The Press.
London, England, 1853-05-07 00:00:00

MP

THE PRESS.

12

PROBATIONARY ODES.—No. I.

CMS ROMANI:B SUM.—Lonl Puhnerhton on the Greek• Debate.

Black as black Morton (11, near a hap( ier Queen,
Lo! where he fawns—Athenian Aberdeen ;
Athenian. but not Attic ! There were known
Two NeXCA in the Poseidon' town ;
And the strung words of her Ilistiaian (11 tell
What Byron knew, who knew that Athens well ;
How the best woman is the one. when dead.
Of whom least good, least evil. may be said ;
Upon whose broken tombs may still be seen
The bits and bridles of their diseipline.
What, thou of Athens ! Yes. as then they were
'rho old, old. women vegetating there.
Say, wouldst thou choose some loftier rank than theirs.
Some sign less abject than their grave declares ?
'There all in vain. where can thy likeness be,
Thou mighty Cipher, all without a key ?
Yet stay—yes. 1 hle there was S4S epieene,
A ruler tame almost as Aberdeen.
Our first Scotch King. who had to boast like thee
His Spanish match, his Scotch theology cti,
And who, for Peace (4). bore England's fortunes down
Their lowest depths, till thou 'lntl thine were known—
Thou and thy Oinslons. I )id not Guizot swear
That Britain still should know his patriot care ;
While o'er the navies of our Nelson's isle
Dark Gordon 01 smiled as only he could smile ;
And Randier as died and cursed that trick ((i),
Learnt at thy foreign hands. Caesarean Metternieh?
Oh, fair green glades, ye pleasances of Eu,
Where cyst the Cruises plotted, robbed, and slew,
Who has not beard of Mal** a tale of crime
In your soft shades in legendary time?
Alas ! that we should match them ! Ow sweet face
Through a white wimple looks with tearful grace,
And pale despair and sorrow-preseient eyes
In an old frame from out pair galleries.
The Mary-martyr blessed and damned by fame,
The fitirest bearer of the Virgin's name.
Methinks, to a Scotch heart, that wan pale look
Might vouch a truth as true as a Blue Book ;
Breathing a protest in its young remorse
Against the curse of marriages by force.
Sot so, not so ! A Seotchman, by a Ogee'.
(By him unfelt the moral of tilt. scene)
Bade her betray a sister-sovereign's
And flung a maiden in a eretise'h arms.
WlO4 HONOUR then all tied? and was then. none
To brand the deed, albeit the deed was done?
Hoxoun to thee, Great Britain's Valmerston !
Thou wert too late; but after times shall say,
When dotards sold a virgin's hand away.
One Voice was raised in chivalrous disgust.
At a child's choice, constrained. 'twixt impotence awl lust.
What 'nattered it the Thane? [low should he care,
When Onixot called him "glint " and Philippe " cher."
Or al ccelleut? Aye, most exeelling when.
For nothing gained, he sold to Orleans Spain !
Forbearing Mug! if, with his happier wile.
Ile had but asked for vitehting White's fair isle,
tlis guest would only have made one reply—
Yes—No—Nay, " Yes!" Yes—haply—bye and bye.
(To he (Instituted.)

M. P.

(I) If even,' Englishman is a (iris IhtUaNt.n, Lord Palmerton, with stattnummllhe forethought,
probabl) had in his mind both a %wain cud a prophecy. Ilk sifter est Wm. ht RnMANt:
reieeto.
(2) Timey.ll.lo.l.
(1) The prenatat suite of Alasolutint Spain will best illustrate what Lord Aberdeen ling effected
by his "Spanish match." ills atwitipt at theologieal legislation In rivotlitiol re,oiltell in the
most memorable religions secession ever known Ili. re. the disastrous results %%Melt it could
he impossible to exaggerate. Posterity will feel them when the 4.o:tlition Ministry shall long
have been forgotten.
(4) James I, watt caricatured going down a flight of steps carrying a moil representing
the three kingdoms in his hand, a *Tell issuing from Ida Ino.lttls, with the one Word, as It %int his
one Idea, " Peace."
(6) Thle gentleman was a Peelite Lord of the Admiralty at the time. lie attends Lord Derby's
meetings; but always voter with the tioverinuent, enrrpt when they are strong enough to 41,1
without him.
(6) Sir James Viridian' underwent all the ohlonny of op.• • those letters while). cost the
Itandlems their lives. lint it is notorious that it was at the instances of Austria and Naples,
and through Lord Aberdeen** influence, that the plot was diseovered 111111 beirilyea, Which resulted
in their imprisonment mud death.

