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a most interesting volume by themselves, since they are valuable as history and at the same time present a dim though faithful reflection of the man. He adds with truth that in the American letters Lord Coleridge shows the highest side of his nature-his love of liberty and his passion for justice. But it would not be an unjust criticism upon Mr. Coleridge's book, admirably done as on the whole it is, to say that be has devoted too much space to letters from Coleridge's friends which have little intrinsic merit. Such for instance are some of the letters from Cardinal Newman and the Duke of Bedford. On the other hand, one regrets the paucity of letters from Lord Bowen, and the absence of any from Mr. Bright, though it is evident from Lord Coleridge's letters that considerable correspondence must have taken place between him and them.

A very interesting feature of Lord Coleridge's life was the development of his opinions in affairs both of Church and State from something very like high Toryism to advanced Liberalism. In this, no doubt, he followed largely Mr. Gladstone's example, but far more than with Mr. Gladstone did his Liberalism affect his religious views. The process was gradual, but none the less complete. He grew up with traditions and in an environment of Anglican orthodoxy and Conservatism which were all the more difficult to shake off, because they were due to the close and loving influence of his father, which remained in full force so long after the time when a father's influence is generally operative. This affectionate reverence for his father and his father's friends, Mr. Keble and Sir William Heathcote, continued till their deaths, and must have constantly checked him in breaking away from old-fashioned opinions. After their deaths his profound respect for and intimacy with Cardinal Newman must have acted in the same direction. It is easy to divine what this influence was from little things dotted about his correspondence and journal. For instance, on January 16, 1843, he records after a visit to Keble:

'Mr. Keble particularly choice upon William III., whom he would not allow even to have been a great general, Namur and the Boyne were the only two successes he would allow him. He was also very strong against Milton-some of the sonnets and "Comus" were the only things of his he could admire. He said he had long ago suspected his Arianism before the Bishop of Winchester's book put it beyond

doubt.'

In 1853 he was taken to task by Mr. Keble for speaking disrespectfully of Charles I. Mr. Keble's tract against the

marriage of a man with his deceased wife's sister, published in 1849, made such an impression on him that to the end of his days he never changed his views on this question. And when he first stood for Exeter in 1865 he was still in favour of Church rates.

Again on the crucial question of the American Civil War he failed to shake himself free from the misconceptions and prejudices which led so many Englishmen wrong. This brought him for the time into sharp conflict with his American friends. His view was that the Northerners were not genuine in their crusade against slavery, but were really fighting for tariffs and empire, and that 'so large a 'body as the South had the right to set up for itself.' This drew upon him weighty rebukes from Mr. Ellis Yarnall.

...

'The tariff,' he wrote in 1861, 'is scarcely alleged by the South as a grievance-slavery is their one thought, and conquest for the extension of slavery their one desire. . you say with vehemence that you are neutral. . . . Have you no admiration then for a people more than any other interested in works of every-day utility and comfort, giving up all rather than allow their government to be broken up? Or, to take another view of it, declaring they will accept any sacrifice rather than bring upon their consciences the sin of negro slavery? had we opened the territories to slavery-given congressional protection to it-there need have been no war, but a burden would have been upon the souls of us all.'

And three years later again :

'That you, John Coleridge, a Christian gentleman, should be beguiled from your support of the men of the North, from Whittier, from Bryant, from Binney, that is indeed surprising. Again I say to myself it is but for a time. Can anyone doubt that history will give honour to those who helped forward the cause of freedom, and that the men in any country who put obstacles in the way will receive condemnation ? As to England, the list will be, on the one side, Cairns, and Cobden, and Mill, and Bright, and Milner Gibson, Cornewall Lewis, Dean Trench, and Neale; and on the other, Laird, and Lindsay, and Roebuck, and Beresford Hope. . . . I recall what dear Mr. Keble said to me in 1852, that the power of the Church was not in her eminent men. . . . The poor work-people of Lancashire on whom the suffering . . . from the war has chiefly fallen, have been steadfast in their refusal of support to the South. I hear from Sharp of the "Guardian" that one of the new Archbishops declared he would not allow that journal to enter his house so long as the letters of the American correspondent appeared. Now, I know that those letters, however meagre they may have been, have upheld in their measure the cause of truth and righteousness, and therefore the anathema of the prelate perplexes me.'

It does not appear that at the time those eloquent appeals from America had much effect upon Coleridge's views. Indeed, about the sixties his Liberalism was so little suspected that he was more than once approached with a view to becoming a Conservative candidate for Parliament. This, however, was quite a mistaken view of him. Even before the American war he had written to his old Tory friend Sir William Heathcote in a strain which must have startled that orthodox country gentleman. In 1860 he writes:

'My dear Sir William,-The serious difference in opinion between me and so many people whom I love and honour with all my heart has made me very careless about public life. For I am sorry to say that democratic feeling and convictions only strengthen with me every year I live. . . . And it has become part of my inmost conviction that the aristocracy is destroying our glorious England. The existence of men of rank gives occasion and opportunity for that base, tufthunting subserviency which is the most disgusting characteristic of the Englishman and American. They corrupt and weaken our Government, they destroy the manliness and freedom of society, they obstruct the path of honour and usefulness to everyone who does not belong to them, or who has not some wonderful worldly gifts whereby he forces his way into their ranks. . . . If ever I do go into public life Delenda est Aristocratia would be the banner under which, as an honest man, I must fight.'

