Note return — HARVARD'S HEROES.

He has, on some occasions, put himself prominently forward, and in such a way as to make himself an influential member of Parliament. He moved the vote of confidence in the Whig Government in 1850, when the great debate ensued in which the late Sir Robert Peel made his last speech, and they were kept in office by a poetical majority of nine. But the speech with which Roebuck introduced the motion was entirely eclipsed by the magnificent declamation of Sir Alexander Cockburn, the present Lord-Chief-Justice of England. On another great occasion, in January, 1855, he brought forward in the House of Commons a motion for inquiry into the conduct of the Crimean War. Lord Aberdeen's Government was defeated by an immense majority, and, of course, resigned. Mr. Roebuck was chairman of the Committee of Inquiry; but the cabinet that came in discreetly declined to give him any official post in their ranks. They knew too well the terrible uncertainty and inconsistency of the man's conduct. They could place no reliance either on his temper or his discretion. In 1855 he was one of the numerous candidates for the chairmanship of the Metropolitan Board of Works, but failed to inspire the electors with any confidence in his capacity for the post. In the following year he became the chairman of the Administrative Reform Association, and although the league had at first been highly successful, and aided much in awaking public attention to the miscarriages and mismanagement in the Crimea, yet, under this fatal presidency, it became speedily and ingloriously defunct. This was his last great failure, before abdicating all his early liberal principles. He has of late years endeavored to solace himself for the now irretrievable blunders of his career by an exaggerated indulgence in his idiosyncratic waywardness, paradox, and eccentricity. He is proud of being considered the acquaintance of the Emperor of Austria, and rather pleased than otherwise at being assailed on this account. He affects the society and friendship of conservative members of the House of Commons. He has become tolerant of lords. He may be seen sitting next to Lord Robert Cecil, indulging in ill-natured jocosities, from which his Lordship probably borrows when [pg 400] he indites ill-natured articles for the misguided "Saturday Review."19 He hates the Manchester school of politicians, because their liberality and their sympathy with the cause of freedom and civilization in this country remind Roebuck of his own deflection from the right path.