‘_Via media_ never answers in politics, and somehow or other I never can get out of it. My Laodicean spirit is the ruin of me. From having lived with all sorts of people, and seen good in all, the broad black lines of judgment that people usually draw seem to me false and foolish, and I think my own finer ones just as distinct, though no one can see them but myself’ (vol. i. p. 360).
Before long Milnes found a more congenial position on the opposite side of the House. But it must not be supposed that he rushed into sudden and rancorous opposition to his old leader. So long as Peel remained in office, he allowed no personal considerations to interfere with his support of him; and he steadily refused to join those who rebelled when he announced his conversion to Free Trade. Meanwhile, his interest in the burning question of the day being little more than formal, he turned his attention to a social question in which he had long been interested, and introduced a Bill for the establishment of reformatories for juvenile offenders. Among the many combinations of opposite tastes and tendencies with which Milnes was fond of startling the world, could one more curious be imagined than this—the literary exquisite and the criminal unwashed? But in fact this is only a single instance out of many which could be produced to show that the cynical selfishness he affected was only a mask which hid his real nature; perhaps assumed for the sake of concealing from his left hand what his right hand was doing so well. The proposal, we are told, ‘was scoffed at by many politicians of eminence when it was first put forward.’ But Milnes was not to be daunted by rebuffs, and ‘he persevered with his proposal, until he had the great happiness of seeing reformatories established under the sanction of the law, and of becoming himself the president of the first and greatest of these noble institutions, that at Redhill.’ His very genuine sympathy with the poor and the unfortunate, especially when young, is testified to by one of his intimate friends, Miss Nightingale:
‘His brilliancy and talents in tongue or pen—whether political, social, or literary—were inspired chiefly by good-will towards man; but he had the same voice and manners for the dirty brat as he had for a duchess, the same desire to give pleasure and good. Once, at Redhill, where we were with a party, and the chiefs were explaining to us the system in the court-yard, a mean, stunted, villainous-looking little fellow crept across the yard (quite out of order, and by himself), and stole a dirty paw into Mr Milnes’s hand. Not a word passed; the boy stayed quite quiet and quite contented if he could but touch his benefactor who had placed him there. He was evidently not only his benefactor, but his friend’ (vol. ii. p. 7).