At the start of this period Tierney sat uneasily in the unenviable position of leader of the Whig opposition in the Commons to which he had been nominated (not entirely faute de mieux, for he was a formidable parliamentarian) in 1818. Although he had received scant support from the selfish and idle Lord Grey, he had generally performed well in a difficult situation. Yet he was being undermined by indifferent health: after suffering a collapse in the House towards the close of the 1819 emergency session, he had told Grey and the whip Lord Duncannon* that if he was to continue as leader, he must be allowed to act ‘upon a limited scale’.
Accepting the offer of the 6th duke of Devonshire to bring him in again for Knaresborough at the 1820 general election, Tierney (who was also returned for Appleby on the interest of the 9th earl of Thanet, as part of a contingency plan arising out of the Cumberland election), wrote from his Savile Row house, 16 Feb.:
My room is a sort of office for electioneering and I do nothing but write and talk about contested counties, cities and boroughs ... Personally, it would be of little moment to me if I never again entered the House of Commons. I am growing old, and my health is not what it was, but I am willing to carry on the war, as well as I am able, so long as it is thought I can be of any service to the cause of my friends.
Hants RO, Tierney mss 21c; Chatsworth mss; Add. 51571, Thanet to Holland [18 Mar. 1820].
In the course of his journey to Knaresborough with his colleague Sir James Mackintosh he said that ‘he could no longer attend regularly or even frequently in the hot weather’ and, ruling out Mackintosh and Lord Althorp for different reasons, envisaged Brougham as his successor as leader.
Anything like constant attendance in the House of Commons ... is quite out of the question. Of this I gave Duncannon and others fair notice before Christmas, so that no fault ought to be found with me. I am it is true at this moment in good health, but I know by experience what I have to expect from two or three long nights in a bad atmosphere, even if exposed to nothing more than my share of work. I am greatly mistaken, however, if in the next session there is not a demand upon me for stronger nerves, better spirits and more temper than I pretend to possess, and if, to execute the office of leader, it is not found necessary to have requisites which do not fall to my lot. As for authority, except with a certain number, I have it not, and in your absence, I do not see where it is to come from; and yet if I were to withdraw they tell me - and I am afraid with truth - I should disband the whole opposition. A pleasing prospect this.
BL, Morley mss, Granville to Morley, 4 Apr.; Grey mss, Tierney to Grey, 5 Apr. 1820.
From Brighton, where he went for a short spell of recuperation, he told Lady Holland, 10 Apr. 1820, that he ‘never had less inclination for a parliamentary campaign than I have for that which is approaching’.
On his return to London he was reported to be of opinion that it would be ‘infinitely better to make good use’ of the Peterloo massacre ‘collaterally in debates than to bring forward any substantive motion respecting it’.
has hitherto kept well, but we have not been later than twelve yet, and he has not been called upon to make a long speech. Whenever this happens I am afraid he will fail, and we have all agreed to insist upon his not hazarding his health in the least by coming down when he is not quite able to bear it, and we must fight under Brougham during his absence.
Sydney Smith told Grey that he was ‘well, but very old, and unfit for anything but gentle work’.
He had scarcely credited reports earlier in the year that the queen intended to come to England, and indeed had bet Brougham, of all people, a guinea that she would not appear within six months. In mid-May, sensing the possibility of a ‘new era’, which might benefit the Whigs, though basically inclined to the view that the affair would end in ‘a compromise disgraceful to her, the king and the administration, and their renewal of their lease for another year for those who can neither possess the good opinion of the crown nor the confidence of the country’, he implored Grey to come to London to direct operations:
No man can estimate more highly than I do the comfort of being out of the reach of political warfare at such a moment as the present, for, though I put as good a face upon the matter as I can, I am most heartily sick of the House of Commons and its bustle, and should be happy if I could devise the means of passing my few remaining years in peace and quiet ... I know it is said by some that the business of the queen ought not to be made a party question. I do not see it exactly in that light, but, if it is to be so considered, you are the only person who can place it upon the right footing, and if anything should occur to render it expedient that we should all act together as a body, you ought to be here to take the lead.
Grey mss, Tierney to Grey [29 Feb.], 5 Apr., 18 May 1820.
