The Press. — London, England, 1855-06-02 00:00:00

510 VICES OF THE LIBERALS. EVERY person mixing in the general society of the metropolis must be aware that for the last few weeks the tongues of men have been apt to discourse on thb great seacia6l of the day—the corrupt al es betwefn 0 , RIM # oligarchy and the faise-called Theependeni Liberals. That th 6 " Whig &nines " have bought over the block kidicals kit nbtorioill, and never did a large body of Members of Parliament make a more ignominious figure than the parliamentary Liberals at the present time. Nothing more severe can be said of them than that they are now formidable in nothing but numbers. Connections in politics usually depend upon influence of pro perty, character, and talents. In property the " outsider " Liberals are easily matched and surpassed without difficulty. In talents they are sterile. They have produced nei ther orators, administrators, nor original natures, capable of casting light on political problems. In character—but that is the subject on which we desire specially to engage the attention of our readers. It is one of the most momentous facts in the current history of the times that the Liberals have utterly broken down in character. The war has beon flagrantly mismanaged—the Liberals have held their tongues. The most scandalous jobs have been perpetrated—the Liberals have winked at them, and realised by them ! The bravest of the brave have been victimised by official incapacity in Downing street—and the Liberals have refused to join in any manly reclamation against the stupid sacrifice of hecatombs of heroes. Chiefs and subordinates of departments have miscon ducted themselves—and the Liberals, as a body, are as mute as a Marylebone Baronet after he has bartered his influence for place, salary, and title. There is proved ambiguity .of purpose in the Cabinet—and the Liberals are as anxious to smother all inquiry as any of their body after mysteriously-rapid operations in the tea trade, or after confidential whisper ings with the trusty Mr. HATTER in the vote market. The course of business pursued by the latter worthy is thoroughly appreciated by those dealers in Liberalism who, by organised clamour, put " M.P." after their names. At the Congress of Vienna, when the with in the salon of Prince ESTERHAZY were trying who could utter the most extravagant thing about the genius of NAPOLEON, the English Lord DUDLEY distanced them by saying—" He (NAPOLEON) made past glory " doubtful, and future fame impossible." Mr. HArrEa by his exploits has destroyed the posthumous celebrity of the &lice famed " Billy Holmes," and performed such feats in delicate conversations with indelicate M.P.'s, that all future " whips " will be faint-hearted at the magnitude of his illicit achievements. " That the country is sold, and that the " Liberals are bought," is the remark every where. It is vain to deny the charge. It is proved by the conduct of the Radicals as a body. Mr. DISRAELI made a perfectly fair parliamentary motion. The terms of it enabled any really " independent" Liberal to Note for it. And how did the clamorous friends of the ballot and hou4ehOld suffrage behave ? They acted like obsequious hacks to the Trea sury. The country called for censure on the misconduct of responsible Ministers ; Mr. ilirr6a cracked his whip, and the place hounds from the Reform Club hunted in couples, with the patrician beagles from Brookes's. Whether the cry was "So ho, Coalition !" or " Tallo-ho, Palmerston !" was all alike to the docile senators who scampered after the Treasury game in view. Huntsman HATTER pointed, the Liberal pack voted, extra-whip GRENVILLE BERKELEY saw that their messes were afterwards supplied, and Squire PALMERSTON declares that the Radical covers are capital, and " kept up so cheaply." Of their " fences," the less said the better. But these shortcomings of the noisy pro fessors of " Liberalism," though matters for comical jokes, and cynical comments in the private circle, are most serious objects of con sideration, when we regard the present state M■■■.„ THE PRESS. of parties, and look to the state of Parliament. The Ministerialists are now composed of the Whig oligarchy and the Independent Liberals. _ The - idly. , 'ique is just what it all iid it more faith fait, sr of " Venetittr by wi iranded it. It Ali acted tents—ambitiohih exclr ?archical. Ther' is c-, - 3 Conduct 4he e'er cli lways has , en. ~ -ier di iy e •ebot 'p talk i: racter NV • Mr. la .2 s brt ed thful to • 1 .tecede lus ', an nal' 1 y oligi to ng ih, ,1 fidel erbitta, and I t' ' ...ry t 1 empire. But thigh ,riotism from that ,ody of o profess to be guided b' dity to its °will '6? inte) the patril to the welfare who ;ht expect more f representatives 01 to " greatest " happiness of the greatest number " prin ciple. Too clearly have these latter repre sentatives shown that, like Mr. Benjamin Stout, in. Sir EDWARD BULWER LYT'TON'S comedy of Money, they mean " number one," as the largest in their moral computation. If Parliament has lost the confidence of power ful bodies of opinion out of doors, it is those spurious " independent " members who have done much to bring it into contempt. They profess one line of principles, and they com bine to carry out quite another policy. Speak ing one way, and voting another, they display selfish purposes in their ambiguity of action, and they are self-convicted of meanness in becoming the serfs of the Treasury. It is they who by their servility uphold the gigantic jobbery of governing by a few Whig families. It is they, the Liberal Indepen dents, who are the main instruments of a clique-ruling empire. It, is they, the Liberal Independents, who by their truckling to an oligarchy have given a fertile theme to the publicists of the Continent for mocking at the working of the constitutional system. Nor is it merely by encouraging the vices of the Whigs, by their support, that these spuri ous Liberals have done so much damage to the character of Parliament. Their want of talent has become a galling reproach to the whole Liberal connection. Where are their rising minds, their promising orators, their elever men of affairs ? We ask again, where are the Liberal members of Parliament who sustain by eloquence, genius, and