Victorian Worthies

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The second battle was fought a month later at Dabo, near
Hyder[=a]b[=a]d. The most redoubtable of the Am[=i]rs, Sher Muhammad,
known as 'the Lion of M[=i]rpur', had been gathering a force of his own
and was only a few miles distant from Mi[=a]ni when that battle was
fought. Napier could have attacked him at once; but, to avoid bloodshed,
he was ready to negotiate. 'The Lion' only used the respite to collect
more troops, and was soon defying the British with a force of 25,000
men, full of ardour despite their recent defeat. Indeed Napier
encouraged their confidence by spreading rumours of the terror
prevailing in his own camp. He did not wish to exhaust his men
needlessly by long marches in tropical heat; so he played a waiting
game, gathering reinforcements and trusting that the enemy would soon
give him a chance of fighting. This chance came on March 24, and with a
force of 5,000 men and 19 guns Napier took another three hours to win
his second battle and to drive Sher Muhammad from his position with the
loss of 5,000 killed. The British losses were relatively trifling,
amounting to 270, of whom 147 belonged to the sorely tried 22nd
Regiment. They were all full of confidence and fought splendidly under
the general's eye. 'The Lion' himself escaped northwards, and two months
of hard marching and clever strategy were needed to prevent him stirring
up trouble among the tribesmen. The climate took toll of the British
troops and even the general was for a time prostrated by sunstroke; but
the operations were successful and the last nucleus of an army was
broken up by Colonel Jacob on June 15. Sher Muhammad ended his days
ignominiously at Lahore, then the capital of the Sikhs, having outlived
his fame and sunk into idleness and debauchery.

Thus in June 1843 the general could write in his diary: 'We have taught
the Baluch that neither his sun nor his desert nor his jungles nor his
nullahs can stop us. He will never face us more.' But Charles Napier's
own work was far from being finished. He had to bind together the
different elements in the province, to reconcile chieftain and peasant
Baluch, Hindu, and Sindian, to living together in amity and submitting
to British rule; and he had to set up a framework of military and
civilian officers to carry on the work. He held firmly the principle
that military rule must be temporary. For the moment it was more
effective; but it was his business to prepare the new province for
regular civil government as soon as was feasible. He showed his
ingenuity in the personal interviews which he had with the chieftains;
and the ascendancy which he won by his character was marked. Perhaps his
qualities were such as could be more easily appreciated by orientals
than by his own countrymen, for he was impetuous, self-reliant, and
autocratic in no common degree. He was only one of a number of great
Englishmen of this century whose direct personal contact with Eastern
princes was worth scores of diplomatic letters and paper constitutions.
Such men were Henry Lawrence, John Nicholson, and Charles Gordon; in
them the power of Great Britain was incarnate in such a form as to
strike the imagination and leave an ineffaceable impression. Many of the
Am[=i]rs wished to swear allegiance to a governor present in the flesh
rather than to the distant queen beyond the sea, so strongly were they
impressed by Napier's personal character.

He did not forget his own countrymen, least of all that valued friend
'Thomas Atkins' and his comrade the sepoy. By the erection of spacious
barracks he made the soldier's life more pleasant and his health more
secure; and in a hundred other ways he showed his care and affection for
them. In return few British generals have been so loved by the rank and
file. He also gave much thought to material progress, to strengthening
the fortress of Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, to developing the harbour at
Kar[=a]chi, and, above all, to enriching the peasants by irrigation
schemes. It was the story of Cephalonia on a bigger scale; but Napier
was now twenty years older, overwhelmed with work, and he could give
less attention to details. He did his best to find subordinates after
his own heart, men who would 'scorn delights and live laborious days'.
'Does he wear varnished boots?' was a typical question that he put to a
friend in Bombay, when a new engineer was commended to him. His own
rewards were meagre. The Grand Cross of the Bath and the colonelcy of
his favourite regiment, the 22nd, were all the recognition given for a
campaign whose difficulties were minimized at home because he had
mastered them so triumphantly.

