The Indolent Statesman

MELBOURNE (432 pp.) -- Lord David Cecil--Charter Books ($2.75).

President Kennedy's favorite book concerns a British statesman who made a policy of keeping his country at a standstill for close to a decade and boasting of it. Issued now in paperback, this famed biography of Lord Melbourne makes plain that he was one of the most indecisive, lackadaisical and delightful persons ever to run a country.

In the halcyon days of the middle 19th century, when there were no wars and the most burning issues were the price of corn and the rise of trade unions, Melbourne was able to make a career of wit and irony. He shocked his fellow politicians by his love of paradox, his itch to ridicule everything, including himself. "The stomach is the seat of health, strength, thought and life," he said, alluding to his fondness for food and drink. "If you have a bad habit, the best way to get out of it is to take your fill of it."

Laissez-Faire Marriage. William Lamb, Lord Melbourne, was born to aristocratic ease. He belonged to the great Whig dynasty, whose members "took on the task of directing England's destinies with the same self-confident vigour that they drank and diced." Lamb was never certain who his father was because, as he put it, his mother "was not chaste." But he grew up with a sense of security in his close-knit, comfortable family, early developed a spirit of reasonableness. He fled his first fistfight at Eton with no sense of shame: "If I found I could not lick the fellow, I said, 'come, this won't do; it's no use standing here to be knocked to pieces.' "

In an age of laissez faire, Melbourne was laissez faire incarnate. In both his public and private life, he let people do as they pleased, reprimanded them at most with an ironic comment. He rarely restrained his wife Caroline, an impulsive romantic, whose affair with Lord Byron was the scandal of the time. When Byron finally left her, she made her servants wear buttons with the inscription ''Ne Crede Byron [Do not believe Byron]" and slashed her wrists; Byron retaliated by sending her a bracelet made of the hair of his latest paramour.

At first, Melbourne dabbled reluctantly in politics. He much preferred books and parties. But at 51, after several torpid years in Parliament, he was brought into a Whig Cabinet as Home Secretary. He snapped out of his indolence by harshly putting down hunger riots in the south of England. "I like what is tranquil and stable,'' he announced, and achieved tranquillity by hanging several of the leaders. He scoffed at earnest middle-class reformers, once received a group of them lounging on his sofa. While they talked, he pulled a feather out of a pillow, began to blow it about the room. "Try to do no good," Melbourne advised, "and then you won't get into any scrapes.''

Agreeable Evasiveness. When the government fell in 1834, half-demented King William IV picked Melbourne as Prime Minister because he liked him. "I think it's a damned bore," sighed Melbourne. The populace agreed. "He is certainly a queer fellow to be Prime Minister," remarked a politician. His job, Melbourne believed, was chiefly to keep peace among his quarrelsome Cabinet ministers. By a policy of "agreeable evasiveness," he shored up his shaky government, weathered crises no one expected him to survive. He backed reform measures when he had to, but most of the time he happily saw them defeated in the House of Lords. "When in doubt about what should be done," he said, "do nothing."

Melbourne scored his biggest political success with Queen Victoria. When she succeeded to the throne at 18, Melbourne became her mentor, tried to soften her stern morality. In his wry way, he explained politics to her: "People who talk much of railroads and bridges are generally Liberals." In turn, the Queen adored Melbourne, disliked the less gallant Tories. But in 1841, his last year as Prime Minister, Melbourne unhappily noticed the change Victoria was making in the temper of the country. "This damned morality," he exploded, "will ruin everything!"

Melbourne knew he could not be a gentleman and a politician at the same time, and he preferred to remain a gentleman even in politics. Kennedy, at a time when his own programs are being scuttled, may find some consolation in the philosophical way Melbourne reacted to defeats: "Nobody should be troublesome; they should be made to realize that it is the worst thing there is."

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