GREVILLE'S JOURNAL has revived the memory of the Peelites; and an article appeared the other day, by the survivor and the most renowned of the group, in which, as a set of men taking their own course and remaining outside the regular parties, they were designated as "a public nuisance." One cannot help surmising that they incurred this severe judgment in some measure by their similarity to a set of public men who at the present time are so misguided as to refuse at the call of a party leader to say what they think false and to do what they think wrong. It is the car of the Caucus Juggernaut rolling backwards over political history.

It happened that, though I never was in public life, I saw a good deal of some of the Peelites, and from them heard about the rest more than after the lapse of many years I can remember. The acquaintance of the Duke of Newcastle I made through our common tutor at Eton, Edward Coleridge, who died the other day, and of whom, amidst the flood of biography, I wonder no memoir has appeared. Coleridge was the Arnold. of Eton. He was a very Eton Arnold, it is true; and as he was not headmaster, but only an assistant, his sphere was rather his own pupil-room than the school. But in that sphere, and in his own way, he did for the very dry bones of education at Eton No. 336.-VOL. LVJ.

what Arnold did at Rugby. "My Tutor was greatly beloved, as he deserved to be, by all his pupils, and the connection always remained a bond. It drew together even those who, like the Duke and myself, had not been contemporaries at Eton.

The Duke was not a great statesman, perhaps he was not even а great administrator, for though he was a good man of business and devoted to work, he wore himself out with details which he ought to have left to subordinates; and I fancy he had not the gift of choosing his subordinates very well. The breakdown in the Crimea, however, was not his fault; but the fault of a long disused and rusty machine which he was just getting into order when the Government fell. Though a man of strong feelings and affections, he lacked imagination, and perhaps owed partly to that defect the unhappiness which befell him in his married life. He certainly owed to it a misunderstanding with Seward, one of whose maladroit jests he took in earnest and afterwards recalled at a time when the relations between the governments had become strained. But he was a thoroughly upright, high-minded, and patriotic gentleman, who kept his soul above his rank, and devoted himself to the service of the State; while the fortitude with which he bore accumulated misfortune and torturing disease would have touched

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any heart, as it did mine. He showed, it seemed to me, remarkable tact and temper in presiding over the Education Commission, of which I was a member, and which was made up of men chosen as representatives of different opinions on a burning question. In that respect, at all events, he would not have been a bad head of a government. His colleagues would also have felt that they could thoroughly trust his honour. It was in an unlucky hour, and at the bidding of an ill-starred ambition, that he forsook the Colonial Office for the Ministry of War. As a Colonial Minister he was successful in his own way, which was that of a decided Imperialist, though he was too good-natured ever to quarrel with a friend who wrote in support of the opposite view. His Liberal tendencies did not fail to bring upon him the wrath of his father, who had greatly encumbered the estate by reckless purchases of territorial influence for the purpose of upholding ultra-Toryism, and had prepared for himself a place among the most hapless victims of the irony of fate by opening the door of the House of Commons to Mr. Gladstone.

Cardwell, whose acquaintance I made at first through the Duke, always seemed to me the model of a public servant. He was the most typical pupil, as well as one of the warmest adherents, of Peel, who did his best to train statesmen for the country, and exacted, as the title to promotion, the conscientious industry and thorough devotion to the public service of which he was himself the grand example. Cardwell, like Peel, was dry, and, like Peel, somewhat stiff and formal: there was nothing about him brilliant, or impressive to any one who was not impressed by duty. He was not and never could have been a party leader: he had not the fire, the magnetism, the eloquence, or the skill as a tactician. It did not seem to me that he ever scanned the political field for strategical purposes as party leaders do.

