Melbourne, on his side, was very much entertained by Haydon—here was a new type to be added to his collection of human oddities—and he encouraged him to display his eccentricities to the full. He asked him questions about himself and his queer friends, Keats, Shelley, Hazlitt and so on; and in his turn regaled Haydon with anecdotes about Charles Fox and Sir Joshua Reynolds. “Reynolds was a hard working old dog,” he said. “He worked too hard to be happy.” The two also had long discussions on politics, art and religion, in which Melbourne listened with apparent gravity to Haydon’s exalted rhapsodizings. Now and again he pulled him up by a shrewd well informed comment; but never in such a way as to make him ill at ease. On the contrary—“I am always brilliant with him,” Haydon noted complacently. Indeed, he found Melbourne so sympathetic that he was soon trying to enlist his help in what was the most cherished object of his heart, namely to persuade the State to become an active patron of historical paintings and more especially of the historical painting of Benjamin Haydon. Alas, he had mistaken his man! Melbourne was against the State taking on any task that was not a necessity; he did not look on historical painting as a necessity. Moreover, it is likely that he realized that Haydon was far from being the great artist he fancied himself. Accordingly, when Haydon mentioned the subject of State patronage, Melbourne gazed at him with a mischievous look and answered evasively. A dreadful doubt began to steal into Haydon’s mind. Could it be that Lord Melbourne did not take him seriously? “His manner suggested that I was a disappointed enthusiast,” he noted, “whom he found it amusing to listen to, however absurd it might be to adopt my plans.”
This was pretty near the truth. But Haydon had never been one to let truth get in the way of his dreams, without a struggle. In 1834 he returned to the charge and called on Melbourne at his house. Melbourne, just out of bed, appeared delighted to see him. But the up-shot of this, and of subsequent interviews, was to confirm Haydon in his disillusionment. Not that he ceased to respond to Melbourne’s charm. How graceful his gestures were, he noticed, how infectious his laugh, how like an antique statue’s was his neck revealed by the open collar of his grey dressing-gown! All the same, his attitude to Historical Art was, so far as Haydon could see, nothing short of lamentable. “God help the Minister that meddles with art!” he had remarked shockingly. Indeed, he seemed to take a positive pleasure in bantering and tantalizing Haydon on the subject. One day he would be maintaining perversely that State patronage was harmful to painters; on another that the Government was against paintings in public buildings because they wanted to emulate “the simplicity of the ancients.” Sometimes he did not even bother to answer Haydon’s eloquent adjurations; but merely rubbed his hands, burst out laughing, and turning to the looking glass, began to brush his hair.
Haydon’s patience was finally exhausted when the question of decorating the new House of Lords came up; and Melbourne, simply to tease, suggested employing the academician Callcott, a noted enemy of Haydon’s. A man who could make such a proposal even as a joke, reflected Haydon, was, it was clear, hopelessly frivolous. Sadly he decided that talking to Melbourne, seductive though it might be, was a waste of time. This did not prevent him from writing to Melbourne a year later to ask for some money. Melbourne sent a cheque for seventy pounds at once, adding, kindly but firmly, that Haydon must not expect any more. After this, we notice, communication between them seems to have ceased.
Laughing at Holland House and listening to Haydon, however, only occupied Melbourne’s leisure hours. These were more limited than he liked. He still had plenty of work. His main duties were two-fold; answering for the Government in the House of Lords and performing his functions as Home Secretary. In the House of Lords he was only moderately effective. Since he was shrewd and tactful he could be trusted not to let the Government down; but no amount of practice could make him an orator. The last thing he felt inclined to do was to cajole other people into adopting his opinions, let alone those of his party. All too well he realized how doubtfully right these were. Moreover he never learned to concentrate his thoughts in a purposive flow. Now and again, provoked by some unusually foolish or unjust remark from the other side, he would gather his wits together to make a sharp-edged effective reply; but for the most part he let himself wander along, now and again touching on the practical point at issue, but soon drifting off to pursue some curious train of generalizing thought, the upshot of which was always that since no one really knew anything about the matter, it was better to take no action on it, beyond allowing people to do what they liked. The only measures he enthusiastically approved were those for removing restrictions. Certainly let the Jews be relieved from their civil disabilities—“all disabilities ate injurious,” he declared, “and most are ineffectual.” He was also against stopping Trades Unions from holding meetings on Sundays, and poured scorn on the idea that you could make people more law-abiding by controlling the sale of drink. Indeed, all new-fangled schemes for checking crime struck him as futile. Perhaps some good might be done by insisting that convicts should keep themselves clean—they would be sure to dislike that. But do not try to educate them. “Recollect that crime has existed in all ages,” he remarked, “all attempts at eradication have hitherto proved useless. Education will not help, for education is knowledge . . . which can be good or bad.” Indeed he once suggested that the criminal law involved issues so obscure and deep as to be a subject for the philosopher rather than the statesman. It was part of the science of man; and “the science of man, if it is a science,” he said, “is one of the most unsettling and at the same time most curious lines presented for our investigation.” Such speculations led the peers of England into mental regions in which they were not at home. Melbourne’s speeches left them more bewildered than impressed.
