Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott Part 18

When I come to the _gros_ of your letter touching politics, I own it appears to me that we have a moral t.i.tle to your serious and even strenuous aid.

I hope you will not think my writing to say so a bad compliment, for, as far as the value of the aid is concerned, even such as yours, I a.s.sure you I cannot afford to buy it at the present moment by personal appeals in writing.

But you praise _justly_ the 'moderation and wisdom' of the R. C.

clergy on the question of the hour--why do you not imitate them?

Simply because you cannot trust those who are acting with me in the _paulo post futurum_. Is that a sound rule of political action? You think much, as I do, of the importance of the Land Question. You see a great evil--you do not see any other man with a remedy--you hold off from us who made a very moderate proposal in 1866, because eminent men among our supporters have made proposals which you think extravagant or crude, and to which we have never given any countenance.

Now I will not indulge myself here by going over the many and weighty matters in which we are wholly at one; all that you say on them gives me lively satisfaction.

I will only, therefore, touch the one subject on which you antic.i.p.ate difficulty as possible--that of political propagandism, meaning the temporal power of the Pope: for I do not suppose you mean to censure English pleas for civil rights of the United Greeks in Poland against the Emperor of Russia, though touching their religion.

I have at all times contended that the Pope as prince ought to have the full benefit of the public law of Europe, and have often denied the right of the Italian Government to absorb him. But you must know that extraordinary doctrines, wholly unknown to public law, have been held and acted on for the purpose of maintaining the temporal power. If you keep to public law, we _can_ have no differences. If you do not, we may: with Abp. Manning I have little doubt we should. But that question is and has been for years out of view, and is very unlikely to come into it within any short period. Rational cooperation in politics would be at an end if no two men might act together until they had satisfied themselves that in no possible circ.u.mstances could they be divided. Q.E.D.

There in brief is my case, based on yours, and I would submit it to any committee you ever spoke before, provided you were not there to bewilder them with music of the Sirens.

Now pray think about it. I shall bother you no more. I wish I had time to write about the Life of Scott. I may be wrong, but I am vaguely under the impression that it has never had a really wide circulation. If so, it is the saddest pity; and I should greatly like (without any censure on its present length) to see published an abbreviation of it.

With my wife's kindest regards,

Always aff'tely yours,

W. E. GLADSTONE.

J. R. Hope-Scott, Esq., Q.C.

Mr. Hope-Scott, in replying to the above letter of Mr. Gladstone's (under date 'Abbotsford, November 4, 1868'), says:--

I fully acknowledge the compliment which you have paid me in writing at such length at such a time, and there are some things in your letter which I am glad to have had from yourself. But your main argument for action fails to convince me. I cannot put 'paulo post futurum' into my pocket, and march to the poll. For the present, then, I cannot enlist with you in politics, but I can do so heartily in any attempt to extend a knowledge of Walter Scott.

The following letters, of the same year, will further ill.u.s.trate Mr. Hope- Scott's view of the Irish disestablishment question, and the independent line of politics which he adopted in his closing years:--

_J. R. Hope-Scott, Esq., Q.C. to the Lord Henry Kerr._

Norfolk House, St. James's Square:

March 22, '68.

Dear Henry,--[The Archbishop] thinks that if Gladstone is serious (which he and I both believe him to be) about the Irish establishment, he will carry his motion, although it seems probable that Disraeli will make it a rallying-point, and may even dissolve Parliament if beat. How he is to manage the latter operation in the present condition of the Reform Question I hardly see....

It is astonis.h.i.+ng to find on all sides such proof of the progress of opinion in Irish, and I think generally, in Catholic matters. The Fenian blister has certainly worked well; but besides that, Ireland and the Catholic religion offer the best field for the Liberals, as a party, to recover the ground which Disraeli last year ousted them from. Hence it is that my two months' absence from England seems to count as years on this point. Indeed, Gladstone's great declaration on Monday last is supposed to be due to the rapid progress of a few weeks, or even days....

Yours affectionately,

JAMES E. HOPE-SCOTT.

_The Same to the Same._

Dorlin, Strontian: Sept. 16, '68.

Dear Henry,--... In politics I have taken my line, and have told Curie and Erskine that, as at present advised, I do not intend to meddle with either Roxburgh or any other election. I trust neither party enough to identify myself with either; and while I do not think that the demolition of the Irish establishment is enough of a religious question to make me support the Liberals, I think it sufficiently so to prevent me siding with the Conservatives. On the other matters which you mention, members of both political parties seem to be at present free to follow their own consciences or interests, but their leaders may at any moment require obedience, and in that case I would rather trust the necessary tendency of the Liberals than that of the Conservatives on all home questions; and foreign policy seems, by accord of all parties, to have now settled into non-interference....

