MOTION FOR PAPERS. (Hansard, 10 March 1871)

LORD OVERSTONE

said, that the history of this transaction was an exceedingly curious one, and it was desirable that public attention should be directed to it. It originated in the Vote by the House of Commons of a certain sum of money for a Monument to the Duke of Wellington. The Government then decided that the design should be submitted to public competition. Designs were accordingly sent in, and were publicly exhibited in Westminster Hall. It was next proposed to appoint a Committee, who should be intrusted with the duty of awarding the seven premiums which had been offered. He (Lord Overstone) was honoured—though the task was a very unpleasant one—with being appointed on the Committee. He acted in concert with the First Lord of the Treasury, the Grandfather of the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Lansdowne), the late Dean of St. Paul's, and several other persons. They allotted the premiums to the designs which they believed the best, but on the clear understanding that their duty was not to decide on the suitability of any of them. Their decision was generally approved. There the matter dropped for several years, until Questions were put in Parliament on the subject. Several changes had, in the interim, occurred in the Government, and it was suddenly announced that the Government had resolved to choose an entirely new site. It might have been expected that as the new site differed in all its features and accessories from the original one, and both being sites of a peculiar character, new designs would be invited. The Government, however, announced that they had selected the design to which the Committee had awarded the third prize, and that they had associated with Mr. Stevens the artist, Mr. Penrose the architect of St. Paul's Cathedral, in order that the design might be adapted to the new site. From such a measure no reasonable or practical man would have expected any satisfactory result; but few would have expected one so thoroughly unsatisfactory as that which had occurred. Years had elapsed since the arrangement was made, and it had been recently stated that the whole sum voted for the Monument had already been spent; while all that the country had got in return was a certain, he could not say ruin, but fragment of the Monument in St. Paul's, 1762 with other fragments lying in the artist's studio. The Government, disgusted apparently with the whole proceedings, had taken possession not only of the fragment in the Cathedral, but of the artist's studio and all it contained; it was locked up, and the master of the house was actually precluded access to his own studio. He did not find fault with this, for they had certainly just grounds of complaint; but this showed into what a state the matter had got. He believed the design was the work of a real genius, but of a genius who, as was not unfrequently the case, was totally unable to appreciate the limits of time, space, and expense. What, under these circumstances, were the Government to do? He presumed the Correspondence would give information on this point. According to what he had heard, they would endeavour to make a new association between the artist and some person of practical habits of business to superintend and control him, who would exercise such control as should give the country some security that, within a limited space of time and limited expense, the work, which, was really a work of genius, would, be completed. He sincerely hoped that this would be the result; but, judging from past experience, he confessed that he was not very sanguine in the matter. There was, however, some consolation in reflecting that the man to whose honour and memory the Monument was to be erected had, by his great services to the country, by his great deeds in arms, and by his moral standard of patriotism and duty, erected a monument by the side of which the most imposing and durable monument that human hands could erect was comparatively worthless. Exegit monumentum œre perennuis.