As Home Secretary he was also bewildering. Strangers continued to be startled by Tom Young’s manners, and disconcerted to find themselves being interviewed by Melbourne shaving in his dressing-room at midday. Even when he did get down to the Office he carried his own atmosphere of eccentric informality with him. This was especially startling to deputations—those deputations of public-spirited persons keen to advocate some cause, which were a new and characteristic phenomenon of the age of reform. What were they to make of a Minister who received them lounging back nursing a sofa cushion; who, while they ponderously delivered their carefully prepared recitals of cogent argument and authenticated fact, pulled a feather out of the cushion and began blowing it about the room; and who after they had finished, answered briefly and with a bland smile that he was afraid he could not help them as he knew nothing about the matter in question. Was the Home Secretary an irresponsible ignoramus, they wondered?
Of course Melbourne was nothing of the kind. Anyone who worked for him could have told the deputation that most likely he had sat up half the night before, reading up the subject of their discourse. But he had no intention of letting them know this. This was partly out of mischief. Earnest well-informed persons with liberal ideals and nonconformist consciences are always powerful stimulants to the comic spirit. Melbourne could not resist the temptation to tease them. But there were more sober motives for his behaviour. Often he did not wish to commit the Government; to pretend ignorance was an easy way of doing this. There was generally a method in Melbourne’s madness. Queer and haphazard though his way of doing things might seem, his work got finished and his ends achieved. If efficiency is the art of getting what one wants, Melbourne was an efficient man.
As far as the Home Office was concerned his efficiency was limited by his political views. These were not constructive; for them to be so would have involved his taking an interest in social reform. Social reform bored Melbourne and he did not think it did any good. During his long period of leisure he had read some economics. His reading had converted him to the new doctrine of laissez-faire. It seemed to him proved beyond doubt that the problems of poverty could only be solved by allowing the forces of supply and demand to take their c
ourse. He realized that this process involved considerable suffering for the poor: and since even the study of economics could not transform Melbourne into a hard-hearted man, this disposed him more than ever to avert his mind from the subject. Here was yet another painful aspect of existence which he preferred not to think about.
His point of view appears vividly in an account of some conversations a few years earlier. In November, 1830, Lord Suffield, an enthusiastic peer of humane ideals, approached the Government with a scheme for relieving distressed agricultural labourers by settling them on waste lands as smallholders. In vain: to the orthodox opinion of the period all such schemes were cranky nonsense. So they were to Melbourne. He told Suffield he could have nothing to do with his plans. “I fear you have not devoted much attention to the subject,” said Suffield. “I understand it perfectly,” replied Melbourne crisply, “and that is my reason for saying nothing about it.” “How is this to be explained?” asked Suffield. “Because I consider it hopeless,” retorted Melbourne. Suffield said hotly that he supposed Melbourne agreed with Malthus that vice and misery were the only cure for the evils of poverty. Melbourne shrank from accepting so harsh and bald a version of his opinions. “No,” he said, “the evil is in numbers and the competition that ensues, etc.” “Well then,” said Suffield, “I have means to propose to meet that difficulty.” “Of that I know nothing,” said Melbourne, and changed the subject. Suffield could get nothing more out of him.
The same mixed uneasy state of feeling showed itself in his attitude towards the new reform measures. The Poor Law for instance; in so far as it was grounded on sound economic theory, he was in its favour. But both as a conservative and a man of heart he disliked it. The fact that it put power into the hand of commissioners to act without the permission of the Secretary of State, struck him as a dangerous bureaucratic innovation; and he was repelled by the idea of dragooning the poor into thrift and industry by stopping the old easy-going system of outdoor relief. The consequence was that he defended it in a lukewarm speech, and was heard swearing in a loud, angry undertone as he gave his vote for it. His mind was similarly divided over the Factory Acts for the protection of working children. He felt sorry enough for the children to sponsor the Bill in the House of Lords. On the other hand, in his view any legislation of this kind meant interfering with the action of economic laws; and as such was futile. The result was he could not throw himself into the fight for it with the enthusiasm which is born of faith. One afternoon, a member called Denison stopped him, just as he was getting on his horse outside the Home Office about to start home, and proposed some improvements in the Bill. Irritably Melbourne told him to go and see his brother George Lamb, who was working out the details for him. “I have been with him half-an-hour,” said Denison, “but I could get no way with him; he damned me, damned the clauses and damned the Bill.” “Well, damn it all,” said the exasperated Melbourne, “what more could he say?” Then an impulse of compunction swept over him. “But I will see what I can do about it,” he added. No doubt he did; he was a man of his word. But the story shows that he was not at heart a believer in social reform. On the contrary. “The whole duty of government,” he said, “is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.”
