ABSTRACT
WITH all their various faults and weaknesses, the prime ministers of the XIXth century were none of them destitute of capacity of sorts—though party historians have done their best to write down the practical abilities of Addington and Perceval, of Goderich and Aberdeen, and Lord John Russell. But eminence and capacity do not necessarily make a man a good prime minister. And it is curious to find that the greatest historical figure of the first half of the century, the victor of Waterloo, was on the whole the most unlucky adventurer in the paths of supreme governance that our political annals can show. If he had died a few years after the peace of 1815, he might have been called felix opportunitate mortis. No historian could have set limits to his possible career as the guardian of the British Empire and its old traditions. But alas! it was a case of omnium consensu capax imperii, nisi imperasset—all would have judged him capable of conducting the affairs of the State in the most admirable fashion; but unfortunately the responsibility came to him; he accepted it, not too willingly, and his record was most disappointing. He was a great man, a shrewd man, an honest and straightforward man, but his personal mentality, his political theories, and his conception of the duties of a prime minister, were each of them sufficient to render it certain that he would make a most disastrous experiment, if he tried to work that complicated machine, the British Cabinet system, in a time of exceptional storm and stress. To anyone who 262has studied Wellington as a general, and toiled through the vast tomes of his military correspondence, it cannot be denied that a study of the somewhat smaller mass of his political correspondence, during the years that followed Waterloo, brings not only disappointment but surprise. The man was not a mere master of strategy and tactics, but a shrewd observer of everything that came under his eye, a good judge of character, possessed of a keen (if rarely displayed) sense of humour. Casual remarks and table talk show that he had a competent knowledge of history and even of literature. He could appreciate a telling classical quotation, while observing that his own classics were those of an Eton boy in the Remove; and he made occasional Shakespearian allusions. It is impossible to deal with his political aberrations as those of a mere old soldier, wandering about in worlds not realized, and making blunders from want of experience. It is too often forgotten that he had been in high ministerial office—as Secretary for Ireland—before ever he went out to Portugal in 1808, and had had much experience of politics (especially of their seedier side) while dealing with the place-hunters of Dublin—and of Westminster. He was not incapable of friendship, and could be kind and considerate when dealing with children, young people (such as schoolboys, aides-de-camp, and, most especially, young and charming ladies) and old personal dependents. And yet the record of his political life is one of a series of colossal errors, and the impression which he made on all save a very few of his contemporaries was that of a would-be autocrat, a bleak and frigid formalist, who could occasionally leave a scar that could never be forgotten, by some sardonic word or heartless act.
