The Press.
London, England, 1854-01-14 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

36

T H E

PEELITE S.

TO THE EDITOIs OF "THE PRESS•"

Sts,—As I conclude you partake the antipathy to the "following" of
Lord ABERDEEN which is now so common in the House and country,
perhaps you will permit me to offer what you are at liberty, if you
please, to regard as an apology for this unpopular remnant.
In speaking of the Aberdeen following I must premise that it is
necessary to distinguish for which section of that little flock I am
interested. I say section, for as even the minutest quantities are
capable of subdivision, so here in the smallest of existing parties there
are elements so distinct and one would have imagined so oppugnant
that nothing but misery could have brought them acquainted as bed-
fellows.
There is the Peelite proper, whose case I am about to consider.
There are the two divisions of the Peelite improper, the Tadpoles and
the Traducers, those who deal in politics as a traffic, and those who
libel in politics as an art. For these, though they may have some in-
definite connection with " the three " courses which all Peelites are
prepared to take in conjunction, I have nothing to offer at present,
but confine my defence to those purer spirits whose affliction it is in
this sublunary state to be obliged, however reluctantly, to rely on such
coadjutors.
The Peelito proper, I will primarily insist, is not to be esti-
mated by rules which apply to ordinary politicians. To account
for his present predicament it is necessary to study him in em-
bryo ; for thence we shall perceive that ho is the innocent
but unconscious victim of a frail organisation. As a baby he was not
as other babies,—as a boy not as other boys. His teething was pro-
tracted, his chicken-pox scant, and his measles by no means a florid
development. The rustic who to the question, " Have you ever been
confirmed? " answered, " No, air ! but I have been vaccinated," re-
versed the conditions of the Peelite's adolescence ; for it is only the
former process which in his case can be ascertained to have been
achieved with any degree of certainty.
- -

It is yet in the power of the curious to verify the resulting evidence
of these imperfect antecedents. Any one who will observe the Peelites
as a class (and the statement is based upon a pretty wide induction) will
remark the faint-blooded type of their anatomy. They possess in
common a delicate cuticle stretched upon a framework of bone and
muscle, the latter combined in gentlemanly proportions. But their
blood appears to contain a portion of cream of tartar or some other
alterative, and as a party they may be said to look as if permanently
under the influence of medicine.

It might be worth while to inquire how much of their idiosyncrasy
is as due to a light regimen as to a slight constitution. No one will
properly estimate the position of the Peelites who does not avail him-
self of the clue which may be afforded by an examination of their
College Battel Bills. We suspect it would be found that beef and
suck bore an almost infinitesimal proportion to " Commons," and that
the limits of their self-indulgence were sweetbreads or veal cutlets.
If Mr. GLA DSTONE has yet any sins of which to shrive himself, I make
hold to surmise that his most torturing reminiscence may have been
some youthful debauch on raspberry vinegar.
Those who watched the college career of himself and his companions
will generally have little occasion to remember their infirmities.
They never drove tandems, or " sported oaks," or petted terriers, or
scoffed at Dons. The Chancellor of the Exchequer must have been a
pattern to " Peekwater ; " the President of the Board of Trade, we will
venture to say, never trampled irreverently on Dr. JENKINS'S garden-
plat. The Colonial Secretary is not a likely person to have been fre-
quently " gated." Of only ono of them have we heard that he ever
sowed any wild oats in the manner of other young gentlemen of his
time, and in his ease it is said the particular sample was by no means
of the least known or cultivated quality.

Had their station permitted, these well-conducted alumni would
have made exemplary curates or tutors, but it was their misfortune
as a class that their circumstances (lid not impose the necessity of
professional labour. They were deprived from this cause of the oppor-
tunities of discipline enjoyed, for instance, by" the Good Apprentice,"
while their easy present and indefinite future procured them, on the
other hand, the temptations of Telemachus. Of course they submitted
themselves to the direction of a chosen Mentor, but in this respect
they were influenced by the fashion of their generation. It was no
Athenian goddess who was permitted to whisper in their ear, but
the voice of affected wisdom which conveyed the insinuations of
the JESUIT.

But for his monitions it is exceedingly probable that they would
never have ventured on the stage of the world. Their pulses would
have trembled and their breath exhaled in some sphere adapted to

SATURDAY,

their interesting weakness. As they shared the taste for Papal devices
for " postures and impostures," the want of fervour which protected them
from a crisis would have served to prolong indefinitely the languor of
their prostration. They might have been, as others of their associates
are still, meek-eyed clergymen, deposited in seclusion, reduced by
their college fever to a state of chronic debility, