The Press. — London, England, 1853-06-11 00:00:00

1 k I ♦s Homer had his Zoilus, so Wellesley had Radicalism railing at his glory. It was not until front to front, army to army, and hero to hero, he met and overthrew his giant adver sary, that a full chorus of national enthusiasm rewarded the inspired sagacity and invincible soul of "The man of men—the Prince of Waterloo." As against the Jacobites of Scotland in 1702, so against the Jacobins and Papists in Ireland, in 1801, the remedy was the same — LEGISLATIVE UNION. Hence the "Catholic claims " were introduced into our politics, and hence those black pages in the " Annals of Party" that record the scandalous statesman ship from whose blunders we are still suffering. V. (From Waterloo to the Papal Aggression iK 1850-I.)—This was an ERA of INTERNAL CHANGE and CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM, in which many triumphs were won, and perils eneoun tered, from which we are not yet free. Chief amongst the last has been the diminution in the moral power of Parliament, which has re sulted, not from the bill of '3l (a measure that was inevitable after the misconduct of '29), but from public honour being violated. The precept of Burke, " So to be patriots as not to forget that we are gentlemen," was deli berately despised by those who, having de serted Mr. Canning on false pretences in '27, as soon us his eorse was cold in the Great Abbey, carried the very measure upon which they had affected to secede. The excuse for this conduct was as discreditable as the deed. Necessity, the plea of the tyrant and the coward, was invoked to gloss over a tergiversa tion as had as the Fox-North Coalition, and worse than the flight in '46, that repeated the policy of renegadoes. Well might the philosophical historian have said in his place in Parliament, " One such change as that of 1829 was one too much in the life of any public man."* The " Annals of Party" record no s uch po litical scandal as the censurable manner in which claims denied to justice were conceded to clamour. Deaf to the prophecies of Burke, to the joint requests of Fox and Pitt, to the soul-stirring appeals of Grattan, and the sober sense of Lord Grenville, ay ! stone-deaf to the eloquent wisdom of the gifted chiefs of two generations, the ears of Sir Robert Peel re mained open only for the roar of the rabble. He hailed au O'Connell as his conqueror in '29, as he crowned Mr. Cobden his victor in '46 ! Not all the daggers of all the Peelites, nor the claspknife of the " Cumberland yeoman," could erase the stains from that. blackest page in our annals of party. Ambition ! If thy dazzled votaries felt in early life the pangs attendant on thy worship, they would shun thy idolatry, and, flying thy baleful lustre, would reverence sonic less ma lignant star. Oh ! for that pen which described the dying Wolsey, to paint for our instruction the mental torment racking the spectral form of Canning, as the expiring statesman lay on his death-bed, in the very room of that classic villa of the princely Cavendishes where Fox, too, disheartened and discomfitted, had breathed his last ! Life ebbs—the body sinks —the prize,—the fatal Premiership,—drops from his relaxing grasp. Yes ! the Peelites have said he shall not keep it, though the united voices of Sovereign and People had railed him to power. Ah ! he has clutched it again ! He will yield it only with life—'t was the bright dream of his youth—'t was the coveted guerdon of his manhood-1 is now the torment of his excruciating death-bed ! 'T is gone ! The last gasp has heaved, and Canning has soared into History. Count his torments and his triumphs—weigh the immor tal name of that being of genius against the broken heart of that persecuted statesman — say, now, will ye covet his agony and glory ! Well ! these things must be left to the moral indignation of History, and to the " reading and thinking few" who form poste rity. But let us mark for public instruction the fatal consequences that have flowed from neglecting the morals of party, and those tra il taenal eentitnents of honour in which Eng lish gentlemen respire. The desertion from Canning in '27. and the • )Ir. Allicau THE PRESS. subsequent concession to the Romanists in '29, shocked the People. From all sides a de mand for Reform arose, and much of the ex citement in '3l sprang—we repeat it emphati cally—from the disrepute east upon Parliament by the anti-Canning Protestants having turned into pro-O'Connell Emancipationists in '29. Thus the Duke of Richmond was called to that Cabinet in which the consistency of Earl Grey was powerfully supported by the energy of Mr. Stanley, in guiding the debates of the Commons. While we were all thinking of Reform, they were calculating at Rome how the spirit of Popery could wring more by cla mour from the Parliament of England. Hay- • ing ousted fifty Protestant members from the Irish representatives (1832), the Pope de manded the confiscation of the Protestant Church. In a moment of weakness the Whigs wavered, and would have allowed the Papacy to insert the wedge, but for the determined conduct of Mr. Stanley, aided principally by the Duke of Richmond, Lord G. Bentinck, and other friends. A Conservative party was then formed, the landed interest and the defenders of the Church uniting with apparent cordiality. '4O arrived, and the famine in Ireland, like the clamour in '29, suggested to Sir Robert Peel the policy which he reduced to system of— surrender ! Mark some consequences never before stated clearly ! While we were debating in '46 and in later days, the Whigs saying that the repeal of Protec tion belonged to theni, the Peelites whispering it was theirs, and all Manchester shouting that it was Mr. Cobden's, the Pope and his Cardinals calmly surveyed our discordant Senate. They saw our traditionary code of party politics can celled, and they beheld our once famous par• liamcntary system impugned in its wisdom and impedeci in its working. Then was the hour for the Jesuits to strike, and aid the Gladstonian philosophy in its Puseyite " de velopments." In the midst of our discords, from the council chamber of the Inquisition the Pope hurled his Hierarchy at our free monarchy, an act of audacity from which the last of the Stuart sovereigns recoiled. He did it, too, with a cry for