SATURDAY,

exposed you to the charge of exclusiveness, that atoned in discipline
and compactness for your want of numerical force. The enthusiasm
is vanished—the connection is broken—the discipline is gone. What
and where arc the Whigs now? Your history itself seems to
ceasc—
you are merged into a section of your former opponents—you are
subordinates in a cabinet from which the name of 1% hig is excluded—
your ancient badge is exchanged for a shred from the mantle of the
dead chief who in life most derided your pretensions, most damaged
your reputation ;—and who, even when accepting your opinions, shrunk
pointedly from all thought of your alliance. Twice did Sir Robert
Peel pass into your camp a deserter from his own forces, but in
neither case an associate with yours. He did but seize upon your
weapons to pile them up as trophies for himself. And perhaps all his
hostilities never so injured the Whigs as when he appropriated, to en
large. the measures he had before resisted. and showed the practical
people of England that he alone could perfinin what you, the Whigs,
had in vain attempted to do. Nay, even when on the abolition of the
corn laws he assigned to each associate in his victory the due propor-
tion of merit, so eager was his desire to disparage your earnestness,
and cast a slur on your own claims to popular gratitude. that, with all
his habitual abhorrence to extra-forensic agitation, he gave the lion's
share of conceded praise to the Orator of the League. And yet it is to
the special followers of your most illustrious enemy that you now post-
pone all your claims of two centuries, not participating on equal
terms in the 'polio opinot,—and consenting to erase the very name of
Whig from the cornerstone of the Government, to cement the founda-
tion of which you fritter your own masonry into splints and rubble.
And what do you gain by an alliance in which you figure not as con•
federate potentates, but as dependent auxiliaries? It is in vain to
boast of the sacrifices of patriotism—of the necessities of carrying on the
Queen's Government—Government in which your two most distinguished
leaders actually hold no official appointment ! From the list which
includes each scattered subaltern of Peel are cashiered the men who had
formed the first ranks of your phalanx. The thoughtful mind of Lord
Grey—the ready vigour and force of his cousin. Sir George—the finan-
cial reputation of Baring—the earnest intelligence of Labouchere—the
liberal accomplisments and exquisite temper of Carlisle—the wit and
the courage of Clstmicarde—the business-like abilities of Seymour—
the scholarship awl moderation of Vernon Smith—the immense erudi-
tion and dazzling eloquence of Macaulay—are severed from the sides
of those who serve as subordinates to Gladstone. True, Macaulay's ab-
negation is voluntary—can you say the same of the rest? Why these
exclusions of your own natural officers, except that they have been too
much identified with the memory of your past battles ; and in the eyes
of your new associates their sears are not the tokens of honour, but
the excuse for dismissal from service ? But the Queen's Government
must be carried on. True ; but how, and by whom?
The nation is divided between two great parties, that of the
Movement, commonly called the Radical, and that composed of the
