The Sun. — London, England, 1863-02-02 00:00:00

The Death of the Marquis of Lansdowne. Lord Lansdowne, in a gsod old age, died on Saturday Saturday evening at 6 o'clock. On Wednesday, the 21st, he fell as he was walking on the terrace at Bowood, and cut his head. \ On the following Tuesday he began to sink, and he never rallied after. His life is the history of the Whigs during the past century. In youth he was the hope of the party, and in declining years he was the sage on whose counsel they relied. His views, like theirs, were formed in the two great schools of politics—the historical school of Edinburgh and the utilitarian school of London, which so moulded public opinion as ultimately to secure the ascendancy of Liberal principles. Of refined manners, of cultivated tastes, with an intellect not indeed command- ing, but yet extremely acute; with a nature by no means impassioned, yet in its calm current most genial ; and with oratory that, if seldom brilliant, was always effective, he was, in his glossy buff and blue attire, the best repre sentative of the ,leading Whigs, as we have known them in these latter days—a pleasant family party, who, with abundance of sound sense and social tact, have combined aristocratic likings with literary fellow ship, oligarchical ideas with popular favour, and a cautious policy with inflammatory speeches. The most influential, the mcst sensible, the most amiable, the most elegant of Whig , , Lord Lansdowne retired in the hey-day of youth into the House of Lords. For 20 years the party was disorganised ; it had no leader of mark among the Commons, and it may be said to have existed only in the saloons of Lansdowne-house and Holland-house. There, perhaps, were congregated more of wit and wisdom, more of brain and beauty than could be assembled anywhere else in the three kingdoms —more, in a word, of that fine essence which ultimately moulds opinion, creates a party, and rules the State. The Whigs have always been worshippers of talent, and few men had a more keen appreciation of all that is brilliant in letters, powerful in debate, or useful in administration than the late Lord Lansdowne. Who ever gave the budding genius a warmer welcome ? Who was a more certain friend to the rising man? By an instinct that, if not genius, was the next thing to it—a noble taste —he surrounded himself with men of mark, and gave splen dour to a party which had to endure all the ignominy of defeat. At length, through the disorganisation of the Tories, the party began once more to make a figure; and, in fart, with the exception of a short interval during which, to use the metaphor of Mr. Disraeli, Sir Robert Peel, who found the Whigs bathing, had run away with their clothes, the great Whig lords, with the deceased Marquis at their head, ever since the formation of Lord Grey's Cabinet, the first meeting of which WAS held at Lansdowne-house, kept the Government of the country entirely in their hands, Lord Lansdowne, more than the leader of a party, became the patriarch of the Upper Douse; he became the personal friend and adviser of the Queen, as the Duke of Wellington had been, and he has now died in a good old age, after a most useful and most prosperous career, in as high honour as can be enjoyed by a subject. The fortunes of the Lansdowne family were formed by a man chiefly known as the founder of a new science—the science of Political Arithmetic, but whose life involved so many of the modes of activity which a very remarkable period afforded that one is surprised to find that it has been almost entirely overlooked by the biographers. Sir William Petty, the son of a clothier at Romsey, fought his way desperately to fame and fortune in the times of the Com monwealth and the Restoration. He entered the navy, and soon left it ; he tried merchandise for a time, and left that also ; he then invented a copying machine, but received no profit from it ; he turned to medicine, and dissected in Paris under the guidance of Hobbes ; he became Professor of Anatomy at Oxford ; to anatomy he added music, and be came professor of this art at Gresham College ; subse quently he became physician to the Irish army during the Protectorate ; not content with these occupations, he con tracted for the admeasurement of lands in Ireland forfeited by the rebellion, his survey being still of great value in the law courts as a work of reference; he became a member of Parliament under Oliver ; he was knighted by Charles II.; he was one of the founders of that Royal Society which has had so much influence on the development of science ; he at length became a shipbuilder, inventing a double-bottomed vessel to sail against wind and tide; and, finally, by vari ous important works on taxation and national wealth, he established, as we have said, the new science of Political Arithmetic. He died, leaving what in these times would be considered very large possessions—personal estate to the amount of £45,000, and landed property to the value of £6,500 a year. Such are the self-made men who supply our English aristocracy with new blood, and preserve it in vital connection with the hearts of the people. He married a lady who was Baroness Shelburna in her own right, and by her daughter, his only surviving child, who had inter married with the Kerry family, he became the great grand father of the celebrated Earl of Shelburne, the first Mar quis of Lansdowne, and the father of the deceased Marquis. Bentham remarked of Lord Shelburne that he was the only Minister he ever heard of who did not fear the people. As a Minister, however, his career cannot be regarded as very successful. His countenance was said to resemble that of Louis XVI., and his fate was in this also like that of the monarch,—that when to all appearance he had reached the summit of power he was politically beheaded. On the dis solution of the Fox and North Ministry, the whole nation expected that his Majesty would have sent for Lord Shel burne, who had already been Premier; but the King sent for his subordinate, young Pitt, and Shelburne was con soled for the loss of his ambition by the coronet of a mar quis. Probably it was not difficult to console him, and now—in order to prove what he once said to Johnson, that a man ought to have every gratification and to be perfectly happy in the enjoyment of £5,000 a year,—he retired to in dulge more congenial tastes in the adornment of Lansdowne House, which he purchased when half finished from Lord Bute, and where he collected a splendid gallery of ancient and modern pictures, together with a library of 10,000 volumes, comprising the largest assortment of pamphlets and memoirs on English history and politics possessed by any man of his time, as well as a series of manuscripts which were subsequently sold to the British Museum for £5,000. The library itself was exquisitely de corated by Cipriani in imitation of the antiquities found in Herculaneum, and it was while occupied in this superb temple as the librarian, philosopher, and friend of Lord Shelburne, that Priestly made the discovery of oxygen. It was at Lansdowne-house, then known as Shelburne house, that Lord Henry Petty was born on the 2d of July, 1780, so that at the time of his decease he had attained the great age of 82. His father was twice married. By his first wife, a daughter of Earl Granville, he had two sons, the younger of whom diei early, while the latter, who suc ceeded his father in the title, died without issue. By his second wife, a daughter of the Earl of Upper Ossory, Lord Shelburno had, besides a daughter who did not long survive, one son, the subject of this memoir, who became the third and most distinguished Marquis of Lansdowne. In his childhood, however, Lord Henry Petty had only the prospects of a younger son; and, seeming to be a precocious boy, he was destined at an early age, like so many of the youthful scions of the great houses, to the service of the State. As Pitt and Fox were specially trainel, so Henry Petty and John Russell were cradled lawgivers; the Con stitution was their rockinghorse, and when other boys were sucking barleysugar and playing at cricket, they were ad miring Magna Charta and studying the tactics of Ministers. Almost all our leading statesmen of these latbr times have been trained in this way ; they have chosen politics for their profession from the first, and they have practised la boriously in the Senate as other men practise at the bar. It was with this view that Lord Henry Petty was sent to Westminster School, where he wee placed under the special superintendence of one of the masters, the Rev. Mr.Debarry. Ono rare privilege was then, as it still is, possessed by the Westminster boys, of which Henry Petty fully availed him self—the privilege of attending the debates in Parliament; and in those days, when oratory was studied more as an than it is now — when at t imes the mann er seemed of art m importance than the matter—when the " action, hetioere a ction," of Fos made the Ministers seem to be traitors action, their own eyes—when the showy rhetoric of Sheridan, which now seems dull and unprofitable as the scenes of a theatre in the daylight, told with such effect that on one occasion Pitt had to ask the house to postpone its vote —when Burke was rendering his argument dark by exces sive brightness of imagery, till his auditors, dazzled