Two other achievements belong to the period of his government of Sind.
The campaign against the tribes of the Kachhi Hills, to the north-west
of his province, rendered necessary by continued marauding, shows all
his old mastery of organization. Any one who has glanced into Indian
history knows the danger of these raids and the bitter experience which
our Indian army has gained in them. In less than two months
(January-March 1845) Napier had led five thousand men safely over
burning deserts and through most difficult mountain country, had by
careful strategy driven the marauders into a corner, forcing them to
surrender with trifling loss, and had made an impression on the hill
chieftains which lasted for many a year. This work, though slighted by
the directors of the Company, received enthusiastic praise from such
good judges of war as Lord Hardinge and the Duke of Wellington. The
second emergency arose when the first Sikh war broke out in the Punjab.
Napier felt so confident in the loyalty of his newly-pacified province
that within six weeks he drew together an army of 15,000 men, and took
post at Rohri, ready to co-operate against the Sikhs from the south,
while Lord Hardinge advanced from the east. Before he could arrive, the
decisive battle had been fought, and all he was asked to do was to
assist in a council of war at Lahore. The mistakes made in the campaign
had been numerous. No one saw them more clearly than Napier, and no one
foretold more accurately the troubles which were to follow. For all
that, he wrote in generous admiration of Lord Hardinge the Viceroy and
Lord Gough the Commander-in-Chief at a time when criticism and personal
bitterness were prevalent in many quarters.

After this he returned to Sind with health shattered and a longing for
rest. He continued to work with vigour, but his mind was set on
resignation; and the bad relations which had for years existed between
him and the directors embittered his last months. No doubt he was
impatient and self-willed, inclined to take short cuts through the
system of dual control[14] and to justify them by his own single-hearted
zeal for the good of the country. But the directors had eyes for all the
slight irregularities, which are inevitable in the work of an original
man, and failed entirely to estimate the priceless services that he
rendered to British rule. In July 1847 he resigned and returned to
Europe; but even now the end was not come. 'The tragedy must be re-acted
a year or two hence,' he had written in March 1846, seeing clearly that
the Sikhs had not been reconciled to British rule. In February 1849 the
directors were forced by the national voice to send him out to take
supreme military command and to retrieve the disasters with which the
second Sikh war began. They were very reluctant to do so, and Napier
himself had little wish for further exertions in so thankless a service.
But the Duke of Wellington himself appealed to him, the nation spoke
through all its organs, and he could not put his own wishes in the scale
against the demands of public service.

[Note 14: The dual control of British India by the Crown and the
East India Company lasted from 1778 to 1858.]

He made all speed and reached Calcutta early in May, but he found no
enemy to fight. The issue had been decided by Lord Gough and the hard
fighting of Chili[=a]nw[=a]la. He had been cheated by fortune, as in
1815, and he never knew the joy of battle again. He was accustomed to
settle everything as a dictator; he found it difficult to act as part of
an administrative machine. He was unfamiliar with the routine of Indian
official life, and he was now growing old; he was impatient of forms,
impetuous in his likes and dislikes, outspoken in praise and
condemnation. His relations with the masterful Viceroy, Lord Dalhousie,
were soon clouded; and though he delighted in the friendship of Colin
Campbell and many other able soldiers, he was too old to adapt himself
to new men and new measures. In 1850 the rumblings of the storm, which
was to break seven years later, could already be heard, and Napier had
much anxiety over the mutinous spirit rising in the sepoy regiments. He
did his best to go to the bottom of the trouble and to establish
confidence and friendly relations between British and natives, but he
had not time enough to achieve permanent results, and he was often
fettered by the regulations of the political service. His predictions
were as striking now as in the first Sikh war; but he was not content to
predict and to sit idle. He was unwearied in working for the reform of
barracks, though his plans were often spoiled by the careless execution
of others. He was urgent for a better tone among regimental officers
and for more consideration on their part towards their soldiers. If more
men in high position had similarly exerted themselves, the mutiny would
have been less widespread and less fatal. His resignation was due to a
dispute with Lord Dalhousie about the sepoys' pay. Napier acted _ultra
vires_ in suspending on his own responsibility an order of the
Government, because he believed the situation to be critical, while the
Viceroy refused to regard this as justified. His departure, in December
1850, was the signal for an outburst of feeling among officers,
soldiers, and all who knew him. His return by way of Sind was a
triumphal progress.

