Karl Marx

Layard

["Neue Oder-Zeitung" No. 107, 5 March 1855]

London, 2 March. Layard, the great Nineveh scholar, the day before yesterday, in a speech to his constituents at Aylesbury, published an interesting chapter illustrating, on the one hand, the manner in which the oligarchy distributes the most important state offices, and on the other, the highly ambiguous position of the so-called liberal and independent members of Parliament vis-à-vis this oligarchy.

Lord Granville, Layard relates, appointed him Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, where he served for three months, when Russell’s ministry fell and the Derby cabinet was formed. Derby offered him the chance to remain at his post until his designated successor, Lord Stanley (Derby’s son), returned from India. Then he would entrust him (Layard) with a diplomatic mission abroad.

“All my political friends,” Layard relates, “were of the opinion that I should accept the offer, with the exception of Lord Russell, who expressed a contrary opinion, which I did not hesitate to follow.”

Layard therefore declined Derby’s offer. Well! Lord Russell becomes minister again, and Layard is not forgotten. Russell now invites him to the ministerial banquet, where he is to take his seat as Under-Secretary of the Board of Control, i.e., the Ministry for India. Layard accepts. But suddenly Russell recollects that an elderly Whig gentleman, by the name of Sir Thomas Redington, who had once been entrusted with Irish, but never with Asiatic affairs, “is still unprovided for” (literally). He therefore intimates to Layard that he should not stand in the way of the elderly gentleman’s accommodation. Layard resigns again. Russell, encouraged by the self-sacrificing modesty of the scholar,

now insinuates to him that he should completely step aside and accept a consulate in Egypt. This time Layard becomes furious, refuses, and makes himself conspicuous in Parliament by important speeches against the oriental policy of the ministry.

Palmerston, as soon as he had formed his cabinet, seeks to buy him off with the post of Secretary of the Ordnance. Layard refuses this, because he understands nothing at all about artillery, etc. How naive! As if the retired Secretary – Mr Monsell, one of the brokers of the Irish Brigade – had ever been capable of distinguishing an ordinary musket from a needle-gun! Palmerston now offers him the Under-Secretaryship at the War Office. Layard accepts, but the next morning Palmerston has discovered that Frederick Peel – this bureaucratic nonentity – is at this moment indispensable at the War Office, of whose functions Peel notoriously understands nothing. As a substitute, he finally offers Layard, in Russell’s name, the Under-Secretaryship at the Colonial Office. Layard considers the circumstances too difficult for him, at this moment, to undertake studies on fifty colonies, with which he has never concerned himself. He refuses, and thus this edifying story ends.

The only moral that the ministerial papers draw from this is: that Layard is still very inexperienced in the ways of the world and has basely forfeited his Assyrian fame.