by the glare, were at last blinded into sleep; and when—not to speak of Erskine and the other luminaries of the law—Pitt himself e was elaborating those stately per iods in which he A so little and seemed to say so much that so me one ex claimed with admiration, " I do believe he could deliver a King'a Speech off hand," the sight must have been pecu liarly in s pi r i ng to a boy especially since all this mastery of language was used with the most deadly designs in the most•furians philippics, not so much for the establishment of principles of parties andanthdeimpeachment passing of laws as for the demolition of Ministers. Henry Petty was sadly disappointedcm night in attending these debates. He had missed by a very few fe intended to that strange scene, rea lly ridiculous, although to be terrific, in which during a debate on the Alien Act, e Burke drew a dagger from his brea st, and, throwing it h the floor, cried, "This is what you will Baia by an alliance it completeFrance.' political bably, no man of his time had suet et th a boy, sedu lously as this young lord, who, hile y, en a c f e ter pas e sed lously attended the debates in Parliameil ph to Edinburgh to study history and philoso graduated at Cambridge, now studied Benthamism w un r d d e a r the best possible guidance, and soon—for the Peace of Amiens was of short duration--returned to England to learn the arts and imbibe the traditions of Lansdowne house and Holland-house. Great were the hopes enter tained of him, and in t he following year, when barely age, he entered the House of Commons as member fur the family borough of Caine. He immediately turned his atten tion to finance. Was not his great ancestor a financier ? 'Were not the Whigs, always bad arithmeticians, in want of a financier ? Waa not he himself, as well as his friend fi t a orner, fitted by his Edinburgh training to shine in Therefore, as a worthy descendant o f William Petty, c ? and as a worthy rival of William Pitt) ho delivered his maiden speech on the Bank Restriction Act. .But his most important effort, and th a t which de cided his position in the House of Commons, d e li ve red in support of the attack on Le Treasurer of the Navy. Mel v i l l e i w asa Lord re of was a speech d Melville as various public mon e y s to his own use, and of perraitti his hi s paymaster Trotter to do the same , and even to use applying opportunities on the Stock-Exchange, Eventually, all that was proved was that Melville had made temporary use of various sums, all of which he had paid with interest; and that Trotter had supplemented a beggarly salary t y placing • the public money at Coutts's in his own name, and deriving profit from the interest on the deposit. Lord Melville was, therefore, ultimately acquitted, but in April, 105, the case. as reported by commissioners appointed to inquire into the abuses of the Naval Department, looked b-id enough, and furnished matter for a violent party debate, in which Whit bread, on the side of the Whigs, took the lead. Pitt tried hard to defend his colleague, but the case was put very clearly and forcibly by Lord Henry Petty in a speech which mainly contributed to the result of the debate, and pre pared the way, not only for the advent of the Whigs to power, but also for his own elevation to one of the most portant seats in the Cabinet. "Let it be remembered," he said, "how the persons were situated who were thus con nected together—Mr. Mark Sprott, the broker, confiden tially employed by Mr. Trotter, the paymaster; Mr. Trotter, the paymaster, confidentially employed by Lord Melville; and Lord Melville confidentially employed by the public. He had heard of Jacobin combinations, but it would be difficult to imagine any combination more detri mental to the public than these three persons who touched the Cabinet on the one side and the Stocks on the other. What changes of fortune, what convulsions in finance, was it not capable of effecting ?" In the vote which followed the house was equally divided, 216 against 216, and the Whigs only carried their point by the casting vote of the Speaker, Mr. Abbot. Thereupon Lord Melville resigned office, was struck off the list of Privy Councillors, and was formally impeached. Ultimately, as we have said, he was acquitted; but in the meantime, in losing his set , vices, Pitt lost the man upon whom he depended most; and now, oppressed with labour, baffled in his plans (for swift on the glorious news of Trafalgar came the disastrous news of Austerlitz), he gradually sank under the exhaus tion of incessant toil and disappointed hopes, until in the following January he died, as some say, of a broken heart, and as others say, with equal truth, of sheer old age. Now at last hope dawned upon the Whigs. They had covered Melville with sackcloth and ashes ; they had con signed Pitt to dust and ashes. The Tory Cabinet was doomed. While the great Tory statesman is still gasping at Putney, and his attendants have not lost their faith in brandy and chicken soup, the various coteries of London are betting (these were betting days) on the chances of the game. Fox by rights ought to be the new Premier, but it is well known that the King cannot endure him. Grenville has not brains enough, Sidmouth has not friends enough to sustain the duties of the post. Hawkesbury would refuse it —so would a much more likely man, the Marquis Welles ley. Some of the courtiers, as we learn from " Horner's Memoirs," start the idea of Lord Henry Petty. When Lord Henry's father was in the height of his power, and every body expected to see him at the head of a Cabinet, was he not superseded by his subordinate in a previous Adminis tration, young Pitt? And was the re not something sym metrical in now playing over again the game of 1781, in detaching Shelburne's ymithful son from his allegiance to Fox, and in setting him up as the head of the Cabinet to carry out the wishes of the King ? " They mistake their man," writes Homer, " for if Petty has any good quality on which I rely, it is a firm attachment to Fox and his maxims of government.' One thing, however, is decided by the Whigs, that Petty shall be their Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that not only in this post, but also as mem ber for the University of Cambridge, they will back his claims to be the successor of Pitt, Already there is a scramble for Cambridge. Lord Palmerston, a flaming young Pittite, is on the spot, still i an undergraduate ; while Pitt yet lives, Lord Althorp has posted down to canvass votes; Lord Henry thinks it more proper to wait till death has sealed the fate of the Minister. It is an easy sacrifice to the proprieties, for it so happens that the Vice-Chancellor and some of his most influential Heads of Houses are now actually in Lon don on business of the University. The Whigs, more , over, have not long to wait ; the inevitable blow has fallen, and the King, after applying to half a dozen different statesmen, at length consented to a Cabinet of "All the Talents," of which Lord Grenville was the nominal head, and Fox the directing genius. It was composed of Tories, of Whigs, and of halt-breeds. Sidmouth and Ellenborough represented the Tories—foes at once of Reform and of France ; Fox and his partisans represented the extreme Whigs—friendly at once to Reform and to the French ; while Grenville and Wyndham, Whigs as regards the domestic policy of the country, sided with the Tories on the question of foreign policy—and to them respectively, there fore, were entrusted the headship of the Cabinet and the conduct of the war. It was a singular coalition, not only formed of discordant elements, but in which also the various Ministers seemed to be entrusted with discordant functions —in which, for example, the Premier assumed the double office of First Lord and Auditor of the Treasury ; in which Ellenborough, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, had a Cabinet seat; in which Sheridan was made Treasurer of the Navy ; in which Wyndham, who, whatever his faculty of eloquence, had not a ray of administrative talent, was at a time when the country was fighting on the most gigantic scale, made Secretary for War; and in which Lord Henry Petty, at the advanced age of 25 (his private secretary Kaye, afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, being two years his junior), was entrusted with the most complicated system of finance which it in poenible to conceive. However, such as it was, the Cabinet was formed ; and Lord Henry Petty went off to Cambridge to contest the seat for the University. It was a well-fought election, and in the background—a not uninterested witness of the struggles of the youthful candidates, we see the still more youthful Lord Byron (eight years younger than Petty, four years younger than Palmerston) making his own cynical observations on the tumult of Granta. As for two of the candidates, Petty and Palmerston, he says— " One on his power and place depends, The other—on the Lord knows what I Each to some eloquence pretends, Though neither will convince by that." As for the voters— " They know the Chancellor has got Some pretty livings in disposal, Each hopes that one may be his lot, And therefore smiles on his proposal." They so smiled that at the close of the poll the votes for Lord Henry were more than double those for either