the leading political men of the day. He saw Pitt and Dundas frequently; and the latter asked him to undertake a small but very troublesome office,—that of investigating the claims of French emigrants, then crowding into England. His talents for business at once became so evident that henceforth he was in his right place only when he was in office. He was not a man whom the most suspicious critic could ever imagine to be intriguing for power. He had a passion for economical questions, and a hearty liking for the dispatch of business, while to questions of foreign and party politics he brought only half a heart. He did not manage his political relations very well, in truth. His attachment to his friend Canning guided him well through the critical points of Canning’s career. He resigned with him, kept out of office with him, and acted consistently with him during Canning’s life; but, after his death, the devoted public servant and private friend damaged his own reputation through his tendency to be absorbed by the practical business of his office, to the neglect of nice points of political observance which are all important to the eyes of political leaders. Mr. Huskisson wanted to have trade disincumbered of the protective system, and to get the business of the Woods and Forests, or of the Colonies, carried through without interruption; and changes of ministry were annoying and perplexing to him, as interrupting the nation’s business. He showed that he could sit with very various administrations; and people said this was what might be expected of a political adventurer. He was unconcealably disappointed when the Duke of Wellington took him up short about resigning in 1828, and compelled him to do it: and again there was the same sneering comment; but it was the very devotedness of the man which got him into these scrapes. He was as timid about responsibility, and modest about his own consequence, as he was bold in his political economy and “impracticable” with all triflers about the business of the country. He hesitated too much about troubling the nation with personal difficulties; and he could not make anybody understand what the risk would be of giving over his free-trade schemes into other hands than his own.
His latter years were thus not his best, in regard to political position: but a future generation was sure to make up for everything by understanding the magnitude and weight of his enterprises, and clearly perceiving that such a man as himself, drawn from his rank in life, and furnished with the knowledge which belongs to that rank, was wanted for the great work of liberating the commerce, and reforming the fiscal principles of his country.
That a middle-class man was wanted for the special work appears also from the fact that Mr. Huskisson was himself in a progressive state, as well as the guide of the nation in a forward course. Long after he had perceived that a protective policy was an injury to all the parties that lived under it, he sustained the highest duties on corn that were proposed from any quarter. He believed that while any manufacture or department of commerce was protected, there must be stringent corn-laws to prevent the price of wheat falling below 80s. This was at the time of the peace: and it took him a dozen years more to satisfy himself that the price of corn depends on so many elements that to fix a legislative price is only to increase the risk and confusion. In 1821, he had got so far as to advocate, in a Report on the Condition of Agriculture, a reduction of the corn duties: and from that time forward he had the whole landed interest of the country for his enemies.
In another year or two there seemed to be scarcely anybody left on his side, beyond his personal friends. The silk and woollen manufacturers regarded him as a man with a head full of crochets and without a heart in his breast. He felt his evil reputation very painfully; and his emotions gave a higher quality to his speeches on free trade topics than appeared in any other part of his oratory. He made his subject so plain that he always converted somebody; and there were occasions when he converted almost everybody for the moment. In inland towns, the merchant or manufacturer would tell his wife at dinner, or his partner in the counting-house, that here was another speech of Huskisson’s,—more puzzling than ever. It seemed, in the reading, to be as plain and incontestable as any sum in Cocker; yet scarcely anybody but Huskisson himself believed a word of it. This, was only for a time, however. Bit by bit he won a little freedom for trade,—got the Combination-laws relaxed,—and obtained some scope for the exportation of machinery. Timid as he was about some kinds of responsibility, he had no fears of the consequences of relaxing prohibitory and protective duties; and he stood calm and confident when hon. members shook their fists in his face, and called him the destroyer of their constituents, and the malignant foe of the landed interest. He had the pleasure of pointing out, before he died, the happy results of his policy, as far as it had had room to work; and he felt the comfort of gaining over more supporters from year to year. He was sustained by some of the best newspapers, of both parties in politics; and he ventured to tell his friends that he held a whole handful of free-trade, and had as yet only opened his little finger. He was quite unaware that his entire handful was only a sample, in comparison with the freedom which would be given within thirty years of his death. It was with deep satisfaction that he learned, in the last spring of his life, that there had been an exportation of silk goods from Bristol, and that the Macclesfield manufacturers now admitted him to have been the best friend to their industry. What would he have said if it had been foretold to him that in thirty years precisely from that time, the last penny of protective duty would be removed from our financial schedule; and that parliament would have ceased to be importuned with complaints of agricultural distress, because agricultural improvement would have placed the landed interest almost beyond the accidents of fortune, while free-trade in food would have released the nation from all fear of famine! Such a prospect would have amazed him almost as much as his enemies. He had not learned everything in his own line: but he was a progressive statesman in a day when to be that was to be unpopular with high and low.