In memoriam : died July 27, 1892, aged 80 1/2 years, Rt. Hon. Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke.

  • Simon, Sir John, 1816-1904
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: In memoriam : died July 27, 1892, aged 80 1/2 years, Rt. Hon. Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Mr. Lowe as a man so unlikely to be the elect of any popular constituency that, except for the franchise given in 1867 to the University of London, he probably would have been with- out a seat in Parliament. It perhaps did not occur to Mr. Disraeli that his remark implied any disparagement of the constitution he had himself provided for Parliament; but it may be conceded him that the taunt had in it just enough of a certain sort of verisimilitude to make it effective for its pur- pose. In relation to democratic constituencies of ignoble tj’^pe, Mr. Lowe, no doubt, by reason of his merits, might often have made but a poor show at the poll; for he would not have eaten dirt in order to succeed, would not have been the puppet of wire-pullers, would not have bribed or flattered or lied, would not have promised each individual voter to rejoice him with the moon of his desire, would not have debased his own better knowledge and better conscience by doing homage to sectarian spites, or by compromising with the exactions of ignorance and greed. Certainly he would rather have swept the pave- ments at Whitehall than have entered Parliament on conditions like those. Further, too, we can freely admit that Mr. Lowe, like other men, would probably sometimes more or less have shown (as the French express it) les defauts de ses qualites. Hating humbug as he did, and personally indisposed to senti- mental platitudes of speech, he perhaps would not always have taken sufficient care that, when he had to express unpleasant truths, he tempered them with as much oil or sugar as pos- sible ; nor perhaps, with his strict standards of political science, would he always have sufficiently recognised, or seemed to recognise, that sentiment, as well as science, is a power m politics. Defaults in such respects might no doubt have counted somewhat against him with average constituencies; but even among average constituencies, and still more among constituencies of markedly high type, Mr. Lowe’s great quali- ties could never have failed to find appreciation. It would be a superfluous tribute to his memory to follow further that line
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