More about Melbourne

Lord Melbourne, that is. I don't like reading biographies so much because they usually end on a downer with people dying at the end. Lord Melbourne's biography was no exception and worse, included a sentence saying it would have been better if he'd died years earlier than he did after a stroke because he was in a sad decline ever after.

I guess I shouldn't expect a biographer called Lord David Cecil writing in the 1930s to have particularly radical predilcitions but he tended to apologise for Lord Melbourne's inaction or opposition to many of the major reform issues of the day, considering that Lord Melbourne preferred the status quo in almost all cases. The only time he really stood up for change was when he was governing Ireland where the prevailing bias against Catholics was very blatant and he was muttered about darkly for entertaining them and appointing them to positions for which they were qualified. The nerve!

Throughout his career, Lord Melbourne opposed extending the franchise. As Home Secretary he organised the militia to put down the riots associated with the Reform Bill in 1830. He opposed educating the poor because it would give them ideas above his station. He refused to entertain appeals about the transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs because he thought they should be an example. He didn't support repealing the Corn Laws which kept the price of grain high. And, most curiously of all, he opposed the penny post.

These actions or inactions appear in the biography as odd incidents in the life of a lively intelligent man with generally good motives who loved his friends well and was terribly handsome. I can't help being exceedingly grateful that the world has changed so much since then.