supporters of the policy which characterized the short Government of
Lord Derby. Between these two great divisions of the electoral body
there are noble intermediators I grant, men whose sublime duty it
may be to grasp with firm hand the balance of opposing parties. But it
it clear that no mere junction of petty sections can obtain what is the
first requisite of a Government—a strength of numbers sufficient to
carry its measures. But neither of these parties do you gain—neither
of them do you conciliate in your fusion with politicians equally dis-
severed from both. You win the Conservative tiladstone, but not the
Conservatives—you win the Radical Alolesworth, but not the Radicals
You rally round you no popular sympathies when you invest all your
political capital in the precarious speeulation of a Peelite Cabinet.
Look to the last general election. What men less popular then than
the Peelites. despite their unquestionable talents? Peel himself was
a name that carried with it the affection and trust of' an immense pro-
portion of the electoral class. I grant this most fully ; but to his in-
dividual memory alone the popular attachment confines itself.
How many men in the House of Commons can be called Peelites ?
Are there forty ? So. then, in this fragment from the main Conserva-
tive body—without popular prestige, without electoral influence,
without definite policy—you, the Whigs, to whom Lord Grey be-
queathed the government of England. while not one opposing litigant
had resources sufficient to contest your title—you, the Whigs,
at last sink your identity and vanish out of sight ! So thus do
the organs of the Government which your leaders help to compose
emphatically style it the Conservative—so thus the very title of
Whig is ignored as a thing past and obsolete. And the highest com-
pliment the Premier can pay to your veteran chief is to assure the
startled public that my Lord .Tohn Russell is—Conservative!
Is this a position that can flatter the ,just pride of party? And is
this the Be All and the End All of the descendants of Somers and Wal-
pole? Is the position—if you grant it undignified—wholly the fault
of the accomplished and practised chief to whom the conduct of your
party was consigned in the Commons when Lord Althorp was lost
amongst the Peers ? If his be the fault. it arises from no defect in
the inherent qualities which command admiration anti justify power.
To a name to which history has given a blazon beyond all the or and
ozor of heralds Lord John Russell united an intellect refined by
letters, and invigorated by practical life Consummate in the usual
tactics of party—..ourteous to opponents, if somewhat indifferent to
fiiends—rising On legitimate occasions to an eloquence ennobled by
generous sentiments. and entitled by a various knowledge, Lord
Johns just pretensions to be the leader of gentlemen, and the expo-
nent of party opinion, were never denied, save by the mutinous follow-
ers who sat at his rear, only with more effect to assail him from behind.
Where, then. NV:!' his titult. when we ask "What has become of the
mighty party that passed to his guidance?" It seems to me simply
this, that he never comprehended the true ground he should occupy,
nor the directions in which he should advance. For the last twenty

