The Press. — London, England, 1855-09-01 00:00:00

822 I E flag of revolt in her own territories, and attempt to find employment for her forces at home ? If the Conservative principle, be not alto gether a sham in thri ll country; it must applicable in a great* less dtitik% to ev political situation, an 4 eially to 4 Bitua n so momentous and ftming the present. Leave Lord PALMERAIN atone, avid the chances are that he will, iiot ihugh any ook of policy, but siMply Its factiii.Y Dn. mis chief, make this war a contest between the principles of democratic and of absolute power. In the face of this danger differences of opinion among men of Conservative principle must give way. It is folly to dwell on errors and mistakes when a time of common peril calls for common action. We do not say what that action should be, but we confidently aver that it is only by a cordial union of the essen tial Conservative feeling and principle of the country that the State can be rescued from those difficulties which have gradually been closing round it since Lord DERBY'S Admi nistration was overthrown, which deepened immediately after Lord PALMERSTON was called to the head of affairs, and which have now •assumed a shape of such portentous magni tude as to demand the serious reflection of every rational mind in the kingdom. MR. HAYTER AND HAPPY WELLS. HAPPY, thrice happy Wells ! A short cut to California has been discovered for its ten pounders by the enterprising Mr. HAYTER. None of its small shopkeepers in difficulties need think any more of emigrating to the gold countries. Let them tarry at home, and Mr HAYTER will undertake to deposit huge Treasury nuggets at their doors. Themselves, and their brothers, and their sons, shall be taken care of by the beneficent gentleman who has an innate propensity for lavishing official places upon his voters. After such an an nouncement, we are afraid that there will be an overflow of population into a borough where a man with a vote can make his livelihood. Bnt let strangers seeking to make an acquaintance with fortune ani Mr. HATTER carefully observe—that " None but electors "need apply." To breathe the air of Wells, and ti) exercise honourable industry there, will not be sufficient. Proper votes in proper places will be wanted before Mr. HAYTER showers his favours. Register your vote, plump or split as Mr. HATTER likes, and ask for what you Want. Happy, thrice happy Wells ! In our last number we copied from the Herts Guardian a column of small type containing the catalogue of a great portion of the places bestowed by ' Mr. HAYTER upon the electors of Wells. A cornucopia should be his crest. Plenty of public money—plenty of offices, for the vir tuous electors of Wells. Such, in a word, is the system of Mr. HArrss, who has such a horror of illicit influence, that he advocates " Vote by Ballot." Oh! those virtuous Liberals ! Seriously, we must say that Mr. Hex's exploits in place-giving are wonderful. To nearly every letter of the alphabet amongst the electors of Wells he has paid his respects, commencing with ALLEN, the printer, whom he popped into the Customs, and ending with YOUNG, the baker, whose oven he set up in the Excise. He left out the last letter of the alphabet purposely, in order to suggest a cry of—Zounds I But his political ABC he un derstood perfectly well. Choristers, and coopers, and carpenters, butchers and basket makers, tailors and tinmen, sawyers and Shoemakers—every sort of occupation was honoured by this philanthropic official. To give, and not to say, " good things " was the mission of Mr. HAYTER. Take the " Trades • Directory," and there is not an occupation in it for which he did not show his affectionate regard. Of course there is no official scandal in such a profusion of places ; nor could any ono dream that systematic exercise of patronage in ono THE PRESS. direction could ever approach corruption. Of course not. Nor could any one taunt Mr. c i i i i f HATTER with his ex ordinary affection for his constituei • j put of the purest affec tion for them at nukes choristers i o Oa* offs , a ,changes grocers ' gang .. Ho ud liking JAMES Bu choris •, and 0e it such a name was no " the t m for choir, so Mr. HArrE, I put into C , ~. s. Two other get. sons o were " .te ".y name and profft sion he provided iu the Excise, and of course their appoint tuts had nothing to do with their relationship to his partisans. The two Emmen he snugly located in the Royal dockyard and the Post-office. The name of the FoxwELLs had a sentimental claim on his regard ; the first syllable reminded hini of the Whig orator, and the last of the virtuous borough whose patriotic and independent electors he represents. Their claims as suns of voters did not weigh a feather in the scale with Mr. HAYTER. Nor has Mr. HAYTER forgotten the claims of Literature. MILTON was neglected, and got only five pounds for " Paradise Lost," but Mr. HATTER has discovered a couple of MILTONS at Wells, and he has appreciated the tuneful way in which their kinsfolk recorded their votes. In honour of the glorious name Mr. HAYTER sends MILTON, the tailor, along with his goose, into a good berth at Somerset house, and he does not less for the tailor's son. He loves the sound of old Whig names, and Boa RUSSELL, the currier, and NED RUSSELL, the shoemaker, get places out of traditional respect for Woburn Abbey. Mr. HATTER also wished to show that he was tole rant of the infirmities of human nature. Boa PARSONS g ot a good place from him ; but " Bigamy Bob " had a weakness for having two wives, and when legally convicted of that offence, the gentle and clement HAYTER sighed over his case, as Boa lost his post ; and he then gave another to the brother of that highly distinguished person, who, like Mr. HATTER (though not in the same sense), had " once figured at the bar." What gentleness ! What loving kindness ! What clemency to fallen virtue ! What disinterested apprecia tion of neglected merit ! Strangely enough, no man whose name began with H got a place from him. Any alliterative connection with his own name Mr. HATTER deemed a disqualification, and he " excised " the H's of Wells with the desperation of a Cockney asking for the "'Ounds and 'Orses 'Otel." They would, however, have preferred being " excised " in another fashion. But Mr. HAYTER'S rigid virtue prevailed. He bestowed nothing, also, on any one whose name commenced with " T," being desirous to rebuke the empty egotism and eternal " T " of place•hunters without votes. Happy, thrice happy, Wells ! The electors and their representatives are worthy of their union. There is a reciprocity of admiration between them. " I like a good hater," said Doctor JOHNSON, and the electors of Wells declare that they positively love a " good enough " one The surname of their Member is all they wish to have changed. It sounds of discord, while it unpleasantly suggests the recollection of the " Adminis trative Reform Society," whose members call themselves—the Haters of Corruption MR. PEEL AND MR. BAKEWELL. THE " Leading Journal" has a long article to show how widely the Sir ROBERT PEEL would have differed, on such a vital question as the conduct and policy of the present war, from the disciples who are pleased to call them selves by his name. The writer in the Times, we think, takes a philosophical view of the course likely to be adopted in the present posture of affairs by that illustrious but vacil lating statesman—judging by his living an tecedents. But he, of all public men, was the one whose attitude on any coming question it was most imprudent to prophesy from the mere data of his former proceedings under somewhat analagous circumstances. SATURDAY, But if his followers have fallen away from his principles, so far as those principles can be discetted, wialit li by said of his sons 1 With itg. his FAO*, Sir ROBERT was a man ht gkitire charalliti• (Ltd statesmanlike de. meatbur. In Ida hitch tilt dignity of Prime Min o le r, 1g1 • oi . ",Lktder di her Majesty's Op posi n,",lvertality haVO suffered . He was a flee he English Ilpfthtlai. He was respected abro apnost as much as at home. And, with all his solemnity and reserve, he was a man of stronger feelings and of warmer sym• pathies than the world commonly supposed. But who are these Ministerial subordinates who bear his name ? His eldest son, the wearer of his honour and his territorial suc cessor, is a wrong-headed eitourdi, whose esca pades have successively furnished materials for gossip at Madrid, and Berne, and London ; and who, in his endeavours to subside into respectability,has only contrived to make him self the laughingstock of society, by his swag gering graciousness and by his inconceivable ignorance—which he lavishly imparts, now to a literary reunion at Marylebone, now to a mechanics' institute at Tamworth—while his superiors, who secured him for the sake of his name, see in him only an enfant terrible, who compromises his colleagues by the wildness of his assertions at Polish meetings and to Italian regenerators, and astounds the public by his new discoveries in political history and geography. - - - - But, if not very wise or very modest, he has, at any rate a certain amount of dash which makes him popular elsewhere as well as on the hustings, and consequently exhibits him in very favorable contrast to his brother FRE DERICK, who is intensely unpopular everywhere. Putting aside all question of intellectual power, in which he is more deficient probably than any one of the 658 members of the Lower House, he has neither the quiet dignity of his father, nor the genial itourderie of his elder brother. He is distinguished for nothing save a pedantry as offensive as bis talents are contemptible ; for a deification of red tape and routine, behind which he always entrenches himself, when his department is accused of culpable neglect or cruel indifference. He has calmly vented many safe insults, and made numerous unfeeling speeches ; but the heat of debate has never once betrayed him into generosity, and under the most exciting circumstances he has never been known to lapse into enthusiasm. He appears to be an automaton with no human virtue, and with only the least human and basest of passions. Spitefulness is the only feeling of any kind in which he indulges. But if ho is abstemious in, or utterly abstinent from, the kindlier passions, he but hugs his darling vice the closer with all the fondness of the most sen suous Sybarite. His " appetite but grows " with what it feeds on." After tasting night after night during the session the sweet de light of sneering at every member who. like Mr. &WORD, or Colonel DUNNE, or Sir DE LACY rvANs, spoke with the humanity of Christians, or the feelings of soldiers, of our poor fellows in the Crimea, their hardships, their stoppages from their meagre pay, their sickness, he hails with malicious joy, in the re cess, an opportunity of insulting the feelings of an old gentleman whose son's professional prospects have been ruined. We wish to be clearly understood. General Simpsos, in dismissing young BAKEWELL, acted we have no doubt from a sense of imperative duty, and lAA PANMIIRE, in sanctioning the sentence, probably felt that no discretionary power was really left him. But who except FREDERICK PEEL would have written so cruel a letter to 13AxEwELL's father, rejoicing in the young man's ruin, de nouncing him as a" calumniator," and chuckling at being the organ to announce the hopeless ness of his restoration to the service ? The story is a sad one. We know not whether to rejoice that the unpleasant task of writing to the father fell on an official to whom it was congenial, or to regret that it could not devolve on a gentleman who might have tempered justice with sympathy, and quali fied determination with compassion. X bib._