FUNERAL OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON—THE QUEEN'S MESSAGE. (Hansard, 15 November 1852)

§ The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER
rose and said: Mr. Speaker, Sir, 150 The House of Commons is called upon tonight to perform a sorrowful but a noble duty. It has to recognise, in the face of the country and of the civilised world, the loss of the most distinguished of our citizens; and it has to offer to the ashes of the great departed the solemn anguish of a bereaved nation.
Sir, the princely personage who has left us was born in an age more fruitful of great events than any other period of recorded time. Of its vast incidents, the most conspicuous were his own deeds—deeds achieved with the smallest means and against the greatest obstacles. He was, therefore, not only a great man, but the greatest man of a great age. Amid the chaos and conflagration which attended the close of the last century there arose one of those beings who seem to be born to master mankind. It is not too much to say that Napoleon combined the imperial ardour of Alexander with the strategy of Hannibal. The kings of the earth fell before his fiery and subtle genius, and at the head of all the Powers of Europe, he denounced destruction against the only land that dared to disobey him and be free. The Providential superintendence of the world seems scarcely ever more manifest than when we recollect the dispensations of our day-—that the same year which gave to France the Emperor Napoleon, produced also for us the Duke of Wellington; that in the same year they should have embraced the same profession; and that, natives of distant islands, they should both have repaired for their military education to that illustrious land which each in his turn was destined to subjugate. During that long struggle for our freedom, our glory—I might say for our existence— Wellesley fought and won fifteen pitched battles—all of them of the highest class— concluding with one of those crowning victories that give a colour and a form to history. During that period that can be said of him which can be said of no other captain—that he captured three thousand cannon from the enemy, and never lost a single gun.
But the greatness of his exploits was, perhaps, even surpassed by the difficulties which he had to encounter. For he had to encounter a feeble Government, a factious Opposition, a distrustful people, scandalous allies, and the most powerful enemy in the world. He won victories with starving troops, and he carried on sieges without munitions. And as if to complete the fa- 151 tality which attended him throughout life in this respect, when he had at last succeeded in creating an army worthy of the Roman legions and worthy of himself, this invincible host was broken up on the eve of the greatest conjuncture of his life, and he had to enter the field of Waterloo with raw levies and discomfited allies. But the star of Wellington never paled. He has been called fortunate, but fortune is a divinity which has ever favoured those who are at the same time sagacious and intrepid, inventive and patient. It was his own character that created his career—alike achieved his exploits, and guarded him from every vicissitude; for it was his sublime self-control alone that regulated his lofty fate.
Sir, it has been of late years somewhat the fashion to disparage the military character. Forty years of peace have, perhaps, made us somewhat less aware how considerable and how complex are the qualities which go to the formation of a great general. It is not enough that he must be an engineer, a geographer, learned in human nature, and adroit in managing men—he must also be able to fulfil the highest duty of a Minister of State, and then to descend to the humblest office of a commissary and clerk; and he has to display all this knowledge, and to exercise all these duties, at the same time, and under extraordinary circumstances. At every moment he has to think of the eve and of the morrow—of his flank and of his rear. He has to carry with him ammunition, provisions, and hospitals. He has to calculate at the same time the state of the weather and the moral qualities of man; and all these elements that are perpetually changing he has to combine, sometimes under overwhelming heat, and sometimes under overpowering cold—sometimes even amid famine, and often amid the roar of artillery. Behind all these circumstances, too, there is ever present the image of his country, and the dreadful alternative whether that country is to welcome him with laurel or with cypress. Yet this image he must dismiss from his mind; for the general must think—and not only think—he must think with the rapidity of lightning, for on a moment more or less depends the fate of a most beautiful combination, and on a moment more or less depends the question of glory or of shame. Unquestionably, Sir, all this might be done in an ordinary manner, and by an ordinary man, as every day of 152 our lives we see ordinary men who may be successful Ministers of State, successful authors, successful speakers—But to do all this with genius is sublime. Doubtless, to be able to think with vigour, with clearness, and with depth in the recess of the cabinet, is a fine intellectual demonstration; but to think with equal vigour, clearness, and depth amidst bullets, appears the loftiest exercise and the most complete triumph of the human faculties.
Sir, when we take into consideration the prolonged and illustrious life of the Duke of Wellington, we are surprised how small a section of that life is occupied by that military career which fills so large a space in history. Only eight years elapsed from Vimiera to Waterloo; and from the date of his first commission to the last cannon-shot which he heard on the field of battle, scarce twenty year3 can be counted. After all his triumphs he was destined for another career; and the greatest and most successful of warriors—if not in the prime, at least in the perfection of manhood— commenced a civil career scarcely less successful, scarcely less splendid, than that military one which will live for ever in the memory of men. He was thrice the Ambassador of his Sovereign at those great historic Congresses that settled the affairs of Europe; twice was he Secretary of State; twice he was Commander-in-Chief of the Forces; once he was Prime Minister of England; and to the last hour of his life he may be said to have laboured for his country. It was only a few months before we lost him that he favoured with his counsel and assistance the present advisers of the Crown respecting that war in the East of which no one could be so competent to judge, and he drew up his views on that subject in a state paper characterised by all his sagacity and experience; and, indeed, when he died he died still the active chieftain of that famous Army to which he has left the tradition of his glory.