He had two years to live when he set foot again in England, and most of
this was spent at Oaklands near Portsmouth. His health had been ruined
in the public service; but he continued to take a keen interest in
passing events and to write on military subjects to Colin Campbell and
other friends. At the same time he devoted much of his time to his
neighbours and his farm. In 1852 he attended as pall-bearer at the Duke
of Wellington's funeral; his own was not far distant. His brother, Sir
William, describes the last scene thus: 'On the morning of August 29th
1853, at 5 o'clock, he expired like a soldier on a naked camp bedstead,
the windows of the room open and the fresh air of Heaven blowing on his
manly face--as the last breath escaped, Montagu McMurdo (his
son-in-law), with a sudden inspiration, snatched the old colours of the
22nd Regiment, the colour that had been borne at Mi[=a]ni and
Hyder[=a]b[=a]d, and waved them over the dying hero. Thus Charles Napier
passed from the world.'

He was a man who roused enthusiastic devotion and provoked strong
resentment. Like Gordon, he was a man who could rule others, but could
not be ruled; and his official career left many heart-burnings behind.
His equally passionate brother, Sir William, who wrote his life, took
up the feud as a legacy and pursued it in print for many years. It is
regrettable that such men cannot work without friction; but in all
things it was devotion to the public service, and not personal ambition,
that carried Charles Napier to such extremes. From his youth he had
trained himself to such a pitch of self-denial and ascetic rigour that
he could not make allowance for the frailties of the average man. His
keen eye and swift brain made him too impatient of the shortcomings of
conscientious officials. He was ready to work fifteen hours a day when
the need came; he was able to pierce into the heart of a matter while
others would be puzzling round the fringes of it. Rarely in his long and
laborious career did an emergency arise capable of bringing out all his
gifts; and his greatest exploits were performed on scenes unfamiliar to
the mass of his fellow countrymen. But a few opinions can be given to
show that he was rated at his full value by the foremost men of the day.

Perhaps the most striking testimony comes from one who never saw him; it
was written three years after his death, when his brother's biography
appeared. It was Carlyle, the biographer of Cromwell and Frederick the
Great, the most famous man of letters of the day, who wrote in 1856:
'The fine and noble qualities of the man are very recognizable to me;
his piercing, subtle intellect turned all to the practical, giving him
just insight into men and into things; his inexhaustible, adroit
contrivances; his fiery valour; sharp promptitude to seize the good
moment that will not return. A lynx-eyed, fiery man, with the spirit of
an old knight in him; more of a hero than any modern I have seen for a
long time.' A second tribute comes from one who had known him as an
officer and was a supreme judge of military genius. Wellington was not
given to extravagant words, but on many occasions he expressed himself
in the warmest terms about Napier's talents and services. In 1844,
speaking of the Sind campaign in the House of Lords, he said: 'My Lords,
I must say that, after giving the fullest consideration to these
operations, I have never known any instance of an officer who has shown
in a higher degree that he possesses all the qualities and
qualifications necessary to enable him to conduct great operations.' In
the House of Commons at the same time Sir Robert Peel--the ablest
administrative statesman of that generation, who had read for himself
some of Napier's masterly dispatches--said: 'No one ever doubted Sir
Charles Napier's military powers; but in his other character he does
surprise me--he is possessed of extraordinary talent for civil
administration.' Again, he speaks of him as 'one of three brothers who
have engrafted on the stem of an ancient and honourable lineage that
personal nobility which is derived from unblemished private character,
from the highest sense of personal honour, and from repeated proofs of
valour in the field, which have made their name conspicuous in the
records of their country'.

Indifferent as Charles Napier was to ordinary praise or blame, he would
have appreciated the words of such men, especially when they associated
him with his brothers; but perhaps he would have been more pleased to
know how many thousands of his humble fellow countrymen walked to his
informal funeral at Portsmouth, and to know that the majority of those
who subscribed to his statue in Trafalgar Square were private soldiers
in the army that he had served and loved.

