Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348

This is one of those curious memoirs which, from time to time, start forth from the family archives of public men, for the illustration of the past and the wisdom of the future. Nothing can be more important to either the man of office or the man of reflection. Avoiding all the theoretical portion of history, on which all men may be mistaken, they give us its facts, on which no one can be deceived; detailing the course of personal events, they supply us with the views of the most intelligent minds directly employed in the transactions, exhibit the portraits of those minds, and point out to those who are to follow, the effect of vigour, intrepidity, and knowledge, in overcoming the difficulties of nations.

The work on which we are about to make some remarks, is one of those productions which do especial honour to the English aristocracy. It is the diplomatic career of the founder of a peerage; compiled and published by the third in succession to the earldom. The noble editor, professing to have done but little in this office of reverence and duty, has done much—he has paid due honour to a manly, wise, and vigorous ancestor; and he has set a striking example to the young nobility of his time. The libraries of every noble family of England contain similar records of the highest value; and nothing could be at once more honourable to the memory of the gallant and renowned who have passed away, or more important to posterity, than to give those documents to the light, illustrated by the recollections of their noble descendants, and brought before the public with the natural advantages of authenticity and authority.

Lord Malmesbury’s career continued through one of the most interesting portions of the last century; that which was the preparative for the great catastrophe of its close, the overthrow of the French monarchy. He was in the service of his country, as a diplomatist, from 1768 to 1797; and for many succeeding years was in connexion with all the leading political characters of a time singularly fertile in remarkable men. He was born at Salisbury in 1746, the descendant of an old English family, possessed of property in Wiltshire. His father was an eminent scholar, the author of Hermes , and other well known treatises on literary and philosophical subjects. But the scholar was also a man of active public life. Entering into parliament, he was appointed a lord of the treasury in 1763, and secretary and comptroller of the Queen’s household some years after. A bon-mot of one of the Townsends is recorded, on his taking his seat.

“Who is the new member?” asked Townsend.

“A Mr Harris, who has written on grammar and harmony.”

“Then what brings him here, where he will hear neither ?”

The son of such a man had public life before him as his natural source of distinction; and Lord Malmesbury, late in life, (in 1800,) thus gracefully commemorated his gratitude. “To my father’s precepts and example I owe every good quality I have. To his reputation and his character, I attribute my more than common success in life. It was those that introduced me with peculiar advantage into the world. It was as his son that I first obtained friends and patrons. I had nothing in myself; and I speak, at the distance of thirty-five years, not from affected modesty, but from a powerful recollection of what there was to entitle me to notice. Once, indeed, placed in a conspicuous and responsible situation, I was anxious to act becomingly in it. And even here I recur with pleasure to the same grateful source; for while my father lived, which was during the first twelve years of my public life, the strongest incentive I had to exert myself was in the satisfaction I knew he would derive from any credit I might acquire; and the many and distinguished honours which I have since received, have suffered a great diminution in my esteem, from his being no longer a witness to them.”

He was sent to Winchester, where he remained till he was sixteen. From Winchester he was transferred to Oxford, where the discipline at that period was so relaxed, that his only surprise in after life was at the success of so many of his companions, among whom were Charles Fox, North, Bishop of Winchester, Lord Robert Spenser, Lord Auckland, and others, who had risen to rank of various kinds. He left Oxford in 1765, and passed thirty-five years on the Continent. His lordship here makes a striking observation on his own experience, which has been authenticated by every intelligent and honest mind under the same circumstances—remarking that his foreign residence was so far from making him undervalue England, that it raised it still higher in his estimation. He adds—“Here I will make an assertion, grounded on experience and conviction, and which may be applied as a never-failing test, that an Englishman who, after a long absence from England, returns to it with feelings and sentiments partial to other countries, and adverse to his own, has no real mind—is without the powers of discernment and plain easy comparison—and has no title to enjoy the superior moral and local advantages to which he is born, but of which he is insensible and unworthy.”

As diplomacy was evidently the career marked out for him by his father, he was sent to study at Leyden, where he remained a year. In the commencement of the century, Holland was the central point of all European negotiations; and its schools became famous for languages and the study of international law. The society among the higher orders of the country was the most intelligent in Europe, consisting of ambassadors and scholars of the first character. After this year of vigorous study, and some brief stay at home, he returned to the Continent, and made an extensive tour of the north. In the autumn of this year he received his first diplomatic appointment, in the mission to Spain. His success in the Falkland Island negotiation recommended him to government, and he was appointed minister at Berlin—a very unusual distinction for a diplomatist only twenty-four years old. But a still more important distinction now awaited him. In 1777 he was sent as minister to the court of the Empress Catharine, where he found himself involved in all the craft of diplomacy with two of the most artful sovereigns that ever lived, Frederick and Catharine. But difficulties only place talents in a more conspicuous point of view, and he received from his government the highest reward then conferred upon a foreign minister, the Order of the Bath, in 1780. The climate of Russia was at length found too severe for his health, and he petitioned for his recall, which was granted, but with the honourable offer of his choice of a mission either to Spain or the Hague; the former was the higher in rank, but the latter the more important in activity. He unhesitatingly, and wisely, chose the embassy to the Hague. In 1784, the Foxite administration fell, and Pitt was in the ascendant. Harris had been at all times connected with Fox, and had constantly voted with him in the House; but so high was the public sense of his ability, and such was the impartiality of Pitt’s sense of public duty, that he offered him the re-appointment to the Hague, which Harris, after consulting Fox and the Duke of Portland as his political leaders, accepted. His services were peculiarly required at this period, from the violent discussions which had arisen in Holland; and he either originated, or perfected, the treaty of alliance between England, Holland, and Prussia, which saved the Stadtholder for the time, and Holland probably from being made a French province. His conduct was regarded with so much approbation by the allies, that he received from the Prussian king leave to add the Prussian eagle to his arms, and from the Stadtholder, his motto, “