Lord Salisbury on Politics: A selection from his articles in the Quarterly Review, 1860-1883

396 Pages·2007·11.72 MB·English

by  Paul Smith

hord Salisbury on Politics
Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics
EDITORS
MAURICE COWLING
G. R. ELTON
E. KEDOURIE
J. G.A. POCOCK
J. R. POLE
WALTER ULLMANN
For complete list of books in this series
see page 387
Lord Salisbury
on Politics
A selection from his articles in the
Quarterly Review, 1860-188$
Edited with an introduction and notes
by
PAUL SMITH
Lecturer in History, King's College London
CAMBRIDGE
at the University Press 1972
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www. Cambridge. org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521083867
© Cambridge University Press 1972
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1972
This digitally printed version 2007
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 74-174256
ISBN 978-0-521-08386-7 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-04457-8 paperback
Contents
Preface page vii
List of abbreviations viii
Editors introduction 1
Bibliographical note no
'The Budget and the Reform Bill' (April i860) in
'The House of Commons' (July 1864)
159
'The Reform Bill' (April 1866)
193
'The Change of Ministry' (July 1866) 226
'The Conservative Surrender' (October 1867)
253
'The Programme of the Radicals' (October 1873) 292
'Disintegration' (October 1883) 335
Index 377

Preface
My thanks are due to Mr Maurice Cowling, who suggested this edition,
and has cast a helpful editorial eye over it (without, of course, incurring
any responsibility for its blemishes); to the Marquis of Salisbury, who
has very kindly allowed me to quote from the Salisbury Papers at Christ
Church, Oxford; to the librarian of Christ Church, Dr J. F. A. Mason,
who most courteously aided my work there; to Messrs Hodder and
Stoughton, for permission to quote from Lady Gwendolen Cecil's life
of her father; and not least to my wife, who has patiently borne with
my unreasonable working habits.
A few words are necessary about the editing of the articles. Each is
prefaced by an introductory note, designed to supply the essential
background. Otherwise, annotation has been kept to a minimum, in the
belief that a heavy apparatus of footnotes would be more of an impediment
than an aid to the articles' use. An outline historical knowledge has been
assumed in the reader, and therefore of the very large number of events,
persons, and pronouncements, historical and contemporary, to which
Salisbury alludes, only those not figuring prominently in general history
receive notes. In the introductory note and footnotes to each article,
Lord Salisbury is given the title by which he was known when the
article was written (i.e. Lord Robert Cecil to 1865, Viscount Cranborne
from 1865 to 1868, and Lord Salisbury thereafter).
PAUL SMITH
Kings College London
November 1971
vn
List of Abbreviations
B.Q_.R. Bentley s Quarterly Review
Cecil, Biographical Studies Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Biographical
Studies of the Life and Political
Character of Robert Third Marquis of
Salisbury
Cecil, Salisbury Lady Gwendolen Cecil, Life of Robert
Marquis of Salisbury
Q,R. Quarterly Review
S.R. Saturday Review
Vlll
Editor's Introduction
SALISBURY'S JOURNALISM
THE third Marquis of Salisbury led the Conservative party for twenty-one
years (the first four in tandem with Sir Stafford Northcote), and was
prime minister for nearly fourteen of them. He was arguably 'the most
formidable intellectual figure that the Conservative party has ever
produced'.1 He was also one of the dominant European, indeed world,
statesmen of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, hardly inferior
in stature even to Bismarck. Yet, compared to men like Peel or Disraeli,
he has not occupied the place in the Conservative hall of fame or received
the attention from historians that might seem to be his due.
The failure to bulk more largely in party hagiography is perhaps not
difficult to understand. Though the Conservative party enjoyed what
was in many ways its heyday under Salisbury's leadership, it is hard to
say that his role was crucial to its success, or that he gave to it any
distinctive impulsion or policy that can be accounted fundamental in its
development. Both Peel and Disraeli can be seen, with varying degrees
of accuracy, as having played a vital part in the making of the modern
party by fostering its adaptation to the political consequences of economic
and social change, as crystallised in the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867.
Salisbury's Conservatism, though not diehard, was more of the resistant
than of the adaptive variety: the core of his early political career was
his virulent opposition to 'democracy' as expressed in the Reform
movement of the sixties, and in power he seemed to men like Lord
Randolph Churchill to be unsympathetic to the cultivation of mass
support made necessary by the extension of the franchise. His mature
achievement, and interest, lay rather in the field of foreign and imperial
affairs than in home policy. In an age of democratic politics centred
largely on social issues, Salisbury seems to belong to a distant and
antipathetic tradition, the last grand aristocratic figure of a political
system that died with Victoria, or even before, a great whale irretrievably
beached on the receding shore of the nineteenth century. Into the
'progressive' strain of modern Conservatism he simply will not fit.
1 R. Blake, Disraeli (1966), p. 499.