He was content to do the busi

ness and solve the question of the hour. The question of the hour he solved by an honest sort of opportunism, rather than on any very broad principle, or with reference to any far-reaching policy. Not only was he unqualified to be a party leader, but he was an indifferent partisan: his mind was too fair, and his judgment was too cool. On the other hand, he was a true comrade, a fast friend, and not a bad hater of the enemies of his friends. I really believe that this is the right way of stating the case, and that Cardwell was free from rancour. I know that some whose opinion is of weight thought him unjust to opponents. It is difficult for a gladiator in such an arena as party politics to be perfectly just; but I must say that I never heard Cardwell speak bitterly of mere difference of opinion or of anything but what he sincerely believed to be dishonest. He was cautious, perhaps reticent to a fault. Without being eloquent, he was a good and convincing speaker in Peel's manner, and particularly clear in exposition; yet he never spoke if he could help it, and more than once he rehearsed to me, in substance, speeches which he was going to make, but when the time came did not make. It was as an administrator and practical legislator that he was really great. While others talked and manœuvred for power he did an immense amount of work, and of the best quality, for the nation. His great achievements and monuments are the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, which is still the code of our Mercantile Marine, and the transformation of the army from an unprofessional and unscientific to a professional and scientific force. Peel made it a point of honour so carefully to prepare his Bills that they should pass with little amendment, and in this, as in other respects, Cardwell was a faithful pupil. The Merchant Shipping Bill with its five hundred and forty-eight sections passed through Committee at a single sittinga curious contrast to a Franchise Act,

the work of the opposite school, which, when it finally became law, retained of the original Bill scarcely anything but the preamble! The transformation of the army in face of all the prejudices and opposition of the men of the old school was probably as heavy a piece of work as ever fell to the lot of a British legislator. It broke Cardwell down and brought on the sad malady which closed his working days. The strongest testimony is borne, by those who are best qualified to judge, to the temper and patience as well as to the ability and the power of mastering details displayed in the conduct of the business. Testimony equally strong is borne to the display of the same qualities in other departments, notably in the Board of Trade. As Colonial Secretary he had to deal, amidst a tornado of public excitement, with the question of the disturbances in Jamaica and of Governor Eyre. The case of Jamaica he was generally allowed to have settled well, though in the case of Governor Eyre it was impossible to unite the suffrages of those who regarded the Governor as a hero with the suffrages of those who regarded him not only as the hateful instrument of a cruel panic but as the dastardly murderer of his personal enemy, Gordon. To Cardwell is due, if not the initiative, the execution, of a great change in Colonial policy; for he it was who, by practically insisting that the Colonies should pay for troops maintained in them, inaugurated self-defence, which was a long step towards Colonial independence. Cardwell was no eye-server: he did the work of his office thoroughly and faithfully without any thought of self-display or of the figure which he was to make before the House of Commons; and one could not help thinking how absurd was the party system which compelled the country to deprive itself of such a departmental administrator because the party to which he belonged had been defeated on some legislative question totally unconnected with the business

of his department. Albeit, as has already been said, no party leader or organiser of political forces, Cardwell in council, though quiet, was strong, and was able even to control the course of errant and flaming bodies which are now setting the political firmament on fire. Such at least was the impression which I formed when I was living in the Peelite circle. I am glad to see that a memoir of Cardwell is in hand: it will tell no exciting story, but it will hold a mirror up to public duty. One who could have told the biographer much and would have told it with affectionate eagerness is no more. Though everywhere but in his home Cardwell seemed rather cold, his wife could not live when he was gone. Her remaining days, in fact, were almost spent in lingering round his grave.

I passed a summer with Cardwell in the Phoenix Park when he was Secretary for Ireland, and there had the advantage both of observing Irish government and of hearing Lord O'Hagan, Sir Alexander Macdonald, Dr. Russell, and other wise and patriotic Irishmen on the Irish Question. I call Sir Alexander Macdonald an Irishman, for though he was not a native of Ireland, no man could be more thoroughly identified with the country in heart, while he remained, in his great work of organising national education, happily independent as "a foreigner" of Irish factions. Being

in the Cabinet Cardwell was the real minister; while Lord Carlisle, who was Lord-Lieutenant, was happy in displaying his admirable social qualities, making the after-dinner speeches in which, thanks to his unique flow of sincere and heartfelt flummery, he excelled all mankind, and in keeping the score at cricket. The general impression, I believe, was that Cardwell had failed as an Irish Secretary. It is certain that he was the reverse of the typical Irishman, and equally certain that he disliked the post and was glad to escape from it to the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster. But I