MAY 7, 1853.

years one choice has lain before the judge►ent of statesmen, viz.. the main-
tenance of those institutions, nay. of those habits of thought, which
prese►ve monarchy.—or that gradual change into absolute democracy
to which Tocquevillo somewhat rashly considered all the tendencies
of our age impel the destinies of Europe.
It was this choice that Lord John could never p►evail on himself to
make with unequivocal and systematic decision : it is by seeking to
evade or to toy with it. and by attempting to dignify vacillation into
political prudence, that. under the leadership► of Lord John. you have
year after year thinned your ninks and damaged your influence. And
now the sole principle upon which you can defend your coalition is
based upon precisely the same error—that of playing Conse►vatives
against Radicals, and obtaining a►►jjorities that ►ave no faith in your
policy and no heart in your cause.
Yet your true position was so directly in sympathy with the views and
wishes of the great middle class—of which as Whigs you aspire to be the
fittest representatives—that you had but to understand and maintain
it, in order to render yourselves indispensable to the necessities of the
state.

Let us pause and examine. The Parliamentary Reform Bill was the
great work of the Whigs. From that epoch dates the influence they
gained with Lord Grey, to lose at last under Lord Aberdeen. You had
thus created a new constitution, amidst the loud hurrahs of the people.
What was your obvious and easy task? Was it not to identify your-
selves inseparably with your own work, and to be :Alit:fly the censer
vatives of the liberal constitution you had formed ? But you imper- •
fectly understood that task when, through the mouth of Lord John,
you declared yourselves for finality. A problem like the Reform 13111
entails the task of solving its corolialies. To conserve this new consti-
tution, you ha►l first, it is true, to maintain its roots, but, secondly, to
establish the value of its products ; in other words, your task, as the au-
thors of a fresh charter between the throne and the people, was to main-
tain the charter intact from denu►crtttic invasion. and to disarm demo-
cracy itself, by proving that it sufficed for all those ends of practical
government the failure of which alone excuses his own creed to the
democrat. Firmness to defend the reformed constitution, unrelaxing
energy to work out its legitimate results,—this should have been your
twofold aim—this was Lord Grey's. Anti had you proved yourselves
equal to that position you would have carried oil' from Conservatives
on one side, and Radicals on the other, a majority all your own. For
you would have become the representatives of the real sense of the
public, and rapidly have formed the Third Party amongst the electoral
constituencies which has withered away under your hesitating discou-
ragements. For why did the Government. of Lord John gradually die
of exhaustion ? Because it unsettled much as to the new constitution,
and settled nothing, that was expected to be the result of it. And
just towards the close, at the moment most inopportune, when insur-
gent populations anti tottering thrones throughout the Continent,
when quick successions of excess and despotic reaction rendered it
most unwise to tamper with settled institutions at holm., and disposed
the public least to demand a change, my Lord John collies down to
the House of Commons with his notable proposition—to undo the
Reform Bill ! Six years of languid legislation, six years subsistence
on the legacy of Free Tuttle, six years and nothing done, that could
show the innate vigour of the existent constitution to remove all
grievances, and advance all progress, contrasted by a spasmodic vio-
lence against the Reform Bill itself, and it classical dissertation, by the
very Premier who had been most in collision with the democntts.
during all his tenure of office,—on the advantageous construction Of
the word democracy ! All this explains why the Whigs had fallen at
the commencement of the present Parliament into so great disrepute.
They had not only thrown away their right position, they had per-
versely taken up the wrong one. They had done nothing to prove
that Reform works well ; and their only pretence to what the jargon
of the day calls " Liberal opinion " was in the abortive attempt to
create agitation against the very title-deeds of the possessions they
haul obtained from the state. Could it be supposed, then, when thus
thrown out of power—meeting the present Ptn•liument with reduced
numbers, internal divisions, popular discredit—they would obstinately
insist again on precisely the same error? Anti yet is not that error
the very basis of their present coalition, or rather submersion ? They
form a Government on the principle of a farther Reform Bill when-
ever Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Molesworth can concur in amal-
gamating the opinions of the Reform Club with those of the Carlton.
Every attempt to viii icate the constitution is put off for some indefinite
plot on the constitution itself, on which, if it he possible to form a
rational conjecture, not two of the conspirators can possibly agree
together. It is true, meanwhile, that you have assisted to swell the
reputation which you, above all men. are forbidden to share ;—the
reputation that Mr. Gladstone has procured from a budget of which
the chief popular merit is in its signal contrast to all your own finan-
cial principles, and its covert blow to the policy by which you have
hitherto supported Aristocracy as an element necessary alike to the
safety of freedom, and the duration of monarchy. What in this be
your gain shall be considered later.
Here I pause for the present. hi my next letter I shall endea-
vour to show that the Govenunent of Lord Derby assumed precisely
that position which you, the Whigs, had thrown away ; and- I shall
take leave to inquire if you then took the best. Means to reunite your
forces, regain your ascendancy, and identify your natural leaders with
the cause they profess to cherish. MANII.IIOI.

THE PLEDGE TO GOD AND THE PLEDGE TO MAMMON.
A DIALOGUE BETWEEN AN ENGLISH FUNDHOLDER AND A CANADIAN
CHURCHMAN.