[Illustration: LORD SHAFTESBURY

From the painting by G. F. Watts in the National Portrait Gallery]

ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER

SEVENTH EARL OF SHAFTESBURY

1801-85

1801. Born in Grosvenor Square, London, April 28.
1811. His father succeeds to the earldom. He himself becomes Lord Ashley.
1813-17. Harrow.
1819-22. Christ Church, Oxford.
1826. M.P. for Woodstock.
1828. Commissioner of India Board of Control.
1829. Chairman of Commission for Lunatic Asylums.
1830. Marries Emily, daughter of fifth Earl Cowper.
1832. Takes up the cause of the Ten Hours Bill or Factory Act.
1833. M.P. for Dorset.
1836. Founds Church Pastoral Aid Society.
1839. Founds Indigent Blind Visiting Society.
1840. Takes up cause of Boy Chimney-sweepers.
1842. Mines and Collieries Bill carried.
1843. Joins the Ragged School movement.
1847. Ten Hours Bill finally carried.
1847. M.P. for Bath.
1848. Public Health Act. Chairman of Board of Health.
1851. President of British and Foreign Bible Society.
1851. Succeeds to the earldom.
1855. Lord Palmerston twice offers him a seat in the Cabinet.
1872. Death of Lady Shaftesbury.
1884. Receives the Freedom of the City of London.
1885. Dies at Folkestone, October 1.

LORD SHAFTESBURY

PHILANTHROPIST

The word 'Philanthropist' has suffered the same fate as many other words
in our language. It has become hackneyed and corrupted; it has taken a
professional taint; it has almost become a byword. We are apt to think
of the philanthropist as an excitable, contentious creature, at the
mercy of every fad, an ultra-radical in politics, craving for notoriety,
filled with self-confidence, and meddling with other people's business.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the greatest philanthropist of the nineteenth
century, was of a different type. By temper he was strongly
conservative. He always loved best to be among his own family; he was
fond of his home, fond of the old associations of his house. To come out
into public life, to take his place in Parliament or on the platform, to
be mixed up in the wrangling of politics was naturally distasteful to
him. It continually needed a strong effort for him to overcome this
distaste and to act up to his sense of duty. It is only when we remember
this that we can do justice to his lifelong activity, and to the high
principles which bore him up through so many efforts and so many
disappointments. For himself he would submit to injustice and be still:
for his fellow countrymen and for his religion he would renew the battle
to the last day of his life.

His childhood was not happy. His parents had little sympathy with
children, his father being absorbed in the cares of public life, his
mother given up to society pleasures. He had three sisters older than
himself, but no brother or companion, and he was left largely to
himself. At the age of seven he went to a preparatory school, where he
was made miserable by the many abuses which flourished there; and it was
not till he went to Harrow at the age of twelve that he began to enjoy
life. He had few of the indulgences which we associate with the early
days of those who are born heirs to high position. But, thus thrown back
on himself, the boy nurtured strong attachments, for the old housekeeper
who first showed him tenderness at home, for the school where he had
learnt to be happy, and for the Dorset home, which was to be throughout
his life the pole-star of his affections. The village of Wimborne St.
Giles lies some eight miles north of Wimborne, in Dorset, on the edge of
Cranborne Forest, one of the most beautiful and unspoiled regions in the
south of England, which 'as late as 1818 contained twelve thousand deer
and as many as six lodges, each of which had its walk and its ranger'.
Here he wandered freely in his holidays for many years, giving as yet
little promise of an exceptional career; here you may find in outlying
cottages those who still treasure his memory and keep his biography
among the few books that adorn their shelves.

From Harrow, Lord Ashley went at the age of sixteen to read for two
years with a clergyman in Derbyshire; in 1819 he went to Christ Church,
Oxford, and three years later succeeded in taking a first class in
classics. He had good abilities and a great power of concentration.
These were to bear fruit one day in the gathering of statistics, in the
marshalling of evidence, and in the presentation of a case which needed
the most lucid and most laborious advocacy.