of his opponents. To give point to his sneer at the venality of the University, Lord Byron, in a note to one of his poems. reminds us that in the following year, when Lord Henry Petty had ceased to be a Minister of the Crown, he lost his seat, and was obliged to content himself with the Duke of Bedford's borough of Camelford, which he continued to represent till his elevation to the peerage. Ostensibly, however, the reason of his rejection by the University was that advocacy of the Catholic claims on which the Admi nistration of which he was a member made shipwreck. The young Chancellor entered upon his duties amid much jeering of the kind which will be familiar to a gene ration that has witnessed the elevation of a novelist to the Ministry of Finance; and yet, putting out of the question Pitt's prodigious reputation—in itself a tower of strength, and, considering the prodigal terms on which loans had been raised, foreign States had been subsidiz3d, and our own armies mismanaged, all under the eye of the Tory 'lister, it surely mattered very little, as far as the money market was concerned—to adopt ono of Byron's lines, 6 ' Whether 'tis Pitt or Petty rules the hour." The new Chancellor of the Exchequer had, very soon after entering on the duties of his office, to bring in a bill for the more effec tual examination of the public accounts, and in justification of his bill he made statements which appear to be almost incredible. Speaking on the 21st of May, 1806, he showed that the last Pay-office audit was for the year 1782; that the navy and other offices were equally in arrear—that there were aceountsnot passed to theamount 0f£167,000,000 —that there were accounts not proceeded with to the amount of £58,000,000---that there were 21 years' Pay office accounts to the extent of £150,000,000 not even deli vered—that there were naval accounts in the same situa tion to the amount of £Bo,ooo,ooo—and, to sum up all, that there were arrears of public money not accounted for amounting to no less than £455,000,000—a sum at that time larger than the whole of the national debt. This was monstrous, and, apart from the stability which Pitt's great name gave to the money market, it must be evident that the financial position of the country could scarcely be rendered worse. Lord henry Petty's financial schemes, however, were by no means favourably received. His first proposition was to double the income tax, or more pre cisely, to raise it from 6i to 10 per cent. (that is to say Bd. more in the pound than the income tax of ls. 4d. which the Russian war inflicted on the present generation), and to extend it to all property yielding more than £5O a year. It was, in fact, to appease the clamour which this proposal awoke that the Ministers brought forward that other mea sure for the more effectual audit of the public accounts. When not even the prospect of greater economy which this 1 eonnt foundcoul d t r t e s n e f e r at t h a e o i m s s p o for s t to, l e e a r s a u h r t o e h a e n l d d o w u h t e t n o G t o h v e er n n a na ti k alluring more and more funds with whi t c u h ne to th c r a o rr u y o o o n ut the great war now raging with various Europe,for out another scheme, of the most all ur f taxa tion and, indeed, the whole world, Lord Hen ch ry ara P c e te tt r y , w st h r i u c c h, if it were only feasible, would solve the my ster y o for ever, and evoke any amount of revenue to cover for the amount of expenditure. Assuming that ch ar g es the future could not be greater than those for the cut rent year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer by one wave of his pen, provided without any new taxes for the war in all its vigour during 14 years to come. The war was to be main tained on loans that were to be speedily repaid by a sinking fund eating into them at compound interest. Calculating what loans would he necessary, it was assumed that a sum equal to 10 per cent, on each loan if appropriated from the -war taxes —one half going to the payment of interest and the other half t o th e crea ti on o f a s i n ki ng fund—would' in the course of 15 years redeem the capital, leaving the whole 10 per cent, again applicable to an operation of the same kind should the war continue. This precious plan, the fal lacy of which we need not stop to expose, was never fairly carried out, the Ministry being little more than a year in power, and only half a year after the death of Fox. In the same month in which Pitt resigned his life, Nelson was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral; and before Pitt had passed aw ay, Fox, while paying the last honours at the grave of the mighty Admiral, was struck with the hand of death. Fox lingered seven months in office, and died on tho 13th of September, 1806. After his departure there was no more life in the Cabinet. Lord Cirenville, it is true, ~r~n.i, ; ,~, THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 2, 1863. effected what was the grand achievement of his Ministry— the Abolition of the Slave Trade ; but the measure was originated by Fox, and it was carried so triumphantly through both Houses of Parliament as to prove that the great struggle of 20 years which had thus gloriously ended might have been crowned with victory much sooner if pre vious Ministers had been so minded. All parties were agreed in their abhorrence of the trade, The first real difficulty which the Ministers had to encounter was a diffi culty of their own raising, and the Cabinet went to work upon it. Lord Howick introduced " a Bill to enable his Majesty to avail himself of the services of all his liege sub- jects in his naval and militaryforces in the manner therein Mentioned"—that is to say, by their taking an oath which would admit Catholics into the service of the country. When the King, who was always tender on the Catholic question, expressed his disapprobation o: the bill, Ministers agreed to withdraw it, reserving to themselves the right expressed in the Uabinet minutes of bringing it forward at some future time, The minute was couched in terms so positive as well as disrespectful to the King, who had never been very cordial with Lords Grenville and Howick, that he demanded from them a pledge in writing that they would never again press him on the subject. The Ministers, who had overrated their strength, retused to consent until it was too late, and their only course was to resign. It was on this occasion that Sheridan said, with reference to the conduct of the Premier, that ho had often heard of a man knocking his head against a wall, but never before had he heard of a man building, clamping, and squaring a wall for the express purpose of doing so. We have dwelt with so much detail on Lord Henry Petty's first appearance as a Minister because it was, per- haps, the most brilliant episode of his life. Never after wards did he occupy so prominent a position in the eyes of the nation. He did, indeed, occupy posts as high and per form duties as onerous, but he was no longer the miracle he was then considered. He was a young nobleman of amiable disposition, of good education, of considerable ability, and of great ambition, but he was not the heaven .born states men his friends had imagined. Homer, who had great hopes of him, but who also took his measure accurately, as our college friends generally do, describes him as having " a cool, clear-thinking head, a plain, firm, manly judg ment ;" and that is precisely the character which Lord Lansdowne earned throughout his life. As a speaker, he was at this time said to resemble Whitbread, without his passion. Byron, in giving his idea of eloquence, describes him as a mere debater : —" Pitt I never heard ; Fox but once, and then he struck me as a debater, which to me seems as different from an orator as an improvisatore or a versifier from a poet. . . . Lord Lansdowne good, but still only a debater." His powers in debate, however, were so for midable that, on the death of Fox, it was proposed that he should lead the House of Commons, and it was probably through his own diffidence that this onerous post was in trusted to a very different personage. In one respect he was eminently fitted fer the lead. He was remarkable for self-possession, and it is reported as a striking proof of it that in the midst of his maiden speech he stopped with amazing coolness to adjust his cravat, which had got out of order. To Moore he afterwards observed that he hardly ever spoke in the House of Lords without some loss of self-pcssession, and that the only way to surmount it was to talk on at all hazards. He could talk, He was almost always fluent enough, and sometimes rose into eloquence. Whatever public talents he had, how ever, he was now destined to retire very much from public life. He gave up one of the highest offices under the Crown, he entered into the bonds of matrimony, and he obtained a splendid peerage all about the same time. His father had died in May, 1805, only a few days after Lord Henry Petty had signalised himself in debate—the debate on Lord Melville. The old lord had by this time passed very much out of popular notice, and the principal cause of public regret for his demise was that only a fort night before his death he had declared his knowledge of the Junius secret, and yet among his papers were to be found no indication that could