The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-04-23 00:00:00

MR. DISRAELI'S TRIBUTE TO
DEPARTED GREATNESS.

The Pall Mall Gazette remarks :—" Now that Lord
Beaconsfield has passed away from amongst us men
naturally recall those tributes to departed greatness
which in the course of his eventful history it frequently
was the duty of his position to pay. Two passages
from his speeches on those occasions will be read to-day
with even gi'eater interest than at the time they were
delivered. When Mr. Cobden died Mr. Disraeli
said :
" I cannot reconcile it to myself to be silent on this occa-
sion when we have to deplore the loss of one so eminent,
and too in the ripeness of his manhood and the full
vigour of his intellect. Although it was the fortune of Mr.
Cobden to enter public life at a time when passions ran
high—and he himself by no means a man insensible to
political excitement—still when the strife was over there
was seon observed in him a moderation and a tempered
thought that indicated a large intellectual horizon and the
possession of statesmanlike qualities. Though formed in
the tumult of popular opinion with which he iden-
tified himself, there WRS in his character a vein of re-
verence for tradition which, even unconsciously to
himself, subdued and softened the acerbity of the
cruder conclusions at which he may have arrived. That in
my mind is a quality which in some degree must be
possessed by anyone who attempts or aspires to sway
this country. For notwithstanding the rapid changes in
which we live and the numerous improvements and altera-
tions we anticipate, this country is still Old England, and
the past is one of the elements of our power.
this consolation when we remember these unequalled and
irreparable visitations—that these great men are not
altogether lost to us; that their opinions will be
often quoted in this House, their authority appealed
to, their judgments attested; even their very words
will form part of our discussions and our de-
bates. There are some members of Parliament who,
though not present in the body, are still members of this
House, independent of dissolutions, of the caprice of con
atituencies, even of the course of time. I think, Sir, Mr.
Cobden was one of these men. I believe that when the
verdict of posterity shall be recorded on his life and conduct
it will be said of him that he was without .doubt the greatest
political character the pare middle-class of this country has
yet produced—an ornament to the House of Commons and
an honour to England.

"Different but not unworthy of the theme was Mr.
Disraeli's reference to the death of President Lincoln.
He said:—

"There are rare instances when the sympathy of a nation
approaches those tenderer feelings that, generally speaking,
are supposed to be peculiar to the individual, and to form
the happy privilege of private life, and this is one. Under
all circumstances we should have bewailed the catastrophe
at Washington; under all circumstances we should have
shuddered at the means by which it was accomplished.
But in the character of the victim, and even in the acces-
sories of his last moments, there is something so homely
and so innocent that it takes as it were the subject
out of all the pomp of history and the ceremonial of diplo-
macy; it touches the heart of nations and appeals to the
domestic sentiment of.mankind. Sir, whatever the various
and varying opinions in, this House and the country
generally on the policy of the late President of the United
States, on this, I think, all must agree, that in one of the
severest trials which ever tested the moral qualities of man
he fulfilled his duty with simplicity and strength. Nor is it
possible for the people of England at bitch a moment to for-
get that he sprang from the same fatherland and spoke the
same mother tongue."