civil and religious liberty, and the Peelites in both houses—the present Premier—the Viceroy of Ireland—the member for Oxford, and some quondam followers of the Duke of Richmond and Lord Derby in '34, cried " Hear ! hear !" to his Holiness. But Lord John thought of the writings of Milton and Locke, and the deeds of another Russell, and, sounding the tocsin at Durham, pointed out the Pupal ambuscade. England Was indig nant ; she ought not to have been surprised. The Pope remembered '27 and '29. He thought of the Lichfield House compact, and its considerable success, and he saw the con cession to Mr. Cobden in '4O. Taught by his Oxford correspondents, he brooded over the fact, that neither the science of Adam Smith, nor the system of Pitt, nor the suggestions of Huskisson, nor the tendencies of the Whigs, influenced the mind of Sir R. Peel like the organised clamour of the " League." He rea soned that organisation—and the Papacy has an awful one—could do anything. He thought that British statesmen would desert the inte rests of Protestants, as the Peelites had abjured the impulses of Party. When 'lnconsistency was set up for public worship, he thought that other idolatries might be restored in Peel ridden penitent England. But then as ever the Papacy was at war with the Providence of England. The British people with the Bible in their hands overpowered the Pope and his Cardinals, and his Jesuits in and out of Par liament—and his piecrust promises. with sugared sophistry—with all his Oxford per verts, and all his Peelite partisans. Our readers will now see how the morals of British PARTY can have a wide European sig nificance. They will see how the Peelite system of surrender to panic can detract from the moral power of Parliament, amongst the nations. Much remains for us to say on this grave subject. but we ask them now to ponder well upon the following question : What would the state of the Protestant ('hare h he now if Lord Derby had not taken his stand in '3.t against reckless concession. and insisted On retain ing the Irish Church in lien of those " securities" which, in the panic of '29, Sir Robert Peel had SATURDAY, neither the spirit to strive for, nor the foresight to demand Here for the present we pause, and, referring all our recently -published revelations on Party to their appropriate place in the foregoing classification of political phenomena, we will criticise them in detail. Solitary Rambles and Adventures of a Hunter in the Prairies. By John Palliser, Esq. Lon don: Murray. THE spirit of" Sport"—as philosophers tell us —is an inheritance from our ancestors, the noble savages who ran wild in woods, " ere the first laws of tyranny began." According to their theory, the triumph with which the fox hunter first in at the death waves the brush over his head in token of his presence at the " crowner's quest" held, with the relics of the puck for jurymen, over Reynard's carcass; the glee of the crack shot when emptying out thirty-three brace and a half of birds from his game-bag, the trophies of his well-spent day on the heather ; the harder-earned, life-endur ing pride of the deerstalker while bringing home the thickly-tined antlers which will pro claim to coming generations the victory that skill, patience, and the grooved bore have ena bled him to achieve in some Highland glen over its ancient denizens—each and all of these ecs tatic moments, which break the monotony and gild the medium tint of modern civilisation, owe their raptures to the reminiscences of that pri mitive time when men depended solely upon their success in hunting for their chance of a din ner. However worthless the quarry, or artificial the danger of our present pursuit—with what ever ingenuity we may have to surround our chase with fictitious difficulties, may hedge it in with the etiquette of" law," and enhance its value by contrivances which elevate the Jerez nature into articles of costly transfer in Leadenhall Market, or at Messrs. Haines'—the germ of reality lying at the bottom of all these fictions and all this fashion derives its origin from those ancient contests wherein men pursued the genus cervus for their subsistence, and fought with the genus /Ms for bare life. Bri tish barons came in with the Conqueror, but British sportsmen partake the heritage and the triumphs of Nimrod. If as hunters they are not so" mighty" as their great ancestor, it is the beast's fault., and not theirs. The Saxon Mo narch who victimised the wolves, and the Knights of the Round Table who exterminated the dragons, have materially interfered with the development of modern sport. Modern Nim rodism languishes for lack of real dangers and a nobler prey. What our true sportsmen cannot find in rail roaded England, however, they seek in more distant climes. Gordon Cumming has taught us that British pluck and Trulock's rifles may encounter single-handed the densest paehy derniata and fiercest earnivora of the African forests. To this example in one quarter of the globe Mr. Palliser has now added his own ex perience in another. Seduced by the sheer love of sport, he traversed :3,000 miles of sea, and twice as much of land; plunged into the abysses of the American prairies ; threaded, rifle in hand, the vast forests haunted by Red Men and Grisly Bears which cover the broad flanks of the Rocky Mountains ; descended, over the ice in winter, and in his slender skiff in summer, the headlong streams which lead from their snowy summits to the remote outposts of the American Fur and English Hudson's Bay Companies ; and emerged at length into a region of civilised life, French toilettes and polkas, after having starved for three days to gether when game was scarce, and clothed in garments self-made from the skins of the black tailed deer, when his last " continuations made by a professional schneider had given way under the rude wear and tear of a hunter's life in the " far west." Our readers will have discovered that we look upon Mr. Palliser as no common traveller, and on his " Solitary Rambles" as no common book. It is not everybody who will journey to the Yellow Stone River to shoot bison, and when there feel discontented, and wander yet farther afield in order to get a chance at the risly Bears. Nor is it a common hook which, written by no bookmaker, contains the records ■