lead to its discovery. He was suc ceeded by his eldest son, the Earl of Wycombe, whose first aet on coming into possession was to sell almost all the literary and artistic treasures which his father had accumu lated with so much love and labour. The greater part of these were dispersed under the hammer of the auctioneer, many of the pictures going to enrich the Grosvenor, the National, and other galleries; only the Lansdowne MSS. were kept together, being purchased by the British Mu seum; while the gallery of antique marbles was the sole portion of the collection for which the Marquis showed any appreciation,—his opinion being expressed in the fact that he purchased it from his father's executors for £6,000. He died in November, 1809, and was succeeded by his half brother, the late Marquis, whose first care was to purchase the antique marbles from his sister-in-law, and there at Lansdowne-house they may now be seen—some of them, as the youthful Hercules and the Mercury, considered the finest statues of the kind that have found their:way to this country. As for the pictures, when the Marquis succeeded to the title there was not one in this splendid mansion, with the exception of a few family portraits ; but love of art was an instinct of the family, and Lord Lansdowne set himself to the formation of a gallery which now comprises 200 pictures of rare interest and value, but miscellaneous in their cha racter, no school nor master predominating unless it be Sir Joshua Reynolds. Some of the portraits in this col lection are of great interest. There is the celebrated por- trait of Pope by Jervas; Reynolds's wonderful portrait of Sterne; one of Franklin, by Gainsborough ; a beautiful one of Peg Woffington, by Hogarth ; Lady Hamilton appears twice—as a bacchante and a gipsy, from the pencil of Rom ney ; Homer, the old College friend of Lord Lansdowne, is not forgotten; but, most interesting of all, there is the lovely portrait of Mrs. Sheridan, as St. Cecilia, painted by Reynolds. It may recall with some vividness the fashion of those times if we record a little incident connected with this portrait. During the short-lived Ministry of " All the Talents," ' the Whig leaders celebrated their return to power by a continual round of festivities, in which Sheri dan outvied all hie colleagues. One Sunday (25th of May, 1806) he gave a grand dinner; on the Monday following a supper and ball, at which the dancing was prolonged to past 8 o'clock next morning; on the Tuesday a christening, a masque, and another ball, the Prince being present on each occasion, and the Lord Chancellor Erskine and the young Chancellor of the Exchequer, Henry Petty, being conspi cuous among the dancers. On the occasion of the dinner the portrait of Mrs. Sheridan was redeemed for one night only from the pawnbroker's, and exhibited in its place in the dining-room; when poor Sheridan died it was still in possession of the pawnbroker; it then fell into the hands of Sheridan's solicitor, and from him it was purchased for £6OO by Lord Lansdowne. In this little incident we get some glimpses of that conviviality for which the Whigs were distinguished. "Le Whig est la femme de votre Gouvernement," says Balzac, and the truth of the remark is especially illustrated in that social influence which the Whigs have always cultivated more than the Tories. For more than 20 years after the death of Fox a brilliant social existence was almost all that the Whigs had to boast of as a party. It is useless to deny that they were unpo pular with the nation ; and we naturally ask, how was it that they were so long excluded from power. Lord Jeffrey in one of his reviews tries to answer this question, and would have us believe that, by a necessity of their posi tion as friends of progress in advance of the age, the Whigs must always be content to forego the sweets of office in virtue of their superior enlightenment. The theory is, at all events, flattering to the party. It is pleasant to forget that the Whig leaders in the House of Commons were incapable, and that the Whig policy bequeathed by Fox was anti-national; that these two causes acted and reacted upon each other, so as more and more to estrange men of ability who might be disgusted with Tory manage moat, and to render contemptible a policy that before was only disliked and dreaded. Fox was dead ; Henry Petty had gone to the Upper House, where, with Grey and Gren ville, the best part of Whiggism was to be found—found, however, as effectually hidden under the three coronets as a light under a bushel. The Whig Lords were dispirited, the Whig Commons were disorganised, the whole party was at a discount. In the Lower House there were still Wynd ham and Whitbread and Sheridan, but those were man who could not lead, and who very soon died out Wynde ham died from the effect of an accident ; Whitbread com mitted suicide ; poor Romilly, before long, followed his ex • ample; Sheridan died a pauper; andyonsonby, the leader of the Opposition, died of apoplexy the day after Sheridan. He was succeeded by Tierney, who led the Whig knights of the people through many a dreary desert of debate. What could be done under such direction ? Brougham was much the most able man of the party; but he had no fol lowing, and the Whig magnates refused to grant him the leadership of the Commons. If anything can clearly illus trate the mediocrity of the Opposition, it is the medi ocrity of the Cabinet. These were the inglorious days of Castlereagh and Liverpool, who, in spite of a domestic policy that was not only invidious but stupid, re tained power —so strong was the national feeling—simply from the zeal with which they carried out a foreign policy that had been bequeathed to them by greater men. Gradu ally the Whig policy began to make way. At first Whig measures were carried by Tory Ministers. The severity of the criminal code rather of humanity wtl'esaninoit; mitigated ; but s o this thatis n a questiono wonder if all parties aro agreed on the point. It is a nearer ap • proach to genuine politics to meddle with the currency of the country; still, when Peel work e d up th e W hig bu lli on scheme into a Bank Act, the question presented it se lf rath e r as one of commercial safety than of political rivalry. But next turned up the claims of the Catholics, and now the great struggle commenced that was completely to remodel par the that was to give life and vigour to the Whigs, and that was to inaugurate a new epoch in our domestic legis- lation. speTahkeingq,uaescitoioonstoiofntohfe Cat hoclaims d Tory. not, point In of f tri f e a t e l t y i s t ec w ta a ria t n he fra l n V e h h i i g s s e gilt to undo their own work. wofhwo hwioehrathooricgainthalollyiestocobmlapmlaoinfeodr,tahnad; it was the Whigs who now SOU O c n ath th o e lic o i t s h m er u h s a ea hand, their bee a sy on opponentsir nymf had or never Tory Toryism, n forgotten coond th tteh a de t strength of their opposition to Emancipation lconsisted rather of religions than political objections. These objec tions were not insuperable. Pitt had been in favour of the Catholic claims ; so among his successors were Castlereagh, Canning, Palmerston, and others; and, as it turned out, those who ultimately carried Emancipation wore precisely those who had opposed it most vehemently. On this great subject, therefore, it appears that all the landmarks of party were delusive. Here were all the Whigs and a goodly num ber of the Tories united in a common object. The contro- versy at length raged so fiercely that the more formal bonds of party were burst asunder, the nation was agitated to its centre, and, Lord Grey alone dissenting, the Whigs amal gamated with those of the Tories who had all along been favourable to Emancipation, and who had the sense to perceive that the domestic legislation with which successive Tory Governments had been identified was essentially due to the Whigs. The condition of Tories and Whigs uncle' Canning marks an epoch in the Parliamentary history of the country. It was not the first great coalition to which Lord Lansdowne belonged ; neither was it the last. The history of this coalition, as far as Canning was con cerned, is painful from the party jealousies which appear in all the negotiations with his late colleagues. It is sufficient to say that when about the middle of February, 1827, Lord Liverpool was struck with apoplexy, the King sent for Can ning as the most eminent statesman in office. Now, al though in the Cabinet of Lord Liverpool Catholic Relief was an open question, still tiV ellington, Peel, and some others of Canning's colleagues in that Administration, refusedto join a Ministry in which the question might still be left open, but the head of which was committed in favour of Emanci• pation. Deserted by his Tory friends, Canning threw him- sell into the arms of the Whigs, with Lord Lansdowne at their head. Lord Brougham takes the credit of having ef- fected this alliance, an alliance which established a Govern- ment that seemed the strongest the country had seep since the Administration of " All the Talents." If Brougham was the mediator in this alliance, it is to Lord Lansdowne's influence that we must attribute the hearty support of the Whigs, Lord Grey was the most experienced of the Whig statesmen, and he might be regarded as the foremost champion of