Grey did not go up for another four weeks. On the motion for the appointment a secret committee, 7 June, Tierney ‘thanked God’ that he had had nothing to do with the negotiations, but insisted that ‘before any money was voted to the queen, some course ought to be taken which would establish either her innocence or her guilt’. He attacked ministers, who had ‘acted with injustice to the queen, disrespect to Parliament, and above all with the most marked indifference to the feelings and dignity of their master’, and, opposing the committee, argued that compromise was not possible under present circumstances. The Tory Member Henry Bankes noted that in doing so he indulged in some ‘levity and jocularity’.
You know that I have always felt, or, as you would perhaps say, exaggerated, the difficulty of our forming an administration ... Are we to confine ourselves to our own ranks, or are we to look for alliances? This is the main embarrassment ... In other respects a variety of circumstances concur to render the present a favourable moment for a new administration to commence its labours. The distressed state to which this country has been brought in its finances, trade and agriculture is so universally admitted that it constitutes in itself a sort of claim upon public support in aid of those who, without having contributed to the mischief, are to be employed in endeavouring to avert or mitigate it. The question of the queen, too, having been disposed of, the civil list settled and the budget for the year arranged gives infinite advantage to those who might, ten days hence, be called to office, and who would have six months before them, uninterrupted by parliamentary duties, to form their plans and prepare for a future campaign. These apparently favourable circumstances must not, however, be allowed to mislead you, or make us overload the probable difficulties we should have to encounter in the next session. I always speak with reference to the House of Commons.
Grey mss, Tierney to Grey, 12 June 1820 (two letters).
When Grey did arrive in London, he complained to his wife, 21 June, that he had no idea what Tierney intended to do on Wilberforce’s motion of the following day for a compromise settlement, which he thought should be opposed.
On 21 Aug. 1820 he opposed Hobhouse’s attempt to prorogue Parliament, prompting Lord Morpeth† to condemn ‘the violence of the queen’s friends and the irresolution of Tierney’.
Alas poor Cole! I had always a misgiving that she would get her death from me, and last night I fear the presentiment was nearly verified ... I had not pronounced two sentences before one and all of his troops deserted him. The roar that resounded from every part of the benches behind him (which were very full) was as extraordinary to me as it must have been agreeable to him.
Morpeth, however, took Tierney’s side, and got the impression that he had ‘had some influence with his irregular troops’. The Hollands, too, were outraged by Creevey’s behaviour.
He said the bill would not pass the Lords, but what would the queen get? ‘She will get her name in the liturgy’, said I. ‘Oh yes, for that, but all will be forgot and quiet in six months’. ‘What’, said I, ‘won’t you hang these ministers?’ ‘Ah’, replied Tierney, ‘I wish I had my life on so good a tenure as the ministers have their places’.
Add. 56541, f. 85.
On 23 Nov. 1820 Tierney joined in the rowdy opposition attempt to delay the prorogation by Black Rod so that Brougham could deliver a message from the queen. Lord John Russell*, in Paris, found it hard to ‘fancy the cautious Tierney applauding a schoolboy riot’.
At Cassiobury in the last days of 1820 Tierney, just recovered from ‘a terrible cough and cold’, told Sir Robert Wilson* that he was ‘all for refusal of [the] queen’s allowance, be the sum what it may ministers propose to offer, until her name is restored to the liturgy’.
represent the opposition as an army invariably acting under the orders of a general ... [he] disavowed the power and command which ... [he] ascribed to him; if such a power were offered to him he would decline the responsibility attached to it.
HLRO, Hist. Coll. 379, Grey Bennet diary, 2.
On the address, in a speech described by the Grenvillite Member William Fremantle as ‘tame’,
had given them such a root in the church, in the army, and in the navy, as proves, when a strong resistance is made against them, that the sense of the people is opposed to them, since a great number of the people are absolutely under their fangs.
Henry Labouchere*, a spectator at the debate, was disappointed with the ‘eloquence and debating talent’ displayed, but said that ‘Tierney alone exceeded my expectations’. John Whishaw noted that he ‘has spoken very well, but is declining in vigour. His health is quite unequal to these late nights’.
In mid-February 1821 Henry Grey Bennet, reflecting on the increasing enthusiasm of opposition for the ‘Mountain’s’ campaign for economy and retrenchment, hoped ‘the leaders will take an interest in the whole affair’, but thought that ‘if not it will be necessary to come to an understanding with Tierney, who is not to be allowed to take our exertions amiss if he absents himself on any plea except bad health from his daily attendance in the House’.
many of our rational friends think it will be better and that when ... there is no leader, there will be less jealousy of him, and that his opinion will have more weight and that perhaps the whole party may hang better together or, if not this, that they will quite divide and the violent ones walk off together.
