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

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to the welfare

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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.

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