Catholic Relief ; but he alone of his party held •• _ _ _ _ aloof from the coalition, and the real leader of the Oppo sition stood out to view when almost to a man the Whigs forsook Lord Grey to follow Lord Lansdowne in supporting Mr. Canning. It is exceedingly characteristic of Lord Lansdowne, - and gives some idea of his courteous bearing, his social disposition, and his moderate politics, that he should take so active a part in the formation of three peat coalitions which are the most striking events in the history of Cabinets during the present century. In the first coalition he joined himself with Tories of the Sidmouth and Ellenborough stamp; it was an alliance, the practical effect of which was to absorb Whiggism in a pro secution of the war, however unwilling, and to secure the ascendancy of Toryism. In the second coalition he joined himself with Tories of the Canning and Lyndhurst and Palmerston order, the effect of which was to disintegrate existing parties, to pave the way for the advent of the more liberal Conservatives into the Whig ranks, to absorb Tory ism in the consideration of domestic abuses, and ultimately to secure for an indefinite period the ascendancy of Whig principles. In the third coalition he united his party with the remnant of the Tories who had separated themselves from Canning. Those Conservatives who on the Tory schism of 1827 declined the leadership of Canning accepted the leadership of Peel ; and, as Lord Lansdowne then formed an alliance, not indeed with Peel, far he was no more, but with his friends and disciples. We have said that before the Coalition Ministry of 1806 was formed, Fox, in attending the funeral of Nelson, was arrested by sickness, which in a few months proved to be mortal, and, killing him, destroyed the Cabinet. In like manner, before the coalition of 1827 was formed, Canning, in attending the funeral of the Duke of York, caught a severe cold, from which he never quite recovered, which, combined with harassing duties, hurried him to the grave, when he had been but a few months in office, and which, fatal to him, was also fatal to his Cabinet. Lord Goderich tried to fill his place at the head of the Ministry but failed. The Government carried no important measure, not even that of Catholic Relief. Its grand result, as we have inti mated, was that it prepared the way for the reconstruction of parties. Next year saw the extreme Tories again in power, but saw them also, to the astonishment of the na tion, not only consenting to the repeal of the Test and Cor poration Act, but introducing a bill for the relief of the Ca tholics. The Whigs had triumphed again. In the reform of our criminal code and in the regulation of the currency it was their principles that had triumphed in the hands of Tory Ministers. In the emancipation of the Catholics and Relief of Dissenters their principles had again been passed into law, and they also narrowly missed the honour of pass ing these measures in a Ministerial capacity. In the next great reform they were to attain a still greater success; they were to drive the Tories from power, and, in spite of oppo sition, to see their own policy carried out by themselves. Parliamentary Reform was the watchword ; the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill." The Tories were oblige to succumb. Reform they rejected absolutely, and without reform they could not retain their places. They became restless in their batting. The Duke was bowled out, Peel was caught out, and the Whigs took their innings. They entered office with Lord Grey at their head, and it seemed as if their rule would be eternal. The Whig eternity consisted of ten years, and even that short space was inter rupted by threatened and by actual loss of power. Yet in this term, during which Lord Lansdowne occupied the posi tion of President of the Council, many important measures were passed, and services were rendered, some of which, long years ;afterwards, were regarded almost as . works of supererogation that in the individuals who took part in them atoned for every error and outbalanced every deficiency, Parliament was reformed, Slavery was abolished, tithes were commuted, the Poor Law was passed, education made way. Unfortunately, the Whigs, spite of principle, proved to be more aristocratic than the Tories themselves. Their nepo tism soon began to be felt, the middle classes were alien ated,the lower classes were disgusted ; worst:of all they had not an idea en finance " Great would be the joy of the Three per Cents, if Spring Rice would go into Holy Orders," wrote Sydney Smith. The great financier of 1806 was leading the House of Lords. right glad to escape from the mysteries of political arithmetic, While the Ex chequer was thus getting into a mess, the greatest financier since Pitt—a Tory toboot—was bidding for power, issuing Tamworth manifestoes, in which he woudrously proved himself all things to all men—a Conservative to the Con servatives, and a Liberal to the Liberals. He came into power on the great principles of Cocker. During the greater part of this period, and for the next 10 years, Lord Lansdowne, as he was the acknowledged hoad of the party, was naturally its leader in the Upper House. There never was a leader who commanded more respect, and who while effectually serving his party more fully ob tained the confidence of his opponents. It was not simply h wa s dignified, that his manner was courte ous,tat his that bearing hi s tact was consummate. In the House of Lords a leader must not merely have those qualities which insure success in the House of Commons; he must not only be masterly in attack, he must also be masterly in the midst of inaction. In the Upper House it is possible at any mo ment to force a march and to steal a victory, and this ad vantage a leader must frequently be content to forego, so that the contest is without surprises and the vote is a fair trial of strength. It is obvious that in these circumstances forbearance is required in a leader ; he is trammelled by the very superabundance of power, and he must adjourn a debate or postpone a motion in order to suit the convenience of his adversary. It is one of those tyrannies which the weak exert over the strong, and to which the strong must submit with the best possible grace. Lord Lansdowne per formed his part with a gentleness that won the perfect con fidence of his political foes, and lost nothing for his political friends. For five years—namely, during Sir Robert Peel's lease of power from 1841 to 1846 —he was in opposition ; for six years a fterwards—namely, during the Ministry of Lord John Rus sell —he was i n the Government; but, whether in power o r in o pp osit ion, during the 20 years that frnithe passing of Reform t o th e a d vent of Lor d Derby's Ad m inistration in 1852, h e was t h e good gen i us o f elapsed the House of Peers. Although Lord Lansdowne formally bade farewell to office in 1852, he at the same time declared that it would be his duty as well his pleasure to take part in important discussions, and to express his opinion unbiassed by official relations. He knew not how soon he was to be called upon to fulfil his promise. The Duke of Wellington died in the same year—the venerable hero who knew all parties, who had studied all public questions, who had tried the strength of every nation in}Europe, and who, in every:emer gency, was always at the side of the Queen to give her the benefit of that old experience which in him was sup posed to have attained to something of prophetic strain. After Wellington the most distinguished Peer was the Marquis of Lansdowne,—from a boy noted for the solidity of his judgment; as a man, remarkable for his clear head, his kindly nature, and the perfect consistency with which be pursued the calm talenr of his way, now raised by expe rpiaerntciees; and above the prejudice and by years above the strife of to him the Queen looked for ad vice in the emergencies of State. It is with this view that when, early in 1853, Lord Derby tendered the resignation of himself and his colleagues to her Majesty, the Queen applied to Lord Lansdowne for direction, and it was through his great in fluence that the Whigs formed that celebrated coalition with the followers of Sir Robert Peel under Lord Aberdeen. He net only advised this alliance, he consented to take part in it by accepting a seat in the Cabinet, though without office. When this coalition was dissolved he still retained his seat under Lord Palmerston's Ministry until March, 1858. The position which he thus occupied was by no means a sine cure. Al though he did not feel himself equal to the cares of an office, he always accepted the responsibility of the Go vernment measures; he gave his most careful attention to all that came before the Cabinet, and nothing important was even determined without his sanction. A statesman utterly unselfish, a nobleman per fectly genial, a man of large sympathies and the roughly well-balanced mind—such was Lord Lansdowne to the last. The head of a great party, he was not a party man —for there vas no conceit in him. He never put him selfaril for w-- -• Almost all the great incidents of his p olitical life are in s t ances of self-denial. He re f use d a d u kedom. Had he be en a pushing man, he m i g ht more th a n once have been Prim e Mi nister, and on one occason h e h a d the chance of leadi ng the House of Commons. He was not w ith ou t a mbition, but hi s am biti on was co mpletely under the con trol of his judgm en t. H e a l wa y s said and did the righ t thing irresp ect i ve of himself. An d this unselfishness which in public • life manifested itself as p erfect modera tion, showed i tself in private as genuine kindliness of nature. Th e fine old man. wa s beloved by all who knew hint. -le was always ready with a helping hand for those who needed it, with a kind and a warm remem brance for his friends, with a pleasant smile for all. Now that he has gone his place will not soon be filled, and his memory will not soon pass away. His eldest son, the Earl of Kerry, died in 1830 ; and he is succeeded by his second son, the Earl of Shelburne, who was called to the House of Lords in 1856, under the title of Baron Wy.. combe. Lord Lansdowne married, in 1808, a daughter of the second Earl of Ilchester. She died in 1851, and was the mother of, besides the two sons we have named, a daughter married to the Hon. James Howard. SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS. SAIMIDAY REVIEW.