Lady Airlie, Lady Palmerston and her Times, i. 86; Lady Palmerston Letters, 74.
In fact the party, which Tierney, ground down by indifferent health and left to sink or swim by Grey, felt unable any longer to control, was ‘now completely disorganised’, in the words of John Campbell II*.
Tierney agreed with Creevey, 6 Apr. 1821, that distress petitions had been disregarded, but he was not prepared to countenance the denunciation of the dismissal of Lord Fife* from his household post for voting for repeal of the additional malt duty which Creevey had incorporated in his amendment against going into committee of supply. Later that day, however, he voted to reduce the war office grant. He voted for further army economies, 11, 16 Apr. On 12 Apr. he supported Hume’s motion for the disfranchisement of civil officers of the ordnance as a remedy for a specific grievance at Queenborough, but said he was not willing to conflate it with ‘the grand question of parliamentary reform’. He gave silent votes for Lambton’s, 18 Apr., and Russell’s, 9 May, motions on that subject, and for reform of the Scottish county representation, 10 May. He divided for repeal of the Blasphemous and Seditious Libels Act, 8 May, and inquiry into Peterloo, 16 May. He voted to censure of delays in the proceedings of the commission of judicial inquiry, 9 May, and was named to the select committee on the Irish report, 26 June (and again, 19 Mar. 1823). He voted fairly regularly for economies during May, and was in the minority for Hume’s general motion for retrenchment, 27 June 1821. He voted for mitigation of the punishment for forgery, 23 May, 4 June. He divided for inquiry into the administration of justice in Tobago, 6 June, and in condemnation of the suppression of liberalism in Sicily, 21 June. He was, however, one of the few Whigs who supported the grant of £6,000 to the duke of Clarence, as he explained on 8 June 1821.
Tierney and his wife spent the late summer at Sandgate, near Folkestone, and moved in mid-September to Dover. Though not ‘much surprised’ that Wilson’s ‘indiscretion’ had got him into ‘a scrape’, he was ‘sincerely sorry’ for him after his dismissal from the army on account of his conduct at the queen’s funeral, and advised him as to his best course of action when he called on his return from the continent. In early October, telling Grey that he was otherwise out of the way of political news, he wrote:
My aversion to the present system does indeed daily increase, but, as I do not see how I can contribute to its overthrow, I may as well not set my bile afloat by worrying myself about it, at least during the recess. When Parliament meets ... I shall, if I continue as well as I am at present, have quite enough of storms and bitterness in the course of what will probably be the bustling and angry session which I shall witness.
Add. 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland, 11, 21 Sept., 7, 11, 13 Oct.; Grey mss, same to Grey, 3, 10, 31 Oct. 1821.
In December 1821 he convinced himself that the recruitment by the ministry of the Grenvillites and the Irish appointments of Lord Wellesley and William Plunket* indicated that ‘the king is friendly to [Catholic] emancipation, and that it is nearer at hand than many imagine’. He maintained this view, notwithstanding Grey’s cynicism, and refused to believe that he would ‘find a good many flying off this year on the Catholic question’.
On the eve of the 1822 session, when he was ‘in good health and spirits’, he could ‘never remember town so empty when the meeting of Parliament was so close at hand’ and admitted that he knew ‘nothing of the intention of opposition’. He told Mackintosh that ‘he thought none of us (barring unforeseen calls) should speak, but should leave the ministers and the country gentlemen to squabble’, though he placed little faith in the reports that ‘the country gentlemen are coming up in a rare humour, and are to frighten ministers out of their wits’: ‘I do not take the wrath of Messrs. Gooch and Co. to be quite so formidable’. He was critical of Russell for writing public letters on the corn laws to Huntingdonshire farmers.
Tierney was at Worthing in August, and moved on to Brighton towards the end of the month. He anticipated no major changes following Londonderry’s suicide; wrongly predicted that Canning would still go to India; thought that there was not the remotest chance of an approach being made to the Whigs, who were ‘as much out of the question as if they were out of the world’, and supposed that the government, however reconstituted, would ‘have a sore time of it’ in Parliament’ but, ‘in the present state of their opponents’ would ‘contrive to keep their heads above water’.
I quite agree that it is foolish for any of our friends to proclaim the impossibility of our having the means within ourselves to form a government, but I must be forgiven if I think that it would be a very difficult undertaking, and if I confess myself entirely in the dark as to the manner in which it might be managed ... To constitute anything which could deserve the name of an administration there must be a great deal more than a mere muster of noblemen and gentlemen ready to accept the principal places. This I should say under any circumstances, but more especially in the present state of public affairs.