These views may have had something to do with his dissuading his father from accepting the peerage offered by Mr. Gladstone, but they must have been considerably modified before 1873 when he accepted a similar distinction for himself.

The advance which took place in his political views was accompanied by a like movement in his attitude towards the Anglican Church. His early ardour for the High Church Tractarian movement has been already mentioned. But at the end of 1860, when his father wrote to him, 'I wonder whether you have read your Keble to-day. One 'must be an old man, I suppose, to feel it as fully as I do. . . . Oh, what would life be at its close if one had no 'belief in a hereafter, or no belief in an Atonement !' The reply of the son is:

'You have a compensating influence which I never can or shall have, I mean a real belief in and affection for the religious system in which God has cast your lot. I get no help from Anglicanism for all my deepest and strongest needs.'

In 1870 he wrote:

'I think there is an incompatibility between a democratic country and an Establishment, unless the Establishment is the outward expression of the general religious sentiment and no more. I think St. Paul would have stared at the Thirty-nine Articles, and I see nothing impossible in fact or wrong in thought in wishing for such a perfect simplicity of creed as I believe St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John would all have said was enough.'

A couple of years later he elaborated his position as follows:

"The supremacy of conscience is the great truth of all, and when a man has really done his best with his conscience, I think he should follow its leading without hesitation, and with a firm belief that the Infinite God, in His mercy and wisdom, will accept all His children according to their lights. While I hold with all my soul to God and Christ, I must say most Christian theology, properly so called, seems to me the most audacious and insolent presumption.'

His acts and votes in Parliament were practical proofs of his advanced opinions. The year after he was elected he moved and carried a Bill for the abolition of tests in the University of Oxford, but a change of Ministry led to the measure being dropped. In the following year he carried a similar Bill, extended in scope by being made applicable to Cambridge, but it was thrown out by the Lords. In 1868 the Bill was still further enlarged by giving power to colleges to elect non-Anglican Fellows. It was passed in the Commons but never reached the Lords. In 1870 he again carried the Bill through the Commons, but only to find it shelved through the agency of Lord Salisbury in the Upper House. Up to this time Mr. Gladstone had held aloof from active support of the measure, but in 1871 he changed his attitude, and when the Bill had been again carried through the Commons the Lords were compelled to accept it, containing as it did the substance of an amendment by Mr. Fawcett making the abolition of tests in the colleges as well as in the Universities compulsory.

He warmly supported by speech and vote Mr. Gladstone's resolution in 1868 on the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, though on this point he had long been a Liberal, for, as he had told his father twenty years before, I can 'never get over the fact of 900,000 getting the tithes of '8,000,000.' In 1868, moreover, he was strengthened by his father's assurance that Mr. Keble agreed with Mr. Gladstone on the principle of disestablishment. When

Mr. Gladstone formed his first Government in December 1868, and offered Coleridge the post of Solicitor-General, it was declined, but under pressure ultimately accepted. The reason of the refusal was not clear, but his biographer calls it an unwise decision.' He was induced to change his mind by several friends, including 'Palmer and Bowen.' In 1869 he spoke strongly in favour of the second reading of the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill. On questions of law reform he was in favour of many things which have since been carried, and some which have not. Amongst the latter he advocated a Minister of Justice, a Code, and a simplification of land transfer on the Australian plan. But he was strongly opposed to a proposal (which has since been adopted) that the Law Officers of the Crown should not take private practice. In 1872 he introduced, but did not carry, a Juries Bill reducing the number of jurors in all cases except murder from twelve to seven, and allowing the verdict to be that of the majority. Generally, as his biographer points out, his attitude as a Minister was certainly not a Radical one. He has himself mentioned, as measures passed between 1868 and 1872 upon which he looked back with satisfaction, the Bankruptcy Act, the Naturalisation Act, the Foreign Enlistment Act, and the Law of Master and Servant. His Solicitor-Generalship came to an end in November 1871, from which date he was Mr. Gladstone's Attorney General till October 1873, when he became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In November 1872 he had been offered and declined the succession to Lord Penzance in the Divorce Court, and in August 1873 he was offered and declined the Mastership of the Rolls in succession to Lord Romilly. He seems to have regretted both his decisions after he had made them, but they were made under the belief that he was not qualified to fill the offices satisfactorily. With regard to the Mastership of the Rolls he wrote to his father as follows:

'I should have everything to learn, and, for years, I should exhibit the spectacle of a judge inferior to his Bar, and to a great extent and often in their hands. I might, by going to school again, in time learn my trade, so as not to be a wholly incompetent judge, but no one would think so, and I should not have even the little credit I deserve. . . . I will not promise to take it, for honour is the first thing in a public man, and after all no other man can judge of honour so well as a man's self. But I should much like to have your counsel.'

The same inherent self-distrust comes out again in the

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