Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin | Page 7

to vote for a free trade on principles
of reciprocity, due regard being had to the interests which had grown
up under our present commercial system, without which, as he
conceived, the rights of the labouring classes could not be protected.
Much had been on various occasions said about the interests of the
capitalists and the landlords, but unless the measures of a Government
were directed equally to secure the rights of the working classes, they
never should be supported by a vote of his. It was true that the landlord
might derive some increased value to his property from the increase of
factories and other buildings upon it, and that the capitalist might more
advantageously invest his capital, or he might withdraw it from a
sinking concern; but the only capital of the labourer was his skill in his
own particular walk, and it was a mockery to tell him that he could find
a satisfactory compensation elsewhere.
But the most characteristic part of his speech was that in which he
commented on the 'harsh, severe, and unjust terms' in which it had been
the fashion to designate those who had taken an opposite view on these
questions to that taken by Her Majesty's Government:--
In a day (he said) when all monopolies are denounced, I must he
permitted to say that, to my mind, the monopoly which is the most
intolerable and odious is the pretension to the monopoly of public
virtue.
The amendment was carried by a large majority. Lord Melbourne
resigned, and Sir Robert Peel became Prime Minister. About the same
time, by the death of his father and his own succession to the peerage,
the young Lord's brief career in the House of Commons was closed for
ever; no Scottish peer being eligible, according to the commonly
received opinion, to sit in the Lower House. He appears, indeed, to
have had at one time an idea of pressing the question; but he abandoned
this intention on finding that it had been entertained twenty-five years
before by Lord Aberdeen, and given up by him on the ground, that the
majority of the Scottish Peers looked upon the proposal as lowering to

their body, and as implying inferiority on their part to the English
Peers.
[Sidenote: Governor of Jamaica.]
At this time it seemed as if the fair promise of eloquence and
statesmanship had been shown to public life only to be withdrawn from
it; but a path was about to be opened, leading to a new field of action,
distant, indeed, and often thankless, but giving scope for the exercise of
gifts, both of mind and character, which can rarely be exhibited in a
Parliamentary career. In March 1842, at the early age of thirty, he was
selected by Lord Stanley, who was then Secretary for the Colonies, for
the important post of Governor of Jamaica.
[1] The family seat In Fifeshire.
[2] The most distinguished of all those competitors has borne his
testimony to the truth of this expression. 'I well remember,' Mr.
Gladstone wrote after his death, placing him as to the natural gift of
eloquence at the head of all those I knew either at Eton or at the
University.'
[3] His elder brother.
[4] 'We are disposed, in fact, to regard the question, of University
extension, in this sense, as depending entirely on the possibility of
reducing the time required for a University degree, and we should like
to see more attention paid to this point.... The opinion is strongly and
widely entertained, that students now stay too long at the Public
Schools and Universities, and that voting men ought not to be engaged
in the mere preparatory studies of their life up to the age of
twenty-three or twenty-four.'--Times, May 22, 1869.
[5] There remains a memorandum in his handwriting of a systematic
course of study to be pursued for his degree, in which two points are
remarkable--1st, the broad and liberal spirit in which it is conceived;
2ndly, that the whole is based on the Bible. Ancient History, together
with Aristotle's Politics and the ancient orators, are to be read 'in

connection with the Bible History,' with the view of seeing 'how all
hang upon each other, and develops the leading schemes of
Providence.' The various branches of mental and moral science he
proposes, in like manner, 'to hinge upon the New Testament, as
constituting, in another line, the history of moral and intellectual
development.'

CHAPTER II.
JAMAICA.
SHIPWRECK--DEATH OF LADY ELGIN--POSITION OF A
GOVERNOR IN A WEST INDIAN COLONY SUCH AS
JAMAICA--STATE OF PUBLIC OPINION IN THE
ISLAND--QUESTIONS OF FINANCE, EDUCATION,
AGRICULTURE, THE LABOURING CLASSES, RELIGION, THE
CHURCH--HARMONISING INFLUENCES OF BRITISH
CONNEXION--RESIGNATION --APPOINTMENT TO CANADA.
[Sidenote: Shipwreck.] [Sidenote: Death of Lady Elgin.]
Lord Elgin sailed for Jamaica in the middle