profound knowledge, the great traditions of the House of Commons? We can cordially admire talent and public spirit even where they are not en listed under our own flag. We listen with attention to the speeches made by the " Inde pendent Liberals," but we are always disap pointed at their want of high views, and their absence of sound, practical sense. They talk like the great oracles of small parish vestries. Even in the presence of the Commons of England there is a consequential and pre tentious deportment about them, as if they had a constant recollection of all the beadles who trembled at their frowns. To their consti tuents they profess the politics of wild conceptions, and to the Treasury they main tain the tone of craving dependents. Search their addresses to their constituents, and you will find them full of the formalised cant of revolution ; scan their votes for a session, and you will see them the veriest hacks of Down ing-street. With the wrongs of the people on their lips, they have jobs for themselves in their hearts. With what a popular orator once called " plebeian arrogance,' they boast that they have come into Parliament on their own merits, and they have no ancestors with handles to their names ; but the Colonies, the Customs, the India Board, the public offices at Whitehall, teem with their brothers, sons, cousins, and kinsfolk to the third degree. And the smirk with which one of those " In dependents" says, " I got this from Lord A., " and that from Lord P.," has a mixture of the comic and contemptible. But the next general election, it is to be hoped, will make a clearance of these Pha risees of the platform, whose elastic con sciences expand or contract, as Mr JUPITER HAYTER is pleased to frown in his Olympian height. Other members in other times fol lowed a Prime Minister for his policy ; these spurious senators to whom we now allude troop after the Secretary for the Treasury in search of places. Since the decay of the Wal polian Whigs under the PELHAMS more pitiful jobbery has never been seen in the House of Commons than in this the twenty-third yt ar and fifth Parliament of a Reformed House of Commons. SATURDAY, The assertion is grave, but the scandal is flagrant, and its proofs are as visible as a Benjamin E title and place, or the Ttlbu 3 extinct as his own edit Thu ie salaried and tongtie-tiScl humbler pre tendikrs to I name is Legion, and .vrlise Mr. HAYTER . S. 'net wee flag • ' they have flinebtod from 1 duty of se curitig,gbUd r did a Cabinet show more itnueeiiii.y of purpose than the present, and while it totters to its fall the In dependent Liberals have preferred to lose their reputations rather than their influence in the lowest purlieus of Whiggery. hill jumping into t Lne OK OctithVtikt* as of " 1 Hobbes" ; i 4 tli n 44.0 Osaoae4 l a the 'arliainio, w e n conseiblices l flea fr6iii tOkli• flu 11 their seliii4osei govertitefl . Neves MR. DANBY SEYMOUR. WE have been rather puzzled to understand the principle which guided the Government in their selection of Mr. DANBY SEYMOUR for the Parliamentary Secretaryship of the India Board. During his public career, which has not been a long one, he has been chiefly known as a very eager denouncer of the abuses which pervade the Government of India, though at the same time he has been somewhat inconsistently a supporter of the Administration by whose connivance those abuses have since the expiration of the Char ter been alone perpetuated. Were the general character of that Administration other than it has proved to be, we should look on the appointment as a mark of their desire to render that justice to India at last which they have hitherto denied it; but this would be so little in accordance with all their antecedents that we cannot help fearing that it has been rather used as a means of buying off a prin cipal witness in a cause which they are bent on defeating if they can. Mr. DANBY SEYMOUR, it must be remembered, had made a voyage to India, and could speak with the authority of an eye-witness, and nothing could possibly be more vivid than his description of the shame ful state of things he found there. It may be, to be sure, that we are mistaken, and that in accepting the Secretaryship or the India Board, he has not done so on terms in consistent with that personal honour and public faith which should be deemed the most precious possession of every public man. It may be that he has taken office to further the objects he made so loud a profession of, and not to stifle them; that he has done so as a means of aiding the inquiry into Indian mis government, and not of quashing it; that he has done so, in short, with the praiseworthy intention of giving weight to his advocacy of a just cause, and not with the corrupt one of selling himself to the Government, and clinch ing the bonds of the clients who had intrusted him with their case. This, however, is a poiut which can only be solved by the future course pursued by Mr. DANDY SEYMOUR himself. The present session will, probably, determine whe ther he is henceforth to be ranked among the most honourable or among the most despica ble of the rising generation of public men. If he be really as earnest in the cause of Indian improvement as he so lately professed himself to be, he will, both for his own credit's sake and for the public satisfaction, give suffi cient proof of this without loss of time. It is the custom of Ministers in taking office to explain the principles on which they accept it ; and, without going out of the way to make a formal statement, there are plenty of occasions perpetually arising on which Mr. DANBY SEYMOUR may let the country know on what principles he has accepted the Secretary ship to the Board of Control. Sir JOHN PAXTNOTON, for instance, has been kept waiting for two years nearly for the pro duction of a report regarding the salt duties in India. Mr. BBYMOUR can now rise and state, what he knows to be the truth, that the inquiry is a mere make-believe for the purpose of obstruction, and that there is nothing that could be learned upon the subject which is not on the records of the India Board already. If the question of torture be mooted he can tell the House that while the fact of such in famies is admitted by him, he is prepared to