Brougham and Early Friends, iii. 46; Bessborough mss, Brougham to Duncannon [4 Sept. 1822].
Tierney, who was worried by the illness of two of his children, welcomed Hume’s reported disavowal of his connection with the Whigs, and was made ‘sick’ by the adulation of Canning on his promotion to the foreign office: ‘Anyone would suppose he was some young man of great promise but untried talents, instead of being an old battered politician who has been spouting all over the country for the last 20 years’. He was reported as believing that the introduction of Canning had made the ministry ‘stronger’; but at the close of 1822, writing from Russell Farm, near Watford, which his widowed sister rented, he observed that ‘if our friends act with common prudence and will have but a little patience they may occupy a more advantageous position than six months ago they could have hoped for’.
Bedford, deploring the opposition hierarchy’s desertion of Hume when he attacked the recent appointment of a lieutenant-general of the ordnance, 12 Feb. 1823, commented that Canning had ‘laid himself particularly open, and it would have been a fine opportunity for old Tierney in his better days, mais ces beaux jours ... sont passes’.
Tierney voted for information on Catholic burials, 6 Feb., and the criminal jurisdiction of the Isle of Man, 18 Feb. 1824. He divided for reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 26 Feb. He voted for Hume’s attempts to reduce the ordnance estimates, 27 Feb., when he also voted for repeal of the usury laws, as he did again, 8 Apr. He spoke and voted in support of Abercromby’s charge of breach of privilege against lord chancellor Eldon, 1 Mar. The following day he voted for repeal of the window tax. Like Brougham, he thought inquiry preferable to Heron’s proposed bill to end the necessity of a renewal of offices on a demise of the crown, 4 Mar. On 15 Mar. he was in the opposition minorities on the beer tax, flogging in the army, and the grant for Protestant charter schools; and he voted against the provision for the publication of Irish proclamations, 19 Mar. Although ‘a fast friend to the principle of free trade’, he applauded Alexander Baring’s efforts to persuade government to hear the representations of the silk manufacturers before proceeding with the reduction of duties, 18 Mar. He opposed the aliens bill, 23 Mar., 2 Apr., when, following Canning, he stressed the importance of Britain’s maintaining ‘not a nominal but a real neutrality’ in European affairs; Canning’s friend Charles Ellis* thought he spoke ‘very well’.
He did not write to Grey again until mid-January 1825, having just arrived in London, where he had not spent a fortnight since the summer. He could not guess how Canning would handle the Catholic question, but, hearing that many Whigs approved the conduct of the Catholic Association, was clear as to his own line:
My vote will be given as it always has been, but I must be pardoned if I steer clear of anything that looks like making common cause with Messrs. [Daniel] O’Connell* and Co. Indeed, they have parted company with us, their oldest and most tried friends, and have thrown themselves upon Sir F. Burdett* and [William] Cobbett†. Let my opinion, however, of their proceedings be what it may, I am more and more convinced of the pressing necessity which exists of granting their just claims, and I lament that the intemperate speeches with which the Association commenced its sittings should have frightened away some of their former supporters.
Gratified that Grey and Holland agreed with him, he planned to remain silent, if possible, until the ‘regular question of emancipation’ came on. He approved of Canning’s policy towards the independent South American states, but found it ‘really amusing’ to see him being ‘cried up as the champion of liberal principles’, though acknowledging that he was infinitely preferable to the Tory old guard.
Tierney and his wife went to Brussels in the second week of September, but he was laid low with diarrhoea and a ‘derangement’ of his liver. To his surprise and amusement Cumberland, who was also there, was uncommonly civil to him, and they ‘vowed everlasting friendship’. Expecting a ‘confounded dissolution’, which did not in the event take place, he returned to London earlier than planned. He took a pessimistic view of prospects for the Catholic question, and had ‘no idea of again being in a majority [on it] when the present Parliament is no more’, for ‘the sense of the country is against us’. He had misgivings about Lord Tavistock’s* address to Bedfordshire declaring that at the next election he would neither solicit votes nor spend money; but Bedford, Tavistock’s father, dismissed them as an example of his ‘usual way of croaking’.
