Conservative History Journal

Viscount Castlereagh has never been given his full due by his own countrymen, argues Professor Bew in this article. There is, he says, an attempt to make him sound entirely relevant to the modern age but that is wrong, too.

The truth is that Castlereagh can be understood only as a product of the time in which he operated, rather than as a bearer of any timeless insights. Nonetheless, as his descendant, the Marchioness of Londonderry, argued in 1904, he was not ‘the old-fashioned Tory that ignorant opinion supposes’. Often presented as the enemy of Enlightenment, he travelled widely in Europe, read a broad range of literature and eschewed the anti-Catholicism of many of his peers in England and Ireland. He was convinced that the only approach that government could take towards religion was one of toleration and that each man had the right to make his peace with God on his own terms. True, he was an enemy of political reform, but this was because of the dangers of mob politics which he saw first-hand in Paris during the French Revolution and Ireland during the rebellion of 1798.

Thus Castlereagh’s mind was conservative and enlightened at the same time – and no less the one for being the other. ‘I think those people who are acquainted with me,’ he told the House of Commons in 1817, ‘will do me justice to believe that I never had a cruel or unkind heart.’

Professor Bew's own book will undoubtedly put the matter right. Well, we hope so, anyway.

The reason Tory Historian was cogitating about this was a book by Giles Hunt, entitled “The Duel – Castlereagh, Canning and Deadly Cabinet Rivalry”.

It is rather an odd book in that it follows the career of the two politicians with the focus on their long enmity, which finally resulted in the infamous duel of 1809 that left Canning with a flesh wound (though it could have been very serious, Mr Hunt keeps reminding us) and the reputation of both ministers as well as that of the government in tatters.

Yet, despite the fact that the duel is at the heart of the book, Mr Hunt professes not to understand what happened in the nine days before Castlereagh actually challenged Canning (that is how long he waited after realizing that the latter had led a behind-the-scenes intrigue against him) and during the actual duel.

He ends the central chapter with the words:

The simmering anger behind Castlereagh’s challenge reveals his pent-up feelings, and there is no mystery as to why he challenged Canning to a duel. He felt humiliated and angry, and Canning was the man who had been insisting that the government needed to be changed. The mystery is the delay in issuing his challenge, with a subsidiary mystery about the way he aimed, or failed to aim, his two shots. It is strange.

So, it would seem that Castlereagh was very angry about Canning’s machinations but we do not know why it took him nine days to issue a challenge and why he missed Canning (probably deliberately) with his first shot and wounded him with his second. Strange, indeed. Particularly as this is at the heart of the book.

In the end, Mr Hunt settles for Castlereagh being psychologically unstable, probably mad and suffering from tertiary syphilis. His evidence for his psychological problems at the time of the duel is an analysis by a graphologist, who had died before the book was published, made on the basis of a photocopy of a letter written by Castlereagh.

Even if the graphologist was given the photocopy blind, so to speak, this is doubtful evidence. Apart from that there is a great deal of “must have thought”, “would have assumed” and “probably felt” in the crucial chapters. Tory Historian had a rather old-fashioned training in history writing that definitely precluded phrases of that kind.

As for the tertiary syphilis or “some form of syphilis”, that is based on various snippets about Castlereagh’s health throughout his life as well as the final catastrophe of the morning when he cut his throat. Yet another expert is called in, a senior consultant neurosurgeon, also deceased before the book’s publication, who produced a diagnosis on the basis of H. Montgomery Hyde’s book, “The Strange Death of Lord Castlereagh” that contained most of the report of the coroner’s inquest.

None of which really solves the problem.