Sir, there is one passage in the life of the Duke of Wellington which in this place, and on this occasion, I ought not to let pass unnoticed. It is our pride that he was one of ourselves—it is our glory that Sir Arthur Wellesley once sat on these benches. If we view his career in the House of Commons by the tests of success which are applied to common men, his career, although brief, was still distinguished. He entered the Royal Councils and filled high offices of State. But the 153 success of Sir Arthur Wellesley in the House of Commons must not be tested by the fact that he was a Privy Councillor or a Secretary of a Lord Lieutenant. He achieved here a success which the greatest Ministers and the most brilliant orators may never hope to accomplish. That was a great Parliamentary triumph when he rose in his place to receive the thanks of Mr. Speaker for a brilliant victory; and, later still, when at that bar to receive, Sir, from one of your predecessors in memorable words the thanks of a grateful Senate for accumulated triumphs.
Sir, there is one source of consolation which I think the people of England possess at this moment under the severe bereavement over which they mourn—It is their intimate acquaintance with the character, and even the person of this great man. There never was a man of such mark who lived so long and so much in the public eye. I will be bound there is not a Gentleman in this House who has not seen him; many there are who have conversed with him; some there are who have touched his hand. His image, his countenance, his manner, his voice are impressed on every memory and sound almost in every ear. In the golden saloon and in the busy market place to the last he might be found. The rising generation among whom he lived will often recall his words of kindness; and the People followed him in the street with that lingering gaze of reverent admiration which seemed never to tire. Who, indeed, can ever forget that venerable and classic head, ripe with time and radiant as it were with glory? Stilichonis apex et cognita fulsit Canities. To complete all, that we might have a perfect idea of his inward and spiritual nature —that we might understand how this sovereign master of duty fulfilled the manifold offices of his life with unrivalled activity, he himself gave us a collection of military and administrative literature which no age and no country can rival. And, fortunate in all things, Wellington found in his lifetime an historian whose immortal page now ranks with the classics of that land which Wellesley saved.
Sir, the Duke of Wellington has left to his country a great legacy—greater even than his fame; he has left to them the contemplation of his character. I will not say of England that he has revived here the 154 sense of duty—that, I trust, was never lost. i But that he has inspired public life with a purer and more masculine tone, I cannot doubt; that he has rebuked by his career restless vanity, and regulated the morbid susceptibility of irregular egotism, is, I think, no exaggerated praise. I do not believe that among all orders of Englishmen, from the highest to the lowest, from those who are called on to incur the most serious responsibilities of office, to those who exercise the humblest duties of our society—I do not believe there is one among us who may not experience moments of doubt and depression, when the image of Wellington will occur to his memory, and he finds in his example support and solace.
Although the Duke of Wellington lived so much in the minds and hearts of the people of England—although at the end of his long career he occupied such a prominent position, and filled such august offices, no one seemed to be conscious of what a space he occupied in the thoughts and feelings of his countrymen until he died. The influence of true greatness was never, perhaps, more completely asserted than in his decease. In an age in which the belief in intellectual equality flatters so much our self-complacency, every one suddenly acknowledges that the world has lost its foremost man. In an age of utility, the most busy and the most common-sense people in the world find no vent for their woe, and no representative for their sorrow, but the solemnity of a pageant; and we— who are assembled here for purposes so different—to investigate the sources of the wealth of nations, to busy ourselves in statistical research, to encounter each other in fiscal controversy—we offer to the world the most sublime and touching spectacle that human circumstances can well produce—the spectacle of a Senate mourning a Hero.
Sir, I beg leave to move a Resolution— That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, humbly to thank Her Majesty for having given directions for a public interment of the mortal remains of his Grace the Duke of. Wellington, in the cathedral church of St. Paul, and to assure Her Majesty of our cordial aid and concurrence in giving to the ceremony a fitting degree of solemnity and importance.

§ LORD JOHN RUSSELL
I ask the permission of you, Sir, and the House, to second the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do not wish to add a single word to those 155 eloquent terms which have fallen from the right hon. Gentleman. I wish only to say that the whole House is, I believe, prepared to unite in offering this testimony of respect to the memory of the late illustrious Duke.

§ The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER
I now beg to move a Resolution— That the House will attend at the solemnity of the funeral of Arthur Duke of Wellington in the cathedral of St. Paul on Thursday next.

§ The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER
then moved the appointment of a Select Committee, to "consider the circumstances relating to the attendance of this House and this place at the funeral of Arthur Duke of Wellington in the cathedral church of St. Paul."