—The people of England have spoken, and Exeter Hall, to use Macaulay's expression, has brayed. That bray is a curious thing to witness. The long, dry seesaw of its monotonous howl is an English institution. There is something impressive, and in its way striking, in a thorough, honest, earnest shout of defiant fanaticism and ignorance. A strong solidity and stolidity of one sidedness—a resolute, vigorous, and firm determina tion to see only one aspect of a question—a fixed and thorough grasp of only a single fact, and a de termination to pursue it to all consequences—is the characteristic of a popular fanatical sentiment. There can be no question that slavery is, as it ought to be, an unpopular thing. It is so easy and so true to lay down that man has no right to breed men for the purposes of sale, that to separate husband and wife is treason to humanity, and that " to flog women is wrong, be they Hungarian coun tesses or African slaves," that it is no wonder that a speaker who confines himself to such safe plati tudes will always get three or four thousand people, either in London or Bradford, to cheer him. In reasoning powers and in political wisdom the masses, as they are called, are of course but slenderly pro vided. And when they are told that all this is what the south is fighting for, and what the North is fighting against, nobody will be, or perhaps ought to be, surprised on which side their sympathies lie. Those who teach them and speechify to them are not much to blame, for the prophets are little wiser, and many of them less sincere, than their hearers. But it might, perhaps, have occurred to some of the good simpletons who crowded Exeter Hall on Thurs day evening that there must be a fallacy somewhere. With all their sympathy it must have startled them not so much to listen to those who instructed them, as to remember those who did not talk to them. The men who were conspicuous by their absence must have been in the thoughts of the enthusiastic audi ence. How comes it that it is not as in the days of Wilberforce, Clarkson, Buxton, and Brougham ? The slavery question is now what it was ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago. The slave trade is in the abstract neither better nor worse now than then. The lineal representatives of the great warrior of old survive ; one of them at least is himself alive, and has lost neither tongue nor energy. Why did they not yield at will, as of old, that fierce democracy which used to echo the great doctrine of the equality of race and the nullity of colour in the sight of God and man, of nature and grace ? There must be some reason for this; and it is not to be found in the easy explanation of penny papers, that generous fathers produce degenerate sons, that the Times is written by inconsistent renegades, and that the proud oli garchs who rule this country are the natural enemies of human freedom. Settled national convictions do not travel backwards on the dial of history; and the men who, when swaying the destinies of this country, threw away twenty millions for the eman cipation of British slaves, were at least as much tinctured by feudal traditions as the thought and intelligence of the present day. The question which, when the enthusiasm and the riot of such a meet ing have subsided, must confront whatever reflec tion it included, is this—How comes it that an anti slavery meeting forty or fifty years ago would have included so much that was noble and high princi pled in English life, and that on Thursday night it only presented itself in the shrivelled and attenu ated form of two dissenting preachers, a novelist, one M.P., Mr. Holyoake, and the Chamberlain of London ? It is very comfortable for the obscure to glory in their obscurity, and to console themselves that not many wise, not many learned, at a greater crisis of humanity accepted higher truths than even these. Surely there must have been some present to whom the contrast may have suggested a deeper scrutiny into facts. The avowed object of this meeting was to deal with a pressing danger. Because it was notorious that English sympathy, as expressed by the educated classes, is rather in favour of the South, the meeting was convened to show that the great popular feeling was in favour of President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation,and therefore, in favour of ithe North. Here is a curious complication of fallacies. Our feeling is not in favour of the South because the South is based (if it is based) on the corner-stone of slavery ; but we lean to the South, so far as we do lean to the South, because the North seeks to subjugate the South by fire and blood, by terrorism and a servile war. Of course, the details of Thursday night's meeting were grotesque enough, and suggested to the thoughtful mind Bishop Butler's melancholy mediation whe ther whole nations—in this case it was the nation in its Tooley-street manifestation—might not go mad. The spectacle of a perfectly irrational fana ticism is saddening ; for the howlings of the Eman cipation Society do not rise into the reasoning vice of hypocrisy. At the preliminary little-go which was held at the Whittington Club, the Society sum marily set down a pool Mr. Alexander, who whim pered his honest regrets that Mr. Lincoln's charity had not begun at home, by emancipating the slaves in the Federal States. And on Thursday night the fanatics had it all their own way. They came to have their own prejudices roundly endorsed and firmly stated, and they would listen to nothing else. The chairman, one Mr. Evans—a not very lively person—they conjured very early in the meeting to " shut up ;" and when a fervid and injudicious speaker offered an amendment, they shouted, and roared, and screamed, and " turned him out," after the manner of the English deliberative assembly, and called lustily, and with a bold defi ance of the aspirate, for " Newman 'All." And they endured good prosy Mr. Baptist Noel, told tolerated and even cheered " Tom Brown's" flax of quotations, which were rather tedious than novel; and " Newman 'All" won the honours of the even ing, and pitched it strong into the Times, and, as we thought, plagiarised a good deal from the -Morning Sear, and charged vigorously a certain article called " The Carnival of Cant," and exhibited—as a popular Dissenting teacher was likely to do—much fluency, with a very fair command of the English adjectives in their super lative form. And certain inconvenient hints about Butler and M'Neil were groaned and bellowed and hooted down ; and the solitary M.P. made a solemn and priggish oration, which fell very flat ; and there was one darkey, to carry out the good old man-and brother tradition, and he was judiciously placed in a forward row in the pit ; and there was an immense multitude—so vast that it overflowed Exeter Hall itself, and filled one of the cellars—and a frightful noise and intense heat; and a telegram was sent from the Bradford meeting to the Exeter Hall meet ing, and it vi as read with vehement cheering—only there was nothing in it. And so the British nation has pronounced—at least, Mr. Baptist Noel, and Mr. Newman Hall, and Mr. Taylor, M.P., and Mr. Hughes have pronounced—and, in the eyes of Exeter Hall, it is all the same thing. One warning we must venture to give to Mr. Lincoln and his friends. If they imagine that this sort of trash, and all the volubility of Exeter Hall, and all its vast cheering, howling horde of men, women, and Dis senting preachers, is the expression of English sen timent, they will commit the very same blunder whica Russia made in mistaking the Peace Society and the Manchester clique for the English people. SPECTATOR. —In October, 1854, Mr. Delane, then in correspondence with Sir Charles Napier, and sharing with Government an impression that Sebas topol had surrendered, wrote to Sir Charles Napier, then in command in the Baltic, a letter of strong remonstrance. Nobody contends that the letter, so far as it represented public opinion—and it pro fessed to do nothing more—was not strictly true. Englishmen were for the time excessively discon tented with Sir Charles Napier, whose previous achievements had ltd them to expect that