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IV. Liberalism and the Victorian Intelligentsia1

  • John Roach (a1)
Extract

Henry Sidgwick was one of the most prominent university reformers in later Victorian Cambridge. His resignation of his Trinity fellowship in 1869 helped to precipitate the final abolition of religious tests in 1871, and, in the following decades, he was the leader of those who wished to develop research and to open up new branches of study. In national politics he was, as might have been expected, a Liberal, yet, when the Home Rule crisis of 1885–6 came to a head, his allegiance veered over sharply. In 1885 he voted Liberal ‘after some hesitation’; the next year he voted for the Tory candidate for the borough of Cambridge who was elected by an increased majority. That summer he wrote: ‘Unionists gaining slowly but steadily. Dined in Hall, and was surprised to find the great preponderance of Unionist sentiment among the Trinity fellows—a body always, since I have known Trinity, preponderantly Liberal.’ In the history of Victorian politics more attention might be given to the change which converted a large part of the educated classes from the Liberal side to the Conservative. J. F. Stephen, writing in 1880 to the first Earl of Lytton, said of the Conservative leaders that they were ‘all of them people whose political creed was chosen when the Conservative party was emphatically the stupid party, and when to be a Conservative meant to be opposed to pretty well all the main intellectual movements of the time’. The phrase, ‘the stupid party’, comes from J. S. Mill, whose books had been the chief intellectual influence in triumphant mid-Victorian Liberalism. By the end of his life Mill himself was becoming sceptical of the results achieved by democracy. In Representative Government (1861) he had pointed out that a popular assembly was not fitted to conduct administration or to frame laws, and that one of the great problems of democratic government is to combine popular rule with the skilled administration of the modern state. The need for increased efficiency in a more competitive age was worrying many Englishmen by 1870, and, although their criticisms cut across party and sectional boundaries, they were hostile to much in conventional Liberalism. One answer was the ‘social engineering’ of the Fabians; another approach was Matthew Arnold's assault on our educational system and on the Philistinism of our semi-educated middle classes. The only remedy for the anarchic individualism of English life lay, he thought, in the positive activity of the state, which should purify and deepen the national culture and give it direction and purpose.

Copyright
COPYRIGHT: © Cambridge University Press 1957
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1

I have to thank Professor W. L. Burn who read the article at an early stage and greatly improved it by his criticisms. Dr G. Kitson Clark has also helped me with advice and suggestions.

Footnotes
References
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2 S(idgwick), A. and S(idgwick), E. M., Henry Sidgwick, [A Memoir] (London, 1906), 430, 449, 450.

3 J. F. Stephen to Lord Lytton, 2 April 1880. All Stephen's correspondence is in the Cambridge University Library. Most of his letters exist only in the form of copies made by his wife. I have also used her copies of Lytton's letters to Stephen.

4 Autobiography (London, 1873), 289.

5 Representative Government, chs. V, VI.

6 Martin, A. Patchett, Life and Letters of Viscount Sherbrooke (London, 1893), II, 263–4.

7 Duff, M. E. Grant, Sir Henry Maine, [a brief Memoir. with some of his Indian Speeches and Minutes.] (London, 1892), 75

8 Stephen to Lady Grant Duff, 30 April 1886, 18 May 1883.

9 Stephen, L, Life of [Sir] J[ames] F[itzjames] Stephen (2nd ed London, 1895), 102

10 Bevington, M M, The Saturday Review 1855–1868, Representative Educated Opinion in Victorian England (New York, 1941), 13

11 Minute Book of the Cambridge Union Society, 16 May 1848, see also the description of another debate in Stephen, L, Sketches from Cambridge by a Don (London and Cambridge, 1865), 67–8, and L Stephen, Life of J F Stephen, 98–9

12 M M Bevington, op cit 1–2

13 L Stephen, Life of J F Stephen, 213, n 2, Scott, J W Robertson, The Story of the Pall Mall Gazette (London, 1950), 148

14 Recollections (London, 1917), I, 168–9

15 ‘Mr Mill on Political Liberty’, Saturday Review, VII, 187, 12 Feb 1859; for the attribution, see L Stephen, Life of J F Stephen, 314

16 Stephen to his wife, 23 July 1873.

17 Stephen to Emily Cunningham, 30 Jan 1874

18 Stephen to Lytton, 6 Sept 1876

19 R H. Hutton to Stephen, 27 Nov. 1868

20 It has not been possible to trace any list of contributions to the Pall Mall Gazette. The only guide to what J F Stephen wrote in it is the list of the total number of his articles, each scar from 1865 to 1878, which is given in L Stephen, Life of J F Stephen, 213–14, note. I have taken a single year (1867), and worked through the leading articles, attempting to decide, from internal evidence, which of them were written by Stephen