Yrs affly,

James R. Hope-Scott.

The Lord Henry Kerr.

In a speech at Arundel, January 5, 1869, perhaps the last Mr. Hope-Scott made on a public occasion, he remarked that he did not think the wisest thing had been done in remodelling the const.i.tuency by simply numbering heads. By depriving Arundel of its member, a large interest had been left unrepresented--that is, the Catholic interest. An intimate friend of his, possessing excellent means of information and judgment, said to me: 'Hope- Scott, in his latter years, was not political--not a party man in any sense. Indeed, he got into a sc.r.a.pe with the Whigs when the Duke of Norfolk voted with the Tories. This much mortified the Whigs, and they complained to Hope-Scott of the Duke's line: he said he wished him to be of no party.

This was his line as a Catholic. Every lawyer, in fact, is Conservative.

Revolution is against all their theories of government.' This, however, so far as it relates to the personal influence exercised by Mr. Hope-Scott, must be balanced by the evidence of another friend, also very intimate with him, to whom the _late_ Duke of Norfolk, while still traditionally a Liberal, had remarked that he thought Conservatives would do more for Catholics, and that nothing was to be expected from the Liberals.

CHAPTER XXVI.

1851-1873.

Religious Life of Mr. Hope-Scott--Motives of Conversion--Acceptance of the Dogma of Infallibility--The 'Angelus' on the Committee-room Stairs--Faith in the Real Presence--Books of Devotion--The Society of Jesus--Letter of Mr. Bellasis--Mr. Hope-Scott's Manners--His Generosity--Courage in admonis.h.i.+ng--Habits of Prayer--Services to Catholicity--Remark of Lord Blachford--The Catholic University of Ireland--Cardinal Newman's Dedication of his 'University Sketches' to Mr. Hope-Scott--Aid in the Achilli Trial-- Mr. Badeley's Speech--Charitable Bequests--Westminster Missions--Repeal of t.i.tles Act--Statement of Mr. Hope-Scott--Letter to Right Hon. S. Walpole-- Correspondence with the Duke of Norfolk--Scottish Education Bill, 1869-- Parliamentary Committee on Convents--Services of Mr. Hope-Scott to Catholicity in Legal Advice to Priests and Convents--Other Charities in Advice, &c.--Private Charities, their General Character--Probable Amount of them--Missions on the Border--Galas.h.i.+els--Abbotsford--Letter of Pere de Ravignan, S.J.--Kelso--Letter of Father Taggart--Burning of the Church at Kelso--Charge of the Lord Justice-Clerk--Article from the 'Scotsman'-- Missions in the Western Highlands--Moidart--Mr. Hope-Scott's Purchase of Lochs.h.i.+el--'Road-making'--Dr. Newman's 'Grammar of a.s.sent'--Mr. Hope- Scott's Kindness to his Highland Tenants--Builds School and Church at Mingarry--Church at Glenuig--Sells Dorlin to Lord Howard of Glossop--Other Scottish Missions aided by Mr. Hope-Scott--His Irish Tenantry--His Charities at Hyeres.

The reader has now been enabled to form an opinion of Mr. Hope-Scott's character and actions in various aspects. The most important of all--his religious life, his services to the Church, and his charities during his Catholic period--remain to be reviewed; and that interval appears the most natural for making such a survey, which comes just before the time when he was visibly approaching the end of his career.

The path by which Mr. Hope-Scott was led to Catholicity has been made sufficiently apparent. We have seen that he was princ.i.p.ally influenced by two reasons, affecting, on the one hand, Church order, and on the other, dogma: the Jerusalem Bishopric, which was set up by Anglicans and Lutherans together; and the Gorham judgment, which rejected an article of the Creed.

These reasons were, as he acknowledged, _clenched_ by his disgust at the outcry raised against the exercise of Papal authority in the inst.i.tution of the Catholic hierarchy in England; and perhaps the greater stress ought to be laid upon this last, as it might have been the less expected, because his early ecclesiastical studies, and early contact with Catholic society, were certainly not such as could have led him to views usually cla.s.sed as 'ultramontane.' On this head it may be sufficient simply to state that, when the time of its promulgation arrived, he rendered, without reservation, the homage of his intellect to the exalted dogma of Infallibility, which in our days has been welcomed by the whole Catholic world from the voice of its Chief Pastor. It is, further, only necessary to refer to his political letter to Mr. Gladstone to see that he endeavoured to make his influence (often so much more effective than any outward agitation) available towards the recovery of the temporal power and the rights of the Holy See.