his errors, if he committed any, would be all on the side of dash. That discontent might be, and we believe was, somewhat unjust. The navy was at the moment but little better organised than the army. Sir Charles Napier took his fleet to sea, unavoidably manned with crews who wanted twelve months' sharp discipline to make them fit for work, fettered, as he thought, by secret orders from Sir James Graham, and profoundly impressed with the peril to which the loss of his fleet in the Baltic might expose the coasts of Great Britain. But the discontent was felt by the public, who, like all publics, thirsted for :action ; and even by politicians, who thought that in wars waged by free States heavy risks were far less dangerous than an inaction which chilled the public mind. Nobody, moreover, affirms that Mr. Delane rushed into the correspondence simply to instruct or to menace the Admiral ; he wrote only in answer to two letters previously addressed to him by Sir Charles Napier, an officer who, like every Napier that ever lived, from the man who invented logarithms to the man who, by rushing on an army of 30,000 men with less than 600, turned Tantia Tepee, and saved the Bombay Presidency, knew how to do great deeds, but liked that his deeds should be widely known. What Mr. Delane did, therefore, was simply this. Feeling that the popular judgment, whether well or ill informed, had condemned the Admiral, al td hearing much of the criticism Government always pass on men who make them wait, feeling also that . the Times, in the exercise of its habitual function as looking-glass to society, would be compelled to reflect that opinion, he warned the Admiral frankly of the approaching storm. So far from being in the wrong, any other course would have exposed him to the imputation of sneaking. We ask any editor in Europe whether, if compelled, or about to be compelled, to attack a political acquaintance, he would not deem it honourable to give the assailed fair warning ? Had Mr. Delane shirked the sub ject, or written common-place compliments, he would have been accused, not unjustly, of soothing as an individual the very man whom as an editor he was about to betray. The language of the letter is, doubtless, too peremptory; but its peremptoriness, one sentence excepted, is simply that of the leading article writer, who cannot by mental habit use feeble or slipshod expressions, of the publicist who cares for England a great deal more than for his own reputation for suavity. With all deference for club critics, Mr. Delane does not dictate the Admiral's course. He simply affirms that action of some kind against some place in the Baltic is expected by the people of England, and no more attempts to suggest time or mode than to instruct an engineer when to fire a blasting-train. He only intimates the work wanted—a function which strictly belonged to the people of England, and to any one endeavouring to express their inarticulate thought. One sentence, about an old woman's difficulties, ought to have been spared ; but it does not affect the principle, which is simply that it is an editor's business, so far as he conscientiously can, to express to all servants of the State, be their rank what it may, the thought of those upon whose shoulders that State is built, and for whose behoof it exists. Any other course, any attention on State questions to claims of rank, or character, or friend ship, is simply on the part of the publicist, as on the part of the Minister, a failure in an admitted duty. He may differ from the public, and ought in that case to express his own judgment ; but fear, favour, or affection should be as foreign to him as to a judge on the bench. Nobody reaches that standard? Very likely not, but let us at least keep the ideal before us, and not give up together the object and the hope of obtaining it. One-half of the fuss raised about this letter proceeds from this feeling, common though not avowed in clubs and drawing-rooms ; " an editor censures an admiral— what impudence !" So deeply has the dry rot eaten into society, that there is scarcely an ensign spitting over a bridge in country quarters, but deems himself socially the superior of any editor, though the latter may be guiding half the world. Indeed, by Heralds' law, he is so, unless the gentle- , man who smiles at his assumption happens, as usual in England, to have some other profession. Imagine Frenchmen, when they were free, thinking M. Thiers audacious for warning Jurien de la Gra viere that France expected him not to let his fleet lie idle ! The mere idea answers itself, for in France the publicist, if not the rival, is still in times of freedom the social equal of the statesman whom he so often informs. England has not yet arrived at that point, nor do we care that she should ; but the claim of " the services" to escape, because they are services, the criticism to which statesmen subject themselves with approval, is one which, if conceded, would end the function of a free press. LONDON REVIEW.—Mr. Kinglake (in his " In vasion of the Crimea") has discovered, or fancies that he has discovered, that Marshal St. Arnaud, at some early period of his life, went by the name of Le Roy; that M. de Persigny, whose father's name was Fialin, bears his mother's name; and that M. de Maupas has no right to prefix to his name the aristocratic particle by which it is pre ceded. Not content with stating these utterly irrelevant facts—if facts they be—in the most offensive manner, Mr. Kinglake has pursued his enemies with them through hi whole narrative. Again, and again, and again— twice, thrice, in the same page—do we see those unhappy " brethren of the Elysee" pelted with the fact that they have assumed other names than those to which they were born. It is right to add, however, that Mr. Kinglake does not pretend that they have thus changed their names from any disgraceful motives ; indeed, on one occasion he admits that they pro bably did so for the sake of mere euphony — exactly as very respectable British peers have been known to transmute Smith into Vernon and Caring ton. Mr. Kinglake ought to have reflected that if the French were minded to pay us back in the base coin which he has used in his dealings with them, they might easily do so, and that it would not need a very micro scopic investigation to show that in the English army also there are a few distinguished men who, from no disreputable reasons, have preferred their mother's to their father's names—that there are ille gitimate children, bearing fancy names, who are nevertheless men of conduct, courage, and sensitive feelings, who would all be sorely pained at having these facts, unimportant to everybody but them selves, maliciously paraded by a French Mr. King lake in the face of the world. The other matter to which we have to allude is more important. We lament to say that Mr. Kinglake appears to take a strange delight in affixing on those he seeks to dis parage, thewithering imputation of cowardice. This he does more often inferentially—but in one very signal instance, by direct assertion. If a French aide de-camp brings Lord Raglan a message, he describes the lad as canfused and breathless, observing, significantly, that his agitation may or may not have been caused by the rapidity of his movements and the steepness of the hill which he had just sur mounted on foot ; if a French general is not exactly where Mr. Kinglake thinks he ought to have been, it is insinuated that, his heart not being in the right place, it is not surprising that his corps should have been in the wrong one. But in speak ing of Louis Napoleon Mr. Kinglake uses no cir cumlocution. he distinctly says that, in circum stances of personal danger, the Emperor invariably becomes a helpless coward. At Strasburg, he sneers at him for not having used the sword he had by his side when he, a single man, found himself surrounded by a regiment of hostile French soldiers,whom he had been deluded into supposing eager to espouse his cause; at Boulogne he sneers at him because he did unhappily use the pistol he carried in his hand with fatal effect. On these occasions Mr. Kinglake compares the Em peror's outward appearance to that "a weaver." Now, we have no doubt that, both at Strasburg and at Boulogne, Louis Napoleon cut as pitiful a figure as baffled conspirators generally do cut in presence of their victorious opponents, but we deny that Mr. Kinglake has produced the slightest proof of his want of personal courage beyond his own unsup ported assertion. And we protest most earnestly against the feminine malignity of his remarks on the Emperor's personal appearance. What would Mr. Kinglake himself think; what would any gentleman of sense think of a French writer, who, even in reply to the work of which we are now speaking, should condescend to remind its author of the ludicrous cir cumstances under which " the staff officer" represents the future historian of the war as having intrr duced himself to the notice of Lord Raglan on the field of the Alma; who should comment disrespect fully on Mr. Kingiake's insecure seat on horse b,,ek, and who should argue that " a tailor," unable to control a bumptious pony, might possibly not be altogether competent to :it in solemn judginent on the complexion and courage of the statesmen and warriors of France ? MR. MORRITT