passing. He introduced and carried the first national education act for Ireland, one result of which was the remarkable and to many almost incredible phenomenon of a board composed of Catholics, Episcopalians and Presbyterians harmoniously administering an efficient education scheme. He was also chiefly responsible for the Irish Church Temporalities Act, though the bill was not introduced into parliament until after he had quitted the Irish secretaryship for another office. By this measure two archbishoprics and eight bishoprics were abolished, and a remedy was provided for various abuses connected with the revenues of the church. As originally introduced, the bill contained a clause authorizing the appropriation of surplus revenues to non-ecclesiastical purposes. This had, however, been strongly opposed from the first by Stanley and several other members of the cabinet, and it was withdrawn by the government before the measure reached the Lords.
In 1833, just before the introduction of the Irish Church Temporalities Bill, Stanley had been promoted to be secretary for the colonies with a seat in the cabinet. In this position it fell to his lot to carry the emancipation of the slaves to a successful practical issue. The speech which he delivered on introducing the bill for freeing the slaves in the West Indies, on the 14th of May 1833, was one of the finest specimens of his eloquence.
The Irish Church question determined more than one turning-point in his political career. The most important occasion on which it did so was in 1834, when the proposal of the government to appropriate the surplus revenues of the church to educational purposes led to his secession from the cabinet, and, as it proved, his complete and final separation from the Whig party. In the former of these steps he had as his companions Sir James Graham, the earl of Ripon and the duke of Richmond. Soon after it occurred, O’Connell, amid the laughter of the House, described the secession in a couplet from Canning’s Loves of the Triangles:—
“Still down thy steep, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby dilly carrying six insides.”
Stanley was not content with marking his disapproval by the simple act of withdrawing from the cabinet. He spoke against the bill to which he objected with a vehemence that showed the strength of his feeling in the matter, and against its authors with a bitterness that he himself is understood to have afterwards admitted to have been unseemly towards those who had so recently been his colleagues. The course followed by the government was “marked with all that timidity, that want of dexterity, which led to the failure of the unpractised shoplifter.” His late colleagues were compared to “thimble-riggers at a country fair,” and their plan was “petty larceny, for it had not the redeeming qualities of bold and open robbery.”
In the end of 1834, Lord Stanley, as he was now styled by courtesy, his father having succeeded to the earldom in October, was invited by Sir Robert Peel to join the short-lived Conservative ministry which he formed after the resignation of Lord Melbourne. Though he declined the offer for reasons stated in a letter published in the Peel memoirs, he acted from that date with the Conservative party, and on its next accession to power, in 1841, he accepted the office of colonial secretary, which he had held under Lord Grey. His position and his temperament alike, however, made him a thoroughly independent supporter of any party to which he attached himself. When, therefore, the injury to health arising from the late hours in the Commons led him in 1844 to seek elevation to the Upper House in the right of his father’s barony, Sir Robert Peel, in acceding to his request, had the satisfaction of at once freeing himself from the possible effects of his “candid friendship” in the House, and at the same time greatly strengthening the debating power on the Conservative side in the other. If the premier in taking this step had any presentiment of an approaching difference on a vital question, it was not long in being realized. When Sir Robert Peel accepted the policy of free trade in 1846, the breach between him and Lord Stanley was, as might have been anticipated from the antecedents of the latter, instant and irreparable. Lord Stanley at once asserted himself as the uncompromising opponent of that policy, and he became the recognized leader of the Protectionist party, having Lord George Bentinck and Disraeli for his lieutenants in the Commons. They did all that could be done in a case in which the logic of events was against them, though Protection was never to become more than their watchword.
It is one of the peculiarities of English politics, however, that a party may come into power because it is the only available one at the time, though it may have no chance of carrying the very principle to which it owes its organized existence. Such was the case when Lord Derby, who had succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father in June 1851, was called upon to form his first administration in February 1852. He was in a minority, but the circumstances were such that no other than a minority government was possible, and he resolved to take the only available means of strengthening his position by dissolving parliament and appealing to the country at the earliest opportunity. The appeal was made in autumn, but its result did not materially alter the position of parties. Parliament met in November, and by the middle of the following month the ministry had resigned in consequence of their defeat on Disraeli’s budget. For the six following years, during Lord Aberdeen’s “ministry of all the talents” and Lord Palmerston’s premiership, Lord Derby remained at the head of the opposition, whose policy gradually became more generally Conservative and less distinctively Protectionist as the hopelessness of reversing the measures adopted in 1846 made itself apparent. In 1855 he was asked to form an administration after the resignation of Lord Aberdeen, but failing to obtain sufficient support, he declined the task. It was in somewhat more hopeful circumstances that, after the defeat of Lord Palmerston on the Conspiracy Bill in February 1858, he assumed for the second time the reins of government. Though he still could not count upon a working majority, there was a possibility of carrying on affairs without sustaining defeat, which was realized for a full session, owing chiefly to the dexterous management of Mr Disraeli in the Commons. The one rock ahead was the question of reform, on which the wishes of the country were being emphatically expressed, but it was not so pressing as to require to be immediately dealt with. During the session of 1858 the government contrived to pass two measures of very considerable importance, one a bill to remove Jewish disabilities, and the other a bill to transfer the government of India from the East India Company to the crown. Next year the question of parliamentary reform had to be faced, and, recognizing the necessity, the government introduced a bill at the opening of the session, which, in spite of, or rather in consequence of, its “fancy franchises,” was rejected by the House, and, on a dissolution, rejected also by the country. A vote of no confidence having been passed in the new parliament on the 10th of June, Lord Derby at once resigned.
After resuming the leadership of the Opposition Lord Derby devoted much of the leisure the position afforded him to the classical studies that had always been congenial to him. It was his reputation for scholarship as well as his social position that had led in 1852 to his appointment to the chancellorship of the university of Oxford, in succession to the duke of Wellington; and perhaps a desire to justify the possession of the honour on the former ground had something to do with his essays in the field of authorship. His first venture was a poetical version of the ninth ode of the third book of Horace, which appeared in Lord Ravensworth’s collection of translations of the Odes. In 1862 he printed and circulated in influential quarters a volume entitled Translations of Poems Ancient and Modern, with a very modest dedicatory letter to Lord Stanhope, and the words “Not published” on the title-page. It contained, besides versions of Latin, Italian, French and German poems, a translation of the first book of the Iliad. The reception of this volume was such as to encourage him to proceed with the task he had chosen as his magnum opus, the translation of the whole of the Iliad, which accordingly appeared in 1864.
During the seven years that elapsed between Lord Derby’s second and third administrations an industrial crisis occurred in his native county, which brought out very conspicuously his public spirit and his philanthropy. The destitution in Lancashire
