R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

6 The Marquess of CreweBut here, for the first time in public, he found himselfin friendly opposition to his father, who emerged fromhis retirement in order to head in Yorkshire the Protectionistopposition to Peel. Before this crisis my fatherhad carried on a political flirtation with' Young England',though he was never actually a member of that remarkableforerunner of the Fourth Party of later days. Afterthe fall of Sir Robert Peel, he did not join the brilliantlittle band of Peelites, but declared himself a Liberal andleft the Carlton Club, though remaining a man of theCentre rather than of the Left. Later he regarded himselfas a follower of Lord Palmerston rather than of anyother leader, though I remember hearing him say thatthe statesman with whom he found himself in the fullestsympathy was Lord Aberdeen. Of the two great figureswho dominated in Parliament the later years of his lifeI will say a word in a moment, but it is necessary tomention the two fields in which he principally exercisedhimself—that of foreign politics, and that of penal reformat home. On the first ground he was extremely wellequipped by his knowledge of foreign countries, and bythe ease with which he penetrated into political circlesabroad. He had close personal friends in France, especiallyTocqueville, Guizot, and Montalembert; hisprincipal tie with Germany was his close friendship withthe family of Baron von Bunsen; curiously enough, withall his knowledge of Italy, he had fewer friends andcorrespondents in the Italian political world. He wrotefrequently, in the monthly Reviews and elsewhere, onforeign affairs, and in 1849 he published, in the form ofan open letter to Lord Lansdowne, a remarkable pamphleton The Events o/1848. This created some sensation,which was not diminished by the appearance, in theMorning Chronicle, of an article not merely assailing theopinions expressed in the pamphlet, but filled with coarse