With Grey I have not exchanged a line since he went out of town ... The meeting of Parliament is now near at hand and, though there are no longer any of the old party battles to be fought, I suspect there will be plenty of debating. Corn, currency and trade will it is most probable furnish many a long night, to say nothing of the state of slavery in the colonies ... and the Catholic question ... Of the state of the country as to money and trade there are many and contradictory reports, but, if I am rightly informed, the full effect of the late alarm has not yet been felt and great distress in the commercial world is to be looked for. Happily there seems to be no prospect of the peace being interrupted or the prospect would be very discouraging ... I have nothing to complain of but that I grow older every day and feel it.
Add. 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland, 25 Nov. 2, 19 Dec. 1825, 16 Jan. 1826.
In the House, 9 Feb. 1826, Tierney got Robinson, the chancellor, to admit that the Bank had not made any formal proposal for the establishment of branches in the country. His initial impression of the measures proposed by government to deal with the banking crisis was favourable; but on 17 Feb., a few hours after Peel, the home secretary, had told the duke of Wellington that he seemed ‘indifferent’, he attacked the promissory notes bill as an abrogation of their stated principle of ‘a speedy return to a metallic currency’. He called for the issue of £5,000,000 in exchequer bills on ‘proper security’, which would facilitate a ‘return to a wholesome state of things ... a large circulation of paper, founded on a solid, substantial metallic currency’. Greville thought this speech ‘admirable’.
All the landed interest are in a terrible commotion ... I have had no private communication with anybody but G[rey] and I then saw enough to satisfy me that the less I meddled the better as I might subject myself to the imputation of beating up for recruits against those with whom I am most sorry to differ. Upon my own opinion I must vote, and, if it be necessary, speak. The conduct of government has been very unaccountable and is, I admit, liable to much animadversion, but having supported Whitmore’s motion ... it is impossible for me not to give my countenance to a measure which provides some remedy for the evil which I deprecate ... I cannot say that I am in the sweetest possible temper.
He was ‘vexed’ to see Grey (to whom he seems not to have written after the summer of 1825), ‘after professing to withdraw from all political activity’, joining Lord Malmesbury and ‘the most violent of the Tories’ in attacking the government on this issue in the Lords, 1 May. From the other side of the protectionist fence, Bedford commented that ‘old Tierney the consumer’ had ‘always been the enemy of the agricultural interest, without understanding a jot of the subject. All he cares about is cheap bread, and when he gets it, what a pretty state the country will be in!’
clear himself from having given any assistance to, or having participated in, what he conceived to be a system of delusion ... He washed his hands of it ... He felt no hostility to Lord Liverpool. He wished him every possible good ... as a man whom he respected; and he also wished him a little more nerve and firmness as a minister.
Add. 51668, Bedford to Lady Holland, 23 May; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Denison diary, 19 May [1826].
Later that day he was in the majority for Russell’s resolution proscribing electoral bribery. He came in again for Knaresborough at the general election the following month.
Tierney stood by his support for the opening of the ports, even though it turned out that the legislation was ‘so worded that it will not meet the case’.
what kind of campaign the opposition intended to carry on, he said, ‘There is no opposition now. I and others have long since given it up, the parties now are the government and the Canningites, and I and a great many others are of the latter class’.
Add. 40389, f. 123.
Three months later, when Hobhouse found him with Burdett, ‘discussing in what form the Catholic question ought to be brought on’, he ‘lamented that there was no opposition, no man to whom the country looks up’.
How the new minister is to carry on the war is beyond my comprehension, that is to say with any strength of his own. He cannot hazard a single division without an assurance of our full support. Indeed I do not see how he is to form his staff without our help and though I now begin to think he must ask for it, I own I do not understand how it is to be obtained. Without us I should say Canning’s administration, unless he can whistle back the Tories, cannot last through the session ... I am afraid ... [Grey] is under evil influence.
Indeed Tierney, who was not particularly well, was upset by reports of Grey’s ‘ill considered invective’ against Canning, though he claimed to be unwilling to ‘pledge myself either to support or oppose the new administration’ without knowing what line Canning intended to take on the Catholic question. He observed to Holland in mid-April:
There never was a moment in which we were called upon for so much firmness, circumspection and temper, and what remains of our character will revive or be extinguished as we conduct ourselves. The state of the country requires a government bearing upon the face of it the appearance of stability ... God forbid that I should see ... [Eldon’s] gang brought back again and above all that I should see it restored to power in such a way as to induce a belief that their services could not be dispensed with. Now a short-lived ministry with Canning at its head would I am afraid have just such an effect.
Canning’s Ministry, 124; Add. 51584, Tierney to Holland, 12 [?13] Apr. [1827].