21 ‘Lord Palmerston’, 19 Oct 1865 The style and ideas suggest that Stephen was the author, and there seems to be an echo of them in ‘The Premier's Lesson to his Enemies’, 3 Mar 1868, which J W Robertson Scott (op cit 160, n 1) attributes to Stephen

22 ‘Cumulative Voting’, 15 Mar 1867, ‘Mr Carlyle on the Falls of Niagara’, 10 Aug 1867; ‘The Liberalism of the Future’, 11 Oct. 1867

23 ‘Discussions on Democracy’, 10 Jan 1867; ‘Cumulative Voting considered’, 6 Mar 1867, ‘The Triumph of Pure Reason’, 15 Aug 1867

24 ‘The Possibilities of the Session’, 22 Jan 1867

25 ‘The Abyssinian Debate’, 27 Nov. 1867; ‘Mr. Gladstone at Oldham’, 19 Nov 1867.

26 ‘Liberalism’, Cornhill Magazine, V, 81, Jan 1862; for the attribution see L Stephen, Life of J F Stephen, 484

27 ‘Pain’, Essays by a Barrister (London, 1862), esp. 147–8.

28 ‘Sovereignty’, Horae Sabbaticae (London, 1892), II, 69.

29 For Stephen's interest in Burke and de Maistre, see his essays on those writers in Horae Sabbaticae; for Carlyle see pp 68–9 below.

30 Reprinted in Contemporary Review, Dec. 1873, Jan 1874.

31 See my article, ‘James Fitzjames Stephen (1829–94)’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Parts 1 and 2, 1956.

32 Stephen to Lytton, 15 Mar. 1878, 10 May 1876.

33 Stephen to Lady Grant Duff, 13 July 1882.

34 Stephen to Lytton, 2 May 1876.

35 Grant Duff, Sir Henry Maine, 74–5.

36 Stephen to Mill, 3 Aug. 1871.

37 On Liberty, in Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government (Everyman, ed. London, 1944). 72–3.

38 L[iberty], E[quality], F[raternity] (2nd edn. London 1874), X, 24, and n. Page references are to the 2nd edn. I have dealt with this book so fully because it has not been reprinted since 1874 and is not easy to come by.

39 Ibid. 96.

40 Ibid. 182–4.

41 Ibid. 21.

42 Ibid. 46–7.

43 Stephen to Lytton, 18 Sept. 1877. Goldwin Smith (1823–1910) had been Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford 1858–66. The article was ‘The Policy of Aggrandizement’, Fortnightly Review, Sept. 1877.

44 Utilitarianism, etc. 14.

45 ‘Caesarism and Ultramontanism’, Contemporary Review, XXIII (May 1874), esp. 1011–12.

46 Ibid. 1017.

47 L.E.F. 53–4, 200.

48 Ibid. 197.

49 Ibid. 217, 215.

50 Ibid. 243–5.

51 L.E.F. 280.

52 Ibid.283.

53 Ibid. 291–2.

54 Ibid. 304.

55 Ibid, xxxiv–xxxv.

56 Ibid. 309–10.

57 Ibid. 320–1.

58 Ibid. 77–8.

59 Ibid. 326.

60 Ibid. 62–3.

61 L. Stephen, Life of J. F. Stephen, chs. I, II.

62 From the second article on Liberty, Saturday Review, VII, 214, 19 Feb. 1859.

63 ‘Mr. Carlyle’, Fraser's Magazine, Dec. 1865; for the attribution see L. Stephen, Life of J. F. Stephen, 202.

64 MacCunn, J., Six Radical Thinkers (London, 1910), 175–6.

65 Fraser's Magazine, LXXII, 789.

66 Stephen, L., ‘Carlyle's Ethics’, Hours in a Library (London, 1892), III, 286–94; Murray, R. H., Studies in the English Social and Political Thinkers of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1929), I, 339.