As to his religious habits as a Catholic, every page of this memoir shows, or might show, that he was a man of great faith, great earnestness, and the most sincere intention to obey the will of G.o.d. Yet it must be remembered that his duty called him into the very thick of the battle of life from morning--till night: whilst so engaged (and it was the case during half the year) it was by no means in his power either to attend daily ma.s.s or to be a frequent communicant, though, at Abbotsford, he would communicate two or three times a week. But a little anecdote will serve to prove that he took care to place himself in the presence of G.o.d in the midst of the busy world in which he moved. He told his friend Serjeant Bellasis that he found he was just able to say the _Angelus_ in the time he took to mount the stairs of the committee-rooms at Westminster. At home he regularly said the _Angelus_; as was noticed by persons who accidentally entered his room at the hours a.s.signed to it, and used to find him standing to say it.

The one absorbing devotion of his Catholic life was undoubtedly the adoration of our blessed Lord in the Sacrament of the altar. Few who have seen him in prayer before the Tabernacle could forget his look of intense reverence and recollection, the consequence of his strong faith in the Real Presence. After the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, St. Michael was his favourite saint; his favourite books of devotion the _Missal_ and the _New Testament_; and, among religious orders, he was personally most attracted by the _Society of Jesus_, with members of which order we have already seen that he was on terms of friends.h.i.+p, even before his reception into the Church.

His admiration for the society lasted throughout his life; and for more than twenty years together, until the end, I believe that for the direction of his conscience it was to the Jesuit Fathers that he always had recourse.

In private conversations, when expressing the great satisfaction he felt at seeing the Society established in Roxburghs.h.i.+re and the Highlands, he often said that the Jesuits seemed to him 'like the backbone of religion.' Yet this love for the Society never led to any want of hearty appreciation of the merits of other Orders, or of the Seculars. Thus he hoped, at one time, to see the Dominicans at Galas.h.i.+els, and showed the greatest regard for the Oblate Fathers of Mary Immaculate, who were for nine years in charge of the mission there, while, both in London, and at Abbotsford and Dorlin, the Fathers of the Oratory and the Secular clergy were welcome and honoured guests. The high value he set upon the Rev. P. Taggart (whom he used to call 'the Patriarch of the Border'), and on the hard-worked Highland priests, is well remembered. I am here, however, partly antic.i.p.ating another branch of the subject, and shall conclude what I have to say about the personally religious aspect of his character by the following letter, from a friend who knew him well, and which contains one or two fine ill.u.s.trations of it, and some very interesting general recollections also:--

_Mrs. Bellasis to the Hon. Mrs. Maxwell-Scott_.

Villa Ste Cecile: Dec. 31, 1880.

My dear Friend,--You ask me [for] some of those impressions which memory gives me of the kindest friend we ever possessed--your excellent father.

Years have rolled on, and yet the intercourse with so striking a person has left a remembrance not to be deadened by lapse of time. The n.o.ble form-- that beautiful, intellectual countenance--the kindly tone of voice, so encouraging in difficulty, so sympathetic in sorrow, so persuasive in advice--who that knew James Hope-Scott could ever forget?

He had a peculiar way of listening, with the head a little bent on one side, to the most trivial subject broached by a friend in conversation, as if it was of the deepest importance, which pleased you with its unintentional flattery. With true Christian politeness he never interrupted you, but, if the subject was an important one, he would come down with some unanswerable view which at once approved itself to the listener as the course to be followed: 'Hope thinks so-and-so'--and it always proved the right thing.

With regard to his generosity, it was his nature to be generous--he had learned the pleasure of giving; and, when any principle was involved in a gift, there was no stint. As an ill.u.s.tration of this, I remember on one occasion a friend--not rich--known to us both, had given me a picture to dispose of, as she did not care for it: it was small, and out of condition, and of an objectionable subject, though we had not perceived its closely veiled viciousness. I failed in persuading a picture dealer to purchase it, and, having to return home by my husband's chambers, I there found Mr.

Hope-Scott. I mentioned my want of success, and your father at once said, 'Let us see it.' It was fetched up from the carriage, and after looking at it attentively--'Well,' he said, 'Mrs. Bellasis, I think you must leave this with me.' I did so, and learnt afterwards that on my leaving the room he crushed the painting with his heel, put it on the fire, and sent me a cheque for my friend for 30_l._