Western Worthies | Page 5

the bar. He practised at the Chancery bar, and attended the Oxford Circuit for two years. He withdrew from practice in 1843, but still retained his name on the rolls of Lincoln's Inn. In 1847, four years after this withdrawal, he received the appointment of Stipendiary Magistrate at Merthyr-Tydvil and Aberdare, the office previously held by his father, and for a period of more than five years he presided at the Police Courts of those towns. From this office he retired in the December of 1852, when he was elected Member for the Merthyr boroughs, the seat having become vacant by the death of that Sir John Guest whom his father had unsuccessfully opposed many years previously. Mr. Bruce has all along manifested a deep interest in the affairs of his own neighbourhood. He was Deputy-Chairman of Quarter Sessions in his native county of Glamorganshire, and he was also Chairman of the Vale of Neath Railway, Captain of the Glamorganshire Rifle Volunteers, and fourth Charity Commissioner of England and Wales.
Mr. Bruce retained his seat for Merthyr without interruption for a period of seventeen years. He had been ten years in the House of Commons when, in the November of 1862, he was nominated to office by Lord Palmerston; and it is worthy of remark that he was then appointed Under-Secretary of the very department over which he now presides--the post which was conferred the other day by Mr. Gladstone on the young and promising Member for Stroud. Mr. Winterbotham has not had to serve as long a political and administrative apprenticeship as his chief; for at the early age of twenty-seven, and after a Parliamentary career of only two years, he has leapt into the office which Mr. Bruce did not procure till he was twenty years older and a Member of ten years' standing. This significant fact seems to "point a moral." It shows that there is now-a-days a better chance for the man who is capable for an important political post, despite his circumstances and antecedents. Mr. Winterbotham is as staunch a Liberal and as pronounced a Nonconformist as any of his ancestors; and yet, as we have seen, he is appointed at twenty-seven by Mr. Gladstone to an office which Lord Palmerston did not bestow upon Mr. Bruce until the latter was verging on fifty; and it is not at all improbable that Lord Palmerston, when he made the appointment in 1862, took credit to himself for stretching a point in favour of a laborious and deserving man?
Mr. Bruce had been Under-Secretary at the Home Office for about a year-and-a-half when he was appointed Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. This office he held for more than two years. His tenure of it came to a close in 1866, when Lord Derby (or rather Derby-cum-Disraeli) returned to power. It was during these two years, in which he devoted himself to the subject of education, that he made the most impressive appearance which any portion of his career has yet presented either to the House of Commons or to the country. Though a nominee of Lord Palmerston, and like his patron anything but an advanced Liberal, he displayed an apparent breadth of view and an earnestness of purpose in his new sphere of Ministerial labour which were exceedingly creditable to him. Some of his speeches on education were admirable, and their tone may be guessed from the fact that they made him a favourite at the time with such organs of public opinion as Mr. Miall's Nonconformist.
It has been argued that Mr. Bruce had not the elevated motives which must inspire a thoroughly successful minister of education; that he was still the police magistrate in his ideas; and that he wished to call in the schoolmaster to aid in the repression of crime. But it is only fair to add that he never said a word to show that he did not value education for itself, and in his own locality he has been a constant patron of Mechanics' and other educational institutions. Again, it has been said that his rejection by the house-holders of Merthyr at the general election, indicated that he had not really succeeded in winning the confidence of the working classes. But there are other circumstances to account for this that ought not to be lost sight of. The constituency was suddenly increased from 1390 to 15,500, two-thirds of whom could neither read nor write. They chose, with great judgment, Mr. Richard, an eminent Nonconformist; with less judgment, Mr. Fothergill, an ironmaster, who had been conspicuous for the manner in which he had enforced "Truck," and opposed education. A new constituency naturally chose new members. But nearly 6,000 voted for Mr. Bruce, including, with very few exceptions, every man of education in