Soon afterwards he was quoted in Tory circles as saying that there was ‘no chance’ of the Whigs forming an alliance with Canning; and there was a curious report that he, like Grey, was actually ‘adverse’ to a junction.
If I close my political life (and to withdraw at this moment would be to do so, as well as to give offence to a very great majority of my friends) I leave him as unprotected as I was myself when I began the world, and deprive him of the only advantage which can in any degree serve to counterbalance the follies of my own life, and the little use I have made of the talents which you at least I know will not accuse me of overrating from any vanity and self conceit ... People of all ranks and degrees seem to me to be gone mad about a junction with Canning. Some are actuated by a natural hatred of the Tory faction, some by being heartily sick of the thing called opposition, and not a few by a wish for office. All that can be said for them is that in giving their support to Canning they are not conscious of any dereliction of principle. The junction I am persuaded would in the first instance be popular, but how long such a temper as now prevails may last is another question. Unless the great mass of the Whig interest can cordially co-operate in giving and have some satisfactory security for receiving support by the projected union, the experiment is full of danger.
Add. 51584, Tierney to Holland [22 Apr. 1827].
Holland strongly urged him to take office, arguing that it would be ‘folly’ to refuse on account of scruples about offending Grey, and that no dereliction of principle would be involved. He also pressed Lansdowne to ensure that Tierney was given ‘a post of honour and profit’. Tierney still hesitated, fearful that the Catholics would be sacrificed to the king’s prejudices.
My speech on Canning’s ‘Master-mind’
One great mistake contains, I find:
Please to correct the gross mis-print
Of ‘Master-mind’, for ‘Master-Mint’.
Cent. Kent. Stud. Stanhope mss U1590 C138/1, Strangford to Stanhope, 28 Apr. 1827.
Bedford deplored the coalition, but told Holland that
what pleases me best in all these ridiculous transactions is to see old Citizen Tierney become a cabinet minister after 40 years’ hard labour to attain that eminence. I am pleased at it, because I like him and admire him personally, very sincerely; because I think it will cheer his old age, and he will not be troubled with any ‘compunctious visitings’.
Add. 51663, Bedford to Holland, 5 May [1827].
Tierney sat on the second bench on the government side of the House, 1 May, and on the treasury bench, 7, 16 May, when he moved the adjournment, in what was his sole reported contribution to debate during the life of the ministry. He told his son that their victory on 7 May, when, on Gascoyne’s motion for inquiry into the shipping interest, ‘the enemy were afraid to come up to the scratch and ran fairly away’, was ‘by far the most satisfactory thing that he has seen yet’.
by main force [to] keep ... [him] from his wonted course of twaddle. I see him shaking his head and looking wise and saying we can’t carry on the government in the House of Commons now Canning is dead. Let him speak for himself. I say we can. I say he himself is more than a match for all Peel can bring against him. But I say whether he is or not, I am, and I say it without the least vanity, but because there are always some Tierneys ... who, distressing themselves, choose also to be so kind as to distress all their friends and to be fainthearted for others.
Holland, however, assured him that ‘Tierney’s head was never more fixed, nor his heart less appalled than upon this occasion’; Brougham was glad to hear it.
feel as confident as you do that our friends and the public will support us if the result is to be our retiring ... I am afraid that some of our adherents and a large portion of the country will ... strongly express their disapprobation of the part we act. We do not live in times when anything that savours of resistance to power is likely to meet with encouragement or even countenance ... As things stand at the moment [25 Aug.] all I can say to you is that ... if the Canningites are steady and act with us, as I am sure we wish to act with them, the king, so far as relates to Herries, cannot do otherwise than give way. If there is to be temporizing, timidity and concession, our days are numbered.
Tierney mss 37c; Add. 51584, Tierney to Holland [25 Aug.]; 51586, same to Lady Holland, 22 Aug. 1827.
He hoped for salvation from the offer of the exchequer to William Sturges Bourne*, but on his refusal was thrown back into agonies of indecision, as he told Lady Holland, 31 Aug.:
We have a most delicate and difficult game to play, and I do not doubt we shall be severely censured whatever we do. If we stay in with Herries we shall be said to disgrace ourselves. If we resign we shall be charged with breaking up the government and letting in the Tories. Would that some creditable middle course could be devised, but I hardly see how it can be looked for.
Add. 51586.
