston ' s

    affectations—History has no parallel for the villany of Murat Bernadotte , in deserting the man who had given th greatness j and it was Lord Aberdeen ' s diploma to which the world was indebted for that matt Triumphing in setting brother-in-law against brother ' and father against daughter , could , his estimation of mankind—he was not tod old to be influenced—ha been exalted ? Could his Scotch notions of Engl and —he is of a family who gained power b y hating Ene . land—have been raised by observation of the caree of England under Pitt ? Could he have thought

    never seeing that , consequent upon these affectations , Lord Palmerston was always able to promote unmolested the Russian system , even better than Lord Aberdeen himself . Lord Palmerston understood as well as Lord Aberdeen that the Russian system was the only system which the British Foreign Office could uphold ; but , being of a popular and felicitous genius , and disguising cynicism in bonhomie , he never said so , but said , indeed , quite the reverse ; and the result was , that in his day liberty was always crushed , and he was always supposed Jfco be a

    Liberal . Lord Aberdeen , more simple-minded , because more austere ( the young Tories want a Tory who is not austere , which is a mistake ) , acted at the Foreign Office upon his convictions , and the difference without a distinction between him and Lord Palmerstou ( at last discovered by Lord Aberdeen ) is , that he did , and Lord Palmerston did not , express his convictions . Lord Aberdeen ' s Foreign Office theory is , that the policy of thia country is not intervention ; and that is also , practically , the policy of Lord Palmerston ; the distinction between the two being , that Lord Palmerston sees the expediency , and Lord Aberdeen does not see the expediency , of talking intervention , while acting

    non-intervention . Lord Palmerston is a popular man in England , because ho is perpetually telling the English that it will bo a great epoch for tho continent when it adopts " constitutional governmont . " Lord Aberdeen is too honest a man to talk such twaddle ; and is consequently no , t a popular man in tho positive sense , though decidedly not an unpopular man with a Cobdenito democracy . Lord Aberdeen knowing , from his acquaintance with tho Governing Classes , how scats are got ami voters aro bought , does not think the British constitution , as at present existing , tho most perfect or tho most admirable of human institutions ;

    and , calculating that tho people of continental Jwirop aro not inoro amiable or more honest than the peop o of Great Britain , ho abstains from urging on con u nontal Governments the desirability of abolishing pa cr " ml despotisms in favour of self-government by Govern * ing Classes . Lord Aberdeen has no theories , cordon y

    does not allow his theories to govern his political con duct . Ho evidently thinks that it is not »* ) to toll tho British people that they aro not tluw J markably onligbtoned and recklessly freo peoplo w ^ ^ they boliovo themselves to bo ; ho clearly < : onH ^ that it would not do to adviso them -to accep t a p « ^ nnl . despotism which would destroy governing « » ^ — . _ r _ j ... _ . „ r . ___ ,. _ , „ _ . — _ 1 |» wi (; i . goui

    Ho thinks that all forms of government aro ^ certain favourable circumstances , and hm no coi ^ ^ tional prejudices . Thun , ho docs not lmto Nic » o ^ decline to bo civil to him , because he in a < lcB |* ^ J 1 () fc ho is avorso to an alliance with Louis Napo tf > ^ ^ because Louis Napoleon doon not institnto a ^ ^ Commons into which pecuniary patriots c " '" j ^ cHt , way , but becauso tho C / . ar Nicholas iH the Jio " ^

    . - j . mill 01 most reliable , and most authentic mm ^ two . Lord Aberdeen cotuvvohmda Rccuruoj

    Untitled Article

    878 tHE LEAbER . [ Si ^ uiiiiAif ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 10, 1853, page 878, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2003/page/14/