THE LATE EARL OF DERBY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 15, 18 January 1870, Page 2

THE LATE EARL OF DERBY.

v/ The following sketch of the late Earl of Derby was published among the "Political Portraits" which appeared in the Leader newspaper about the year 1853 and which were afterwards published in a collected form under the title of ." The Governing classes of Great Britain " : — There is as little accounting for the official peculiarities of families as for the national peculiarities of peoples. But there is as little doubt of tbe idiosyncracies of tribes as of the distinctions of nations. A strong, odd man turns up, marries, grips laud, and founds a family, and for hundreds and hundreds of years his descendants retaiu, continue, and intensify his characteristics. It is unnecessary to give instances of a notorious fact ; in every man's society the phrase is heard "just like the family." Who of us with a family tree, which we all pretend to have, does not excuse a failiug or a vice in the same way as Lucretia — " lam a Borgia and must have blood ; my father sheds it." We do more than excuse ourselves ; we pardon others from some such consideration. And it is such a consideration which is forced upon the notice in examining the character and career of Edward Geoffry Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby. Looking to the famiiy as well as to the individnal history we find that for several centuries there has existed the same man — occasionally, but not often, incarnated iu a different figure — and that the present Lord Derby, accom mod a ting himself to this century, is doing exactly what the first Lord Derby did in his time ' — taking the odds in history. For as the Napiers and all the Gascons, so the Stanleys are all sportsmen. Sans changer is truer of this clan than most family mottoes ; true in the sense that every Stanley is whimsically versatile ; so true i that the very motives which led the first Lord to desert his king were visible on the three different occasions when the present Earl served three different parties — Whigs, Peelites and Protectionists. Sans changer, properly translated, means "Every Stanley hedges. 1 ' No doubt, however, that though the founder of a family propels his temperament through many generations, his brains do not always germinate, and so it happens that there have not beeu many eminent historic heroes among the Stanleys. The Earl of Derby is a clever man and he bas enemies ouly in those who are too solemn to comprehend him. It is absurd to censure with gravity a man, for the shape of whose cerebellum, as for the shape of whose legs, thirteen queer Earls are accountable, and, whatever the jerks ofhis career and the mischief of his capers, there is neither frowning nor laughing at a man who looks upon politics as a scrimmage,, and history as a spree. Our laws, in establishing a senate of hereditary legislators, took the chances of temperaments, and if Lord Derby looks upon life as a joke, and chooses to poke fun at posterity who is to blame — we or he ? If we do not take the joke of his career we are very dull. History (Mr. Macaulay's) intensely admires Lord Halifax, who though a trimmer, had a fine prejudice in favor of impossible causes; and similarly chivalrous has Lord Derby always been — his political book has always been so made up that under no possible circumstances could he ever win. A Vicar of Bray who changes to keep his living is contemptible, but heroic is the inconsistency of him who goes forth into the political world as knight-errant of dead principles and damned projects. Reviewing the career of Lord Derby without partisan passion, we see much to excuse and much to respect. And whatever has to be said ofhis character, the distinction is not to be denied him, that he is the ouly clever eldest son produced by the British peerage for a hundred years. Lord John Russell being the only clever youngest son during the same period. Smart, clever, dashing daring, he always was, and there is no use in saying he was not more, for he never pretended to be more, and if his order and the Conservative classes plunged at him and made him premier, greedy to get hold of the only clever born Earl known in the memory of living man, why he was the person in the realm the most astonished, and if he made a mess of it, as he knew he would, who was to blame? He must have been immensely delighted at the joke of sending

him, a breezy young fellow of thirty, to govern Ireland, the most ungovernable of countries, but if Parliament and tbe nation did not see the indecency of it, why should he not enjoy the joke— and go? He did go and passed a very jolly time, and if he set north and south by the ears, ancl drove O'Connell into chronic insurrection, why that. was Parliament business, not his. When- Lord John Russell asked him to govern the Colonial Empire, a year or two after, he accepted the office with a chuckle ; it was - a joke for a mau who had never been out of England except io Ireland, to be asked to organise the most complicated colonial system in the world, and if he nearly destroyed the Colonial empire, why how absurd to impeach hint. He found he was borne into a seat in the House of Commons and then iuto the Lords just as he was borne into Knowsley and a third of Liverpool ; and he always said he did not see why he should not amuse himself at governing — it was as good fun as racing, and besides he could do both at the same time, as he always has done, running losing liorses in both. He hated work as he told everybody ; he would fight in the house as long as they liked and when they liked, but, drudge, as he always said, he would not, and if they chose to give him office, they must look out for a deuce of a mess, and there always was a deuce of a mess. He liked office, of course; it enabled him to provide for friends and relatives ; ifc added to bis social distinction; and it must be pleasant in a deathbed to reflect that one has been Secretary of State and Lord of the Tieasury. Besides, it enhanced the fun ofthe history which he was requested to act. Tbe race is more exciting when you have something to lose, and taking office was, with Lord Derby, regarded as a sort of bet with the opposition. [7b be continued P\