He was by now, however, convinced that the nomination of Herries had originated not with the king but with Goderich and, while claiming that this did not ‘alter my opinion as to the unfitness of the appointment, which I still think a most improper one’, he did not feel that he could advise Lansdowne to refuse the entreaty which the king was expected to make to him to withdraw his tendered resignation, for the sake of the public service, 1 Sept. 1827. He wrote to this effect to Lansdowne before he went to Windsor that day, ‘after a sleepless night’, and confessing that ‘I never had a harder battle than between my feelings and my discretion’. He entirely endorsed Lansdowne’s submission to the king’s request: ‘I heartily rejoice that you tendered your resignation, but I think, there being no sacrifice or even compromise of any principle in question, you would not have been justified if you had continued to press it after the earnest manner in which His Majesty was pleased to appeal to you’.
Russell found Tierney, who got into a panic over the impending Lanarkshire by-election, fearing ‘an end to all cordial co-operation with the friends of liberal principles in Scotland’ if the lord advocate was allowed to continue supporting the Tory candidate against a Whig, ‘much out of humour’ when he met him at the Hollands’ Bedfordshire home at Ampthill just after the crisis had been resolved. Yet Lady Holland reported that he was ‘more at ease since the last breeze ... and has become quite fond of Lord Lansdowne and praises and extols him to the skies for his compliance’.
What I wrote to you some time ago was simply from my own observation. I passed two days with him, and three or four hours tete a tete, and thought he had lost much of that lively fancy, cheerfulness and gaiete de coeur, which used to delight us all; but I did not mean that he was going to hang himself, au pied de la lettre!
Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 146; Add. 51669, Bedford to Lady Holland, 26 Oct. [1827].
Tierney, whom Holland found infuriatingly and unusually ‘boutonne’ at Brighton in early November 1827, assured Lady Holland that the story that ministers were ‘endeavouring by some compromise’ to prevent the Catholic question from being brought on next session was no more than malicious gossip.
In mid-November 1827 Tierney suggested to Goderich that Althorp should be appointed to the chairmanship of the finance committee. Herries, who later denounced Tierney as ‘an old rogue, the very focus of intrigue, descending to all kinds of tricks’, appeared at first to acquiesce, but subsequently raised strong objections and threatened to resign. Certainly Tierney, disregarding an understanding with Huskisson, carried on covert negotiations with Althorp. The deadlock created by Herries’s intransigence led to the collapse of the government, as the feeble Goderich threw in the towel in early January 1828.
disgust ... that the friends of Canning, in return for the cordial and efficient support they received from the Whigs, should so readily avail themselves of an opportunity to exclude us from the cabinet, and to form a junction with those who have been his and their most inveterate enemies ... The compromise between Herries and Huskisson is most curious ... Herries appears to Huskisson a harmless cabinet minister when changed into the master of the mint. But all this is too contemptible to be talked of ... How all this will go down in the House of Commons remains to be seen, but I confess that I rather expect it will succeed, at least in the outset. I do not see how we are to embark at once on a systematic and furious opposition without exposing ourselves to the same censures which we heaped upon our opponents last year. At any rate so far as I am concerned I have no stomach for attacking anything but such measures as may seem fairly to provoke a battle. A great deal will depend upon the manner in which the recent change shall be received in Ireland.
Advising his son of Wellington’s friendly disposition, he wrote: ‘Do not trouble your head about my politics except to remember that they are very near their end, and that there is very little probability of my ever being again in office’.
This marked the effective end of Tierney’s political career. He was ‘very far from well’ in the spring of 1828, but recovered by slow degrees at Brighton, from where he wrote at the end of April that Wellington had ‘a very difficult game to play’ on the Catholic question, and that the Whigs ‘ought to be very well satisfied with what he has done’. He was ‘not sorry to have been away’ from the reportedly fractious proceedings of the finance committee, to which he had been named, 15 Feb. He was agreeably surprised by the majority to consider Catholic relief, 12 May, when he took a pair. It was rumoured in late August that he was ‘breaking up’ and close to death; but he was in fact tolerably well, and he improved still more when he returned to Brighton in the autumn.
Tierney was ‘quite well, and in good spirits’ in August 1829, and, having lost another Robarts nephew in October, he went to London from Russell Farm in early January 1830.
He was one of my oldest friends, and almost the only one remaining of those with whom I was connected on my setting out in public life. There never has been any interruption of our mutual regard, though some divergence in our political feelings and conduct on one or two occasions ... But I can think of nothing now but his many amiable and valuable qualities, which render his loss irreparable.
Lieven-Grey Corresp. i. 422-3.