AND HIS CONSTITUENTS. Mr. W. J. S. Morritt, M.P. for the North Riding, ad dressed a portion of his constituency in the Odd Fellows' Hall, Middlesborough, on Wednesday evening. The hall was crowded,between 2,000 and 3,000 electors and non-elec tors being present. The Mayor, Mr. T. Brentnall, pre sided. Mr. Morritt, in order to show that he was not wedded to the Conservatives, stated that he had voted with Mr. Walter, who was supposed to be a very strong Liberal, when the latter moved an amendment to the effect that it was inexpedient to confine all Government grants to certified masters. Regarding the Highway Bill, he consi dered that, where roads had been perfectly well kept for many years, no such evil as that for which a remedy was sought to be applied existed. Therefore the remedy should not be compulsorily enforced. The Night Poaching Bill, he thought, was a misnomer. It was merely an extension to the rural districts of what had always existed in the me tropolis, where a policeman, if he happened to meet any suspicious-looking person with a sack upou his back during the small hours had it in his p Aver to tap him on the shoulder and say, " My friend, what have you got in that sack ?" and search it. With regard to the Lancashire dis tress, it was not for him to say whether the calamity had been brought about by misrule or not. Dreadful as it was, there were points in it at which they could look with the greatest satisfaction and pleasure. We had discovered that among the aristocracy of the land the operatives had their truest friends, and the aristocracy had been taught to know that a nobler and finer set of fellows than the Lancashire operatives did not exist. It was such a reciprocity of feel ing as this that bound rich and poor together and made England what it was. With regard to the ticket-of-leave system, he approved it, if only convicts were transported and not kept at home. The only way of curing the evil of which all England was at the present moment complaining was again to have recourse to transportation. Respecting the American war, he knew that non-intervention was our proper policy in general, but still, when he thought of what was going on, he could not help thinking that, for the sake of humanity, we ought to interfere. In reference to the coming session of rarliament, there was one question that interested everybody and that.would come before the house ; he meant taxation. It was reported that there would be a surplus of revenue, so carefully had the expenditure been watched. He only hoped it might prove to be so. He knew that with many it was thought we should have a very Utopia if only extension of the suffrage and the ballot could be achieved, but, as he had done before, he referred them to the experience of other countries, which proved the opposite to be the case. In reply to questions put to him, Mr. Morritt said he voted against church rates being abolished, and should do the same in the next session unless some satisfactory way of settling the question was proposed. He should have no objection whatever to supporting a bill relieving all Dis senters from the payment of church rates. If a measure were brought forward in the forthcoming session for the re cognition of the Southern Confederacy he would support it. He believed it to be perfectly impossible, after what had happened, for North and Sou h ever to amalgamate. As to closing of publichouses on Sunday, he considered it one of the greatest evils that workingmen should stroll on the Sunday, when they had nothing else to do, into the public houses and come out drunk, although perhaps it was never their intention to become so. Any measure that checked that he should most thoroughly approve. He firmly believed that the French treaty had been a very great blessing to this country, and those persons who thought it would be the reverse have found themselves greatly mistaken. He would support any measure that rendered the transfer of land perfectly safe and at the same time lessened its ex- pence. After a vote of thanks to the Mayor, the meeting dis persed. COUNTRY MARKETS. v- YORK- SATURDAY. At to-day's corn market the supply of farmers' wheat was pretty fair, and prices about the same as last week, with a steady trade. Wheat, red 42s to 46s 1 s Oats.... 2os to 249 White do .50s to 56s Bean 4O: to 429 Barley .28s to 368 Peas ....-8 to —9 Malt, 64s to 66s per qr. ; rye, 34s per qr ; flour, 36s to 38s per sack. LEICESTER-SATURDAY. Old white wheat, 58s to 605; sew, 48s to 54s per 36 stone. Old red, 54s to 56s per 36 stone. Barley, mailing, new, 34s to 38s per qr.; grinding, 28s to 30s ; old oats, 27s to 30s; new oats, 20s to 24s per 24 stone. Beans, new, —s to —s ; old, 41s to 43s per 38 stone. NORTHAMPTON-SATURDAY. New wheat, 46s to 51s ; old, 50s to 565. Barley, 28s to 42s per qr. New oats quoted at 20s to 27 , ; old, 28s to 35s per 24 stone. Beans, old, 39s to 425; new, 32s to 365. Peas, 34s to 44s per qr. NORWICH—SATURDAY. White wheat. 48s to 51s 1 Red wheat 43s to 488 Malting barley ...37s to 39s I Chevalier barley 350 to 368 Distilling d 0..... 32s to 34s I Oats.. Flour, 34s Od to —s Od per sack from the miller. NOTTINGHAM-SATURDAY. White wheat, from 45s to 64s ; red wheat, 45s to 560. Barley—malting, 34s to 43s ; grinding, 288 to 30s. Oats old, at 258 to 318 Od; new, 23s to 265. Beans sold at 32s to 45s per qr. Flour, 338 to 435. DUBLIN• TRIDAY. s. d. s. d. 1 Wheat, white.. 26 0 to 28 6 Do., red ., 23 0 to 26 0 Do., new .... 0 to 0 Barley Oats . ... 11 0 to 13 6 Do., black.... lO 0 to 12 0 s. d. s. d. Beans.. . 24 0 to 27 0 Bere. ]2 0 to 13 0 Rapeseed .... 0 to 0 Oatmeal l3 6 to 15 0 Bakers' flour Indian corn Foreign Mail Packet List. MAILS DUE. r.uelralia and Mauritius, via Southampton ..Feb. 18. via Al arseilles .. Feb. 1 2 ' Brazil and Cape Verds, by British pachet. Feb. 3. Cape of Good Hope, Ascension, and St. Helena. Mar. 3. China, Penang, and Singapore, via Southampton. Feb. 1. via Marseilles ...Feb. 12. Falkland Islands Gibraltar, via Southampton Feb. 1. India (Calcutta), and Ceylon, via Southampton Feb. 1 via Marseilles Feb. 12. India (Bombay), via Southampton .. via Marseilles Feb. 6. Portugal.... Feb. 3. iNi alta, Egypt, and Men, via Southampton Feb. 1. via Marseilles Newfoundland Oporto and Vigo .. C. S. and British N. America, ty Brit. packet.... Feb. 4 _.. .... 'by U.S. packet by Canadian packet Feb. —. W.C. of Africa, Madeira, and Teneriffe .. Feb. 10. Bahamas, via New York Feb. 12. Mexico. AU parts of West Indies, including Chili, Peru, Feb. California, and 13ritA) Columbia.. •••• ) OUR WATERING PLACES.—There is a wonderful sameness in the " Watering-places" of the.south of England. Except in sizo and in the necessary differences of one hill, it may be, higher than another, or a little more or less of wood, or a steeper cliff, or a shallower beach, they are evidently members of one family, and have the monotonous family likeness, Go from Margate to Plymouth,—the Alpha and Omega of the class, — you will find this io be true. The same kind of lodging houses, and . he same tariff of prices ; the same Lord Nelson Inns and Royal Hotels ; the same dingy circulating libraries and dreary reading rooms, with one Times and four penny local papers ; the same sort of shore, half shingle, half sand, with the tiresome little waves all alike from year's end to year's end : the same young ladies with their pork pie hats and wet hair down their backs coming out of the bathing machines, identical with one another from the Nore to the Start; the same young gentlemen lounging all day long with the same penny cigars in and out of the same kind of billiard rooms, with the same kind of chipped balls and gieasy cloth—but let one word suffice, Margate, Rams gate, Worthing, Hastings, Brighton, Bournemouth, Wey mouth, Teignmouth, Ilfracombe, and a dozen others, may, one and all, be equally described under the head " Water ing-place."—Ottoe a Week. ....---, Births. ANGELO.—On the 31st ult., the wife of Michael Angelo, Esq., of the War Office, of a daughter. ANsorr.—On the 29th ult., the wife of Sir John W. Anson, Bert., of a son, stillborn. YourionusßAND.—On the 28th ult,, at Elm House, Charl ton, the wife of Major-General Younghusband, of a sou l stillborn. Marriages. GRAHAM —BLIGHT.—On the 27th ult., at St. Jude% Southsea, Major-General Graham, C. 8., to J ane, widow of the late hear-Admiral WETHERED—ELLisoN.—en the 28th inst., at St. Mary% Bryanston-square, Owen Peel Wethered, Esq., of Gre , " Marlow, to Fr ances Alice the eldest daughter of G. g Ellison, Esq., of Upper Seymour-street. Deaths. FLUDYER.—On the 28th ult., at Ayaton, Rutlhnd, Lieu t ' . General Fludyer, late Grenadier Guards, aged 61. GRAY,—On the 31st ult. at 3, Cornwall-terrace, Sahli. George's- roa d , Mary, widow of Hugh Gray, Esq., n i ! eldest daughter of th e l a t e H un . Si r G eorge Grey, B a " aged 67. KEELING.—At Bath, Robert Keeling, Esq., aged 73. LLOYD.—On the 30th ult., at Coombe House, Oroydon,-,.. ward Lloyd, Esq., late of Green-hill, Manchester, ag"' 83. OTTEY.—On the 27th ult., Francis Ferrand Otto, aged v. -.- 6c Of Broxbourne, Herts, late of H.M's Exchequer, ---- S London : Printed and Published by WILLIAM AND---Vln. of No. 112, Strand, Printer, at THE SUN Office. —T Uut i 112, Strand, in the Precinct of the Savoy, in t he CO of Diiddlesex,—Monclay, February 2, 1801