67 Stephen to his wife, 4, 6 Aug. 1873.

68 Stephen to Lytton, 23 Oct. 1879.

69 Stephen to Lytton, 2 Aug. 1878.

70 Lytton to Stephen, 17 July 1877.

71 Lytton to Stephen, 26 May 1878.

72 Lytton to Stephen, 2 Jan. 1891.

73 Stephen to Lytton, 28 Sept. 1876.

74 Stephen to Lytton, 1 Oct. 1879.

75 Stephen to Lytton, 25 Dec. 1879.

76 Stephen to Lytton, 20 July 1876.

77 Stephen to Lytton, 6 Sept. 1876.

78 Stephen to Lytton, 15 Mar. 1878.

79 Stephen to Lytton, 30 Aug. 1877.

80 Stephen to Lytton, 23 Feb. 1885.

81 Lytton to Stephen, 18/25 Dec. 1879.

82 Stephen to Lytton, (3) Feb. 1880.

83 Stephen to Lytton, 14 Apr. 1880.

84 Stephen to Lady Grant Duff, 4 June 1886.

85 Stephen to Lytton, 29 June 1877.

86 Stephen to Lytton, 8 July 1879.

87 See Stephen's letters in The Times, 4, 5, 21 Jan., 29 Apr., 1 May 1886.

88 Stephen to Emily Cunningham (Lady Egerton), 10/11 Apr. 1887.

89 Stephen to Lytton, 26 Oct., 24, 30 Nov. 1876, 6 Jan. 1877.

90 See Stephen's letters to The Times, 16, 22, 28 Oct., 12, 15, 20 Nov. 1878. This question involved him in controversy with Lord Lawrence (Ibid. 22 Oct., 19 Nov. 1878), with Lord Northbrook (Ibid. 12 Nov. 1878), and with Vernon Harcourt (18 Nov. 1878).

91 I, 2 Mar. 1883. Two letters of November 2 and 9 were reprinted as Letters on the Ilbert Bill (London, 1883); for letters on Ireland, see n. 87 above.

92 Stephen to Lady Grant Duff, 15 Dec. 1881.

93 Stephen to Lady Grant Duff, 9 June 1886.

94 Stephen to Lytton, 5 Oct. 1889.

95 A.S. and E.M.S., Henry Sidgwick, 524.

96 Stephen to Lytton, 6 May 1880.

97 Popular Government (6th edn., London, 1909), 126.

98 Ibid. III.

99 Ibid. 233–9.

100 Ibid. 106–8.

101 Ibid. 29–34, 93–4.

102 Ibid. 150.

103 Ibid. 228.

104 Ibid. 44–50.

105 Ibid. 106.

106 Ancient Law, [with Introduction and Notes by Sir Frederick Pollock] (new edn., London, 1930), 180–2.

107 Popular Government, vii; [Dissertations on] Early Law and Custom (London, 1883), 192–3.

108 Ancient Law, 97 ff.

109 Ibid. 102–3.

110 [Lectures on the] Early History of Institutions (London, 1875), 399–400.

111 Ibid. lectures xii, xiii.

112 Early Law and Custom, 242.

113 Ibid. 215–16.

114 Ibid. 388–9.

115 Popular Government, 42–3, 97–8.

116 Early Law and Custom, 253 ff.

117 Early History of Institutions, 327.

118 Village Communities [in the East and West] (3rd edn., London, 1876), 161–6.

119 Early History of Institutions, 86–7.

120 Early Law and Custom, 325.

121 Early History of Institutions, 126.

122 Ibid. 207–8.

123 ‘The Effects of Observation of India on Modern European Thought’, Village Communities, 230.

124 Ancient Law, 332.

125 Popular Government, 26.

126 Elliot, Arthur D., Life of Lord Goschen (London, 1911), I, 251–2.

127 (8th) Duke of Argyll, Autobiography and Memoirs (London, 1906), II, 377.

128 Ibid. II, 380.

129 Elliot, op. cit. I, 306–7; Holland, Bernard, Life of the Eighth Duke of Devonshire (London, 1911), II, 72; Lord Morley, Recollections, I, 201–2.

130 Elliot, op. cit. I, 162–4.

131 Ibid. I, 254.

132 Ibid. I, 282–4.

133 Ibid. II, 67–8; Holland, op. cit. II, 155; Gardiner, A. G., Life of Sir William Harcourt (London, 1923), I, 581.

134 Holland, op. cit. II, 154.

135 Earl of Selbome, Memorials, Part II, Personal and Political, 1865–95 (London, 1898), II, 227.

136 Duke of Argyll, op. cit. II, 417.

137 Duff, M. E. Grant, Out of the Past (London, 1903), I, 217–18.

138 Trevelyan, G. M., Sir George Otto Trevelyan, A Memoir (London, 1932), 124.

139 Rait, R. S. (ed.) Memorials of A. V. Dicey (London, 1925) 95 ff.; D.N.B. 1912–21, ‘Anson, Sir William Reynell.’

140 See p. 58.

141 Cambridge Review, 8 June 1887; Cambridge Chronicle, 17 June 1887 (from which the extracts from Seeley's speech are taken).

142 Butler, J. R. M., Henry Montagu Butler, A Memoir (London, 1925), 98.

143 Ensor, R. C. K., England 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1936), 163.

1 I have to thank Professor W. L. Burn who read the article at an early stage and greatly improved it by his criticisms. Dr G. Kitson Clark has also helped me with advice and suggestions.

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