He came down from Oxford in 1822, but did not go into Parliament till
1826, and for the intervening years there is little to chronicle. In
those days it was usual enough for a young nobleman to take up politics
when he was barely of age, but Lord Ashley needed some other motive than
the custom of the day. It is characteristic of his whole life that he
responded to a call when there was a need, but was never in a hurry to
put himself forward or to aim at high position. We have a few of his own
notes from this time which show the extent of his reading, and still
more, the depth of his reflections. As with Milton, who spent over five
years at Cambridge and then five more in study and retirement at Horton,
the long years of self-education were profitable and left their mark on
his life. His first strong religious impulse he himself dates back to
his school-days at Harrow, when (as is now recorded in a mural tablet
on the spot) in walking up the street one day he was shocked by the
indignities of a pauper funeral. The drunken bearers, staggering up the
hill and swearing over the coffin, so appalled him that the sight
remained branded on his memory and he determined to devote his life to
the service of the poor. But one such shock would have achieved little,
if the decision had not been strengthened by years of thought and
resolution. His tendency to self-criticism is seen in the entry in his
diary for April, 1826 (his twenty-fifth birthday). He blames himself for
indulging in dreams and for having performed so little; but he himself
admits that the visions were all of a noble character, and we know what
abundant fruit they produced in the sixty years of active effort which
were to follow. The man who a year later could write sincerely in his
diary, 'Immortality has ceased to be a longing with me. I desire to be
useful in my generation,' had been little harmed by a few years of
dreaming dreams, and had little need to be afraid of having made a false
start in life.

When he entered the House of Commons as member for Woodstock in 1826,
Lord Ashley had strong Conservative instincts, a fervid belief in the
British constitution, and an unbounded admiration for the Duke of
Wellington, whose Peninsula victories had fired his enthusiasm at
Harrow. It was to his wing of the Conservative party that Ashley
attached himself; and it was the duke who, succeeding to the premiership
on the premature death of Canning, gave him his first office, a post on
the India Board of Control. The East India Company with its board of
directors (abolished in 1858) still ruled India, but was since 1778
subject in many ways to the control of the British Parliament, and the
board to which Lord Ashley now belonged exercised some of the functions
since committed to the Secretary of State for India. He set himself
conscientiously to study the interests of India, but over the work of
his department he had little chance of winning distinction. In fact his
first prominent speech was on the Reform of Lunatic Asylums, not an easy
subject for a new member to handle. He was diffident in manner and
almost inaudible. Without the kindly encouragement of friends he might
have despaired of future success; but his sincerity in the cause was
worth more than many a brilliant speech. The Bill was carried, a new
board was constituted, and of this Lord Ashley became chairman in 1829,
and continued to hold the office till his death fifty-six years later.
This was the first of the burdens that he took upon himself without
thought of reward, and so is worthy of special mention, though it never
won the fame of his factory legislation. But it shows the character of
the man, how ready he was to step into a post which meant work without
remuneration, drudgery without fame, prejudice and opposition from all
whose interests were concerned in maintaining the abuses of the past.

It was this spirit which led him in 1836 to take up the Church Pastoral
Aid Society,[15] in 1839 to found the Indigent Blind Visiting Society,
in 1840 to champion the cause of chimney-sweeps, and in all these cases
to continue his support for fifty years or more. We are accustomed
to-day to 'presidents' and 'patrons' and a whole broadsheet of
complimentary titles, to which noblemen give their names and often give
little else. Lord Ashley understood such an office differently. He was
regular in attendance at meetings, generous in giving money, unflinching
in his advocacy of the cause. We shall see this more fully in dealing
with the two most famous crusades associated with his name.

[Note 15: To help church work by adding to the number of clergy.]

Though these growing labours began early to occupy his time, we find the
record of his life diversified by other claims and other interests. In
1830 he married Emily, daughter of Lord Cowper, who bore him several
children, and who shared all his interests with the fullest sympathy;
and henceforth his greatest joys and his deepest sorrows were always
associated with his family life. At home his first hobby was astronomy.
At the age of twenty-eight he was ardently devoted to it and would spend
all his leisure on it for weeks together, till graver duties absorbed
his time. But he was no recluse, and all through his life he found
pleasure in the society of his friends and in paying them visits in
their homes. Many of his early visits were paid to the Iron Duke at
Strathfieldsaye; in later life no one entertained him more often than
Lord Palmerston, with whom he was connected by marriage. He was the
friend and often the guest of Queen Victoria, and in his twenty-eighth
year he is even found as a guest at the festive board of George IV.
'Such a round of laughing and pleasure I never enjoyed: if there be a
hospitable gentleman on earth it is His Majesty.' And at all times he
was ready to mix freely and on terms of social equality with all who
shared his sympathies, dukes and dustmen, Cabinet ministers and
costermongers.

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