220 



DERBY, EDWARD G. S. 



of the Executive Government. In 1830 lie be- 

 came Chief Secretary for Ireland, and it is 

 from this period that his fame as a statesman 

 dates. Ireland was at that time in a highly- 

 excited state. Only the year before the great 

 measure of Catholic Emancipation had been 

 carried; and Daniel O'Connell, then in the 

 zenith of his fame, had just taken his seat in 

 the House of Commons, flushed with victory, 

 and bent upon accomplishing, if possible, a re- 

 peal of the Union. The new secretary found 

 himself confronted by difficulties of the most 

 threatening character; but, according to the 

 principles and policy which then prevailed in 

 the government of Ireland, he proved fully 

 equal to the occasion. He opposed O'Connell's 

 repeal agitation with all his might, the en- 

 counters between him and the great Irish 

 orator in the House of Commons, night after 

 night, being often of the most exhausting char- 

 acter ; but while he thus showed himself not 

 afraid to offend the national party, of which 

 his distinguished adversary was the idolized 

 leader, he, at the same time, brought forward 

 and succeeded in carrying several measures 

 calculated to give effect to the Catholic Eman- 

 cipation scheme, while, at the risk of giving 

 mortal offence to the Protestant part of the 

 population of Ireland, he did not hesitate at 

 suppressing the Orange lodges. In the terri- 

 ble struggle which preceded the passing of the 

 first Parliamentary Reform Bill, in 1832, Mr. 

 Stanley took an active and prominent part, 

 his genius for debate shining forth with daz- 

 zling brilliancy in these desperate .encounters, 

 between the advocates of the measure and its 

 opponents, which marked the progress of the 

 bill. His brilliant eloquence and his sympa- 

 thies in this whole struggle were dedicated to 

 the cause of popular liberty, although he was 

 a member of one of the oldest patrician fami- 

 lies of England, and the heir not only of a 

 great name, but of the most intensely aristo- 

 cratic and conservative traditions. But he 

 did not allow the excitement of the Reform 

 movement to distract his attention from his 

 proper work as Secretary for Ireland, and he 

 signalized his administration by two bold 

 measures one for national education in that 

 part of the kingdom, and another relative to 

 the Irish Church temporalities, which resulted 

 in ten bishoprics being abolished. The griev- 

 ance of Church rates was also removed, and a 

 graduated tax upon benefices and bishoprics 

 substituted. But another work was before 

 Mr. Stanley, the accomplishment of which 

 must be regarded as constituting by far his 

 best title to an enduring fame. In 1833 he 

 became Secretary of State for the Colonies, as 

 the successor of Lord Glenelg. The question 

 of the emancipation of the slaves in the Brit- 

 ish West Indies was then agitating the public 

 mind and exercising the national conscience 

 to an extraordinary degree. The antislavery 

 labors of men like Buxton and Clarkson, and 

 the captivating and effective eloquence of Wil- 



berforce, had prepared the" way for the per- 

 formance of a great act of justice on the part 

 of England toward the cruelly-oppressed chil- 

 dren of Africa in her colonial possessions ; and 

 it fell to Mr. Stanley's lot, as Colonial Minister, 

 to introduce in the House of Commons a meas- 

 ure for the abolition of negro slavery in the 

 British dominions. It is alleged, indeed, by 

 his friends, that he sought a place in the Cab- 

 inet and the Colonial secretaryship for the 

 purpose of introducing this measure. It en- 

 countered, of course, violent opposition from 

 the West India interest; but, entering with 

 characteristic ardor upon its advocacy, he ex- 

 celled himself in the oratorical encounters he 

 was called upon to sustain in that House, dur- 

 ing the progress of the measure, his great 

 powers never appearing to greater advantage, 

 nor commanding so profound an homage from 

 both friends and foes, as when he put them 

 forth in pleading the cause of the deeply-in- 

 jured blacks. He succeeded in carrying his 

 bill, which provided for the complete emanci- 

 pation of the slaves after a short term of years, 

 awarding the planters, at the same time, a 

 compensation of twenty millions sterling for 

 the loss of their human chattels. With the 

 passage of the Emancipation Bill the most 

 stirring and the most distinguished period of 

 the late Earl of Derby's career came to a close. 

 The remembrance of his lineage and the con- 

 servative traditions which he had hitherto re- 

 sisted began to exert their influence over him ; 

 he began to feel that he was in danger of go- 

 ing too far in the path of reform, and drew 

 back into the ways and channels of thought 

 and action to which his birth and early asso- 

 ciations naturally led him. From the hour of 

 his great triumph, he became more and more 

 wedded to conservatism to the close of his life. 

 It was not long after the memorable triumph 

 which he had gained in the emancipation ques- 

 tion, before he separated from the party with 

 which he had steadily acted from his entrance 

 in the political arena. The occasion of this 

 separation was the success of Mr. Ward's mo- 

 tion for appropriating the surplus of the Irish 

 Church temporalities to secular purposes, a 

 measure to which he offered the most deter- 

 mined opposition, withdrawing from the Grey 

 ministry in 1834, in consequence of his hostil- 

 ity to this motion, and refusing, on conserva- 

 tive grounds, to enter Sir Robert Peel's Cab- 

 inet, which succeeded that of Earl Grey in 

 1834. For seven years he remained in oppo- 

 sition, gradually becoming the recognized chief 

 of the Conservative party, to whom his great 

 abilities strongly commended him. In- 1841 

 he accepted the seals of the Colonial Office 

 under the Peel ministry of that date ; in Sep- 

 tember, 1844, he was called to the House of 

 Peers as Baron Stanley of Bickerstaffe. Sir 

 Robert Peel's abandonment of his party on the 

 Corn Law question led to the withdrawal of 

 Lord Stanley from the Cabinet, and he became 

 the leader, in the Lords, of the Protectionists, 