FUNDROLDr.R.
Happy the man whnse safe invested heaps,
Proud of its trust, a jealous nation keeps;

No falling shares his nightly rest prevont—
No crash disturbs his two pound ten per cent. :
All heedless he. though sands and mines unfold
The solid nugget and the dust of gold :
Though the pale usurer tremble for his store.
Its worth still lessening as its bulk grows more;

Though lords. once dipped. their cumbered acres free.
And debts paid ow astound the mortgagee.
Though railway magnates mink with growing cares.
Wrecked in one KnutsL. their passengers and shores.
FOr forty years, secure from every shock.
A nation's honour guards her new-made stock
Then take. my soul, thy dividends and ease,
For England pays and Gladstone guarantees.
A nation's honour ! cross the Atlantic wave.
There seek the pledge that nations honour gave.
A king bestowed the designated sod.
And vowed the gift for ever to his God.
A senate's voice, while senates yet were' just,
In after years confirmed the sacred trust.
Where now the auspicious infant. born to prove
The mutual pledge of Church and statesmen's love?
spurn'd by its parents, eurst by faction's cries,
In thirteen years the puny bantling dies.
Frxunot.nEn.
It moves not me, Admit your tale be true,
A Church is easier cheated than a Jew.
Vows made to God provoke but God's revenge
Vows made to Mammon touch the Stock Exchange.
Who now believes in heavenly vengeance shown
For broken faiths, or altars overthrown?
If fever burn, our drains the pest have made;
If tamine pinch, we only want free trade.
Not thus our funds. Let Nlammon's temple reel,
A world-wide trade the fatal shock shall feel,
And worldly vengeance, kindled by disgniee.,
Shall hurl the bankrupt Minister from place.
CnrneuMAX.

13
=

'Twits said of ohl. and some believe it still,
Who robs a church will hardly spare a till;
And many an nneient moridist declares
A people's promise binding on their heirs.
Our modern statesmen no such rule allow,
Aims imam ehany(i : things are altered now.
But. lest my angry muse too rudely mil,
I'll cloak my moral in an tmeient tale.
Once on a time, old N.sop tells the fable,
'two brother pilferers sought a tavern table:
In parts assigned, they shared the knavish feat--
The first purloined, the wenn(' kept, the meat.
Charged with the theft, " I have it not," one cries;
" I took it not," his brother rogue replies.
0, father lEsop, who would e'er have thought
A statesman's lesson in thy tale was taught?
A nation's promise is the pilfered meat,
A .joint-stock llinistry the triek rep eat
Whig, who promised, vows he ne'er betrayed It;
The Peelite. breaking, swears he never made
Pause, England, pause, ere History's stem decree
With brand undying stamp thy deeds and thee ;
Pause, ere the blot that stains thy rival's name
Damn thee, like her, to everlasting shame ;
Ere, doomed to mark historie glories fade,
Merged in the of thy darling trade,
With kindred infinity thy annals shine,
And Punic faith with Punie wealth be thine.
Pause while thou enlist. Let restless Faction still
Hound to the charge her tribunes of the Mill,
(Faction whose robe, with tawdry eiitton spread.
Apes the wild weeds that twine round Freedom's head i
Let social Seienee still crude dreams dispense
Of worlds unchecked by meddling Providence ;
Still inovk the heart-poured prayer, that fruitless springs
To move the unbending laws of human things ;
Still let minute philosophers essay
To file our faith, our hope, our creed away,
.And Strauss and Homell in their cloudy brain
Rule their brief hour, like Tindal and 1 Dill Paine.
Let modern lights their flickering ghlim advance—
The German Pantheist, Communist from Franey,
And foiled assassins from their homes expelled
Half+ treasons still, beneath the exiles shield.
Yet, if there be whom noble pride inspires
To rialto as sons the history of their sires,
Who trust, to guide each piddle word and deed,
A nation's eonseience, and a nation's creed,
Who feel their souls indignant turn to hear
The sophist's statecraft. and the scorner's sneer,
And still, unmoved, whatever wiles assail,
Keep their hearts steadfast, though their reason fail,--
if mull there be, though dark the prospect lower,
Calinly we wait our eountry's trial hour.
What though, unmarked, some noxious weeds have crept,
And elabpol their fibres rotund her as she slept,
Though rank the growth of indolence and ease,
Still, God be thanked, our England is not these.

It .

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