The Press.
London, England, 1857-10-17 00:00:00

polished speeches, will savo his administration
from the charge of being a reproach to his
party and a calamity to his country.

POLITICIANS UNDER GLASS.

IF unattached politicians should choose to
live under glass, it ought to be one of their

household maxims never to throw stones.

Indeed, we would recommend to such people
that they should copy the example of the late
Duke of WET.LINGTON, and put up iron blinds
to secure them against volleys of missiles in
return for any ponderous projectiles which
they may have the temerity to cast from their
crystal " castle."
When, for example, we read in a weekly
organ, a few days since, the attack made
simultaneously on Mr. DISRAELI, Sir BULWER
LYTTON, and Sir JOHN PAKINGTON, we were
rather surprised at its rashness. The coarse
language and vulgar vituperation aimed at
Mr. DISRAELI are damaging only to those who
employ it. Such attacks can proceed only
from inveterate malice, or from the mere wan-
tonness of mischief. It is possible that the
latter reason is the true cause of such a profit-
less display of personal virulence. An impo-
sition, in the shape of a hard task, is inflicted
on schoolboys ; and we must set a lesson
before these stonethrowers, and we must
request them to construe it, and learn it accu-
rately by heart.
These mischievous parties ought not to for-
get that they were the identical persons who
wrote up the poor Duke of NEWCASTLE. (By
the way, what hos become of him ?1 They told
the British public that the Duke of NEWCASTLE
had the highest order of administrative abili-
ties, and that nature and art alike combined
to make him fit for the chief of a Parliamen-
tary connection. They vilified Lord DEBBY
and his friends, while they bepraised the
Duke of NEW:A.4I*LE ; they kept a large stock of
' invectives and panegyrics on hand ; they esta-
blished a great factory for the wholesale com-
position of literary treacle and vitriolic the-
' tonic :

Railing and praising were their usual themes;
And both to show their judgment in extremes,
So over-violent or over-civil,
That every man with them was God or devil.
For a time the system worked well for the
Duke of NEWCASTLE. His Grace was perpe-
tually advertised as a great statesman. The
Whigs could not any longer manage the
Irish Roman Catholics, but the Duke of NEW-
CASTLE could do so. And a pretty manage-
ment his Grace and his friends made of their
political affairs ! They set up JOHN SADLEIR,
a third-class attorney, without capital or cha-
racter, for a statesman. They made EDMUND
O'FLAHERTY one of the two Commissioners for
the Irish Income Tax; they chose the pure-
minded Mr. STONOR for a high judicial office
in the colonies ; they selected Mr FRANCIS
LAwLEY for--shall we go on ? No. We
shall not do so. We do not think that any
practical utility, or high public purpose, could
be attained by dwelling on the detestable
scandals associated with the followers of the
Duke of NEWCASTLE. We have no taste for
" exposures," and we have always opposed
the system which aspires to extract political
capital from individual scandals.
Yet should this literary stone throwing
be continued, it may become necessary
for us to take sharper and severer
notice of it than we are now disposed
to do. Political criticism is one thing ;
personal libelling is another. The rabid vitu-
peration which says that " Mr. DISRAELI was
" never the advocate of one good cause," is a
gross reflection on the memory of Sir ROBERT
PEEL, and on the characters of men like Lord
DERBY, SW JAMES GRAHAM, Mr. GLADSTONE,
and other eminent statesmen, seeing that for
many years Mr. DISRAELI was associated with
those distinguished persons in advocating
what appeared to them to be " a good cause."
! To assert that Mr. DISRAELI " entered public
life with no public object " is a mean imputa-
• tion, not above the level of the most scurrilous
dealers in electioneering garbage. And other