In consequence his activities as Home Secretary were confined to the same object as in 1830: namely to maintaining order without infringing existing traditional liberties. This meant that he had to fight on two fronts. On the one hand he must see that the law was in fact properly enforced: on the other he had to resist proposals to introduce new and tyrannical legislation which was still urged on him by a large number of people, including the King and the Duke of Wellington. Of these the King was the most tiresome. Since the passage of the Reform Bill he had become yet another source of bother to an already harassed Government. William IV was a classic example of a man not up to his job. As a prince he had been merely harmless and comical; a bustling, chattering old buffoon of a sailor, with a head shaped like a pineapple, and a large troop of illegitimate children. As a King he made a more disturbing impression. On the throne of England a buffoon is no laughing matter. The glory of his position is likely to turn his head; it also gives him greater scope for displaying his folly unchecked. So it was with William IV. The mere prospect of becoming King began to throw him off his balance. When he heard George IV was dying and the crown within his grasp, he took to wearing overshoes and gargling every morning in front of an open window, for fear he might be carried off by a sudden chill before the splendid prize was actually his. Once King, he took steps to make his personality felt. At first he set up as a democratic monarch suitable to the new democratic age; and dismayed his subjects by spitting in a plebeian manner out of the window of the State Coach, and by walking about the streets unattended and followed by a crowd who jostled and pushed him with unseemly familiarity. His democratic sympathies, however, were not deeply grounded enough to survive the disturbances of the Reform Bill period. These left him so frightened that he turned into a panicky reactionary who smelt bloody revolution in every breath of popular feeling. His nerves were further irritated by a justified suspicion that his Ministers did not take him very seriously. Altogether he found that being King was not the pleasure he had hoped it was going to be: with the result that the jolly old buffoon became a surly, touchy, bewildered old buffoon who sought to compensate for a sense of impotence by bombarding his Ministers with reams of futile complainings and inept advice. Since his chief worry was popular unrest, the brunt of his agitation fell on the Home Secretary. Melbourne dealt dexterously with him. To his communications he replied with a judicious blend of respectfulness, firmness and good humour. Now and again he allowed himself a note of irony, too discreetly worded to penetrate the intelligence of his royal correspondent. When William clamoured for legislation to stop workmen combining, Melbourne replied by sending him a list of thirty-six Acts beginning in Edward I’s time that had been passed for this very purpose—all of which, he added gravely, had been since repealed as ineffective. “Upon the whole,” he concluded, “Viscount Melbourne humbly trusts that Your Majesty will rest assured that the subject will be considered by His Majesty’s servants with that circumspection which is suggested by its evident difficulty, and at the same time with the firmness and determination which are required by its dangerous and formidable character.” Such replies did not stop the King from writing. Nor did they make him like Melbourne very much. He had grown incurably suspicious of all Whigs by this time. Moreover, Melbourne’s mind was too subtle, and his personality too aristocratically confident and stylish, for the silly, homely old sailor King to feel really at home in his company. Melbourne said of him, “He hasn’t the feelings of a gentleman; he knows what they are, but he hasn’t them.” However, the King found Melbourne more genial than most of his other ministers; and he was quite incapable of standing up to his diplomatic skill. Melbourne was always able to manage him in the end: he was also able to manage the Duke of Wellington and other complaining correspondents. With them his tone was different. He was not so respectful, he let himself go a little more. But his terse, caustic notes generally succeeded in quietening them.
The most important topic of these different correspondences was the rise of the Trades Union Movement. As Melbourne had expected, the working-class found themselves no better off as the result of the Reform Bill. In order to improve their conditions, therefore, they turned to industrial agitation. Trades Unions were the means by which they hoped to achieve their ends. Unions of the workers in individual trades were already in existence, when the Reform Government came in. After 1832 they increased by leaps and bounds. Towards the end of 1833 Robert Owen started a scheme for still further strengthening their bargaining power by uniting them into one organization entitled the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union. The aims of this body were political as well as economic. Not only was it to be concerned with practical day-to-day questions of wages and hours, but it declared itself out to establish “a differ
ent order of things, in which the really useful and intelligent part of society only shall have the direction of its affairs; in which industry and virtue shall meet their just distinction and reward, and vicious idleness its merited contempt and destruction.” The Grand National Consolidated Trade Union caught on even more quickly than had the individual Trades Unions. Within a few months an enormous number of town labourers belonged to it. Early in 1834 it began to gain adherents in the country districts as well.
The middle and upper classes viewed these events with growing alarm. The name Trades Union, we must remember, did not suggest to them the established and respectable bodies that it does to us, but rather dangerous and sinister secret societies of a kind happily unknown in England before, round which hovered a murky atmosphere of violence and conspiracy. Admission to them, it was reported, was accompanied by all sorts of melodramatic initiation ceremonies involving skulls and oaths of silence and names signed in human blood. Nor did the middle classes in the least sympathize with their aims. In so far as the Trades Unions tried to modify labour conditions they were interfering with what was thought by the best opinion to be the natural and healthy working of economic law, while their political professions had an ominous whiff of revolution about them. It was enough to make the prosperous citizens’ flesh creep to think of “a different order of things,” in which property was apparently to be redistributed in accordance with what the more discontented members of the working-class happened to think morally just.
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