The Hollands were deeply upset. Lord Holland lamented the loss of ‘one of my best and oldest friends, and the pleasantest one that public life ever procured me. Indeed, so agreeable a man I do not think is left behind him’. Bedford wrote of him as ‘a valued and excellent friend ... and a constantly cheerful and kind hearted companion’; while Russell said he would miss his ‘kind, friendly, agreeable conversation’. Holland’s son Charles Fox* observed that ‘he was of all the older set of Holland House the one I loved and liked the most’.
Tierney was a man of great personal charm and a genuine master of debate, although, as he told Tom Macaulay*, ‘he never rose in the House without feeling his knees tremble under him’.
one of the cleverest debaters in a clear, simple, condensed, unpretending style, appropriate, as to its language, to the matter that I ever knew. He never affected eloquence and imagery, and no man had the same talent for putting down and ridiculing all his opponents who attempted flights of eloquence.
Warws. RO MI 247, Philips mems. i. 363.
He would almost certainly have made a fortune had he opted for a career at the bar. As a politician he was often weak, pessimistic and indecisive, and perhaps too much given to intrigue. Hobhouse wrote three days after his death:
The panegyrics in the newspapers seem to me to be true as to his parliamentary capacity, but false as to his integrity. My father, who knew him well, told me he was as great an intriguer as ever lived. I also think that no statesman ever took such false views of coming events ... His conjectures, so far as I ever heard of them, were never happy.
Broughton, iv. 6.
Holland, who thought he was ‘much more disinterested than his sometimes grovelling way of talking of public virtue led superficial men to imagine’, commented:
It was hardly in his nature to take any step without some previous hesitation or some subsequent misgivings ... His oratory, though of no elevated, commanding or even brilliant kind, was perhaps the most popular and the most agreeable, and certainly by far the most original, then left in Parliament ... In truth his irresolution was fed, if not engendered, by that very sense of humour which enabled him to discern so keenly and to expose so admirably whatever was ridiculous in other public men. His pleasantry and easy manners shed a charm over all intercourse with him, even on the driest matters of business and detail ... Though not destitute of spirit, and though his physical courage was redundant rather than deficient, he had perhaps less pride and certainly far less vanity than any man of equal talents and acquirements whom I ever had an opportunity of observing ... In his capacity as leader of a party he was sometimes too readily offended at insignificant deviations, and disproportionately alarmed at the indiscretion of individuals. He was ... always striving to be more circumspect in conducting other men than is compatible with preserving any authority over them at all; and yet by a contradiction not uncommon in the caution which has its source in timidity, he was occasionally so enamoured of some crotchet or refinement of his own that he was hurried into courses hazardous and rash.
Add. 51785, Holland to C.R. Fox, 7 Feb. 1830.; Holland, Further Mems. 265-7.
Brougham, who detested his ‘doctrine of self-distrust and stultification’, later wrote:
He possessed sufficient industry to master any subject, and, until his health failed, to undergo any labour. His understanding was of that plain and solid description which wears well ... To any extraordinary quickness of apprehension he laid no claim; but he saw with perfect clearness, and if he did not take a very wide range, yet, within his appointed scope his ideas were strongly formed, and ... luminously expressed ... Everything refined he habitually rejected; partly as above his comprehension, partly as beneath his regard; and he was wont to regard the efforts of fancy still lower than the feats of subtlety ... A man undeniably of cool personal courage; a debater of as unquestioned boldness and vigour, he was timid in council; always saw the gloomy side of things; could scarcely ever be induced to look at any other aspect; and tormented both himself and others with endless doubts and difficulties ... It is probable, however, that this defect in his character as a politician had greatly increased as he grew older ... He was one of the surest ... speakers ... and his style ... seemed so easy and so natural to the man as to be always completely at his command ... He was wanting in decision and vigour ... until he rose, when a new man seemed to stand before you.
Add. 30115, f. 100; Hist. Sketches (1839), ii. 144-6, 152, 155.
Tierney’s son wrote to Holland, 4 Nov. 1831:
His shrewdness and penetration were employed not in refining upon that which was plain in itself, but in stripping from truth, or rather from the simplicity of truth, all the colouring with which he found it disguised. Of all the men I ever knew he was perhaps the easiest to be amused, the most tolerant of a bore, and the best natured apologist for dullness and mediocrity in others ... [He was marked by] a total absence of all vanity and pretension.
Add. 51836.
Mackintosh recalled him as ‘so shrewd and droll - the words seemed made for him’.