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PREFACE
Having been consulted by
the family and friends of the late Lord Elgin as to the best mode of
giving to the world some record of his life, and having thus contracted
a certain responsibility in the work now laid before the public, I have
considered it my duty to prefix a few words by way of Preface to the
following pages.
On Lord Elgin’s death it was thought that a career intimately connected
with so many critical points in the history of the British Empire, and
containing in itself so much of intrinsic interest, ought not to be left
without an enduring memorial. The need of this was the more felt because
Lord Elgin was prevented, by the peculiar circumstances of his public
course, from enjoying the familiar recognition to which he would else
have been entitled amongst his contemporaries in England. ‘For’ (if I
may use the words which I have employed on a former occasion) ‘it is one
of the sad consequences of a statesman’s life spent like his in the
constant service of his country on arduous foreign missions, that in his
own land, in his own circle, almost in his own home, his place is
occupied by others, his very face is forgotten; he can maintain no
permanent ties with those who rule the opinion, or obtain the mastery,
of the day; he has identified himself with no existing party; he has
made himself felt in none of those domestic and personal struggles which
attract the attention and fix the interest of the many who contribute in
large measure to form the public opinion of the time. For twenty years
the few intervals of Lord Elgin’s residence in these islands were to be
counted not by years, but by months; and the majority of those who might
be reckoned amongst his friends and acquaintances, remembered him
chiefly as the eager and accomplished Oxford student at Christ Church or
at Merton.’
The materials for supplying this blank were, in some respects, abundant.
Besides the official despatches and other communications which had
passed between himself and the Home Government during his successive
absences in Jamaica, Canada, China, and India, he had in the two latter
positions kept up a constant correspondence, almost of the nature of a
journal, with Lady Elgin, which combines with his reflections on public
events the expression of his more personal feelings, and thus reveals
not only his own genial and affectionate nature, but also indicates
something of that singularly poetic and philosophic turn of mind, that
union of grace and power, which, had his course lain in the more
tranquil walks of life, would have achieved no mean place amongst
English thinkers and writers.
These materials his family, at my suggestion, committed to my friend Mr.
Theodore Walrond, whose sound judgment, comprehensive views, and
official experience are known to many besides myself, and who seemed not
less fitted to act as interpreter to the public at large of such a life
and character, because, not having been personally acquainted with Lord
Elgin, or connected with any of the public transactions recorded in the
following pages, he was able to speak with the sobriety of calm
appreciation, rather than the warmth of personal attachment. In this
spirit he kindly undertook, in the intervals of constant public
occupations, to select from the vast mass of materials placed at his
disposal such extracts as most vividly brought out the main features of
Lord Elgin’s career, adding such illustrations as could be gleaned from
private or published documents or from the remembrance of friends. If
the work has unavoidably been delayed beyond the expected term, yet it
is hoped that the interest in those great colonial dependencies for
which Lord Elgin laboured, has not diminished with the lapse of years.
It is believed also that there is no time when it will not be good for
his countrymen to have brought before them those statesmanlike gifts
which accomplished the successful accommodation of a more varied series
of novel and entangled situations than has, perhaps, fallen to the lot
of any other public man within our own memory. Especially might be named
that rare quality of a strong overruling sense of the justice due from
man to man, from nation to nation; that 'combination of speculative and
practical ability’ (so wrote one who had deep experience of his mind)
which peculiarly fitted him to solve the problem how the subject races
of a civilised empire are to be governed; that firm, courageous, and
far-sighted confidence in the triumph of those liberal and
constitutional principles (in the best sense of the word), which, having
secured the greatness of England, were, in his judgment, also
applicable, under other forms, to the difficult circumstances of new
countries and diverse times.
'It is a singular coincidence,’ said Lord Elgin,.in a speech at Benares
a few months before his end, 'that three successive Governors-General of
India should have stood towards each other in the relationship of
contemporaly friends. Lord Dalhousie, when named to the government of
India, was the youngest man who had ever been appointed to a situation
of such high responsibility and trust. Lord Canning was in the prime of
life; and I, if I am not already on the decline, am nearer to the verge
of it than either of my contemporaries who have preceded me. When I was
leaving England for India, Lord Ellenborough, who is now, alas! the only
surviving ex-Governor-General, said to me, “You are not a very old man;
but, depend upon it, you will find yourself by far the oldest man in
India.” To that mournful catalogue was added his own name within the
brief space of one year; and now a fourth, not indeed bound to the
others by ties of personal or political friendship, but like in
energetic discharge of his duties and in the prime of usefulness in
which he was cut off, has fallen by a fate yet more untimely.
These tragical incidents invest the high office to which such precious
lives have been sacrificed with a new and solemn interest. There is
something especially pathetic when the gallant vessel, as it were, goes
down within very sight of the harbour, with all its accumulated
treasures. But no losses more appeal at the moment to the heart of the
country, no careers deserve to be more carefully enshrined in its
grateful remembrance.
Arthur P. Stanley.
Dean of Westminster
March 4, 1872.
Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
Govenor of Jamaica, Governor-General of Canada, Envoy to China, Viceroy
of India, edited by Theodore Walrond, C.B., with a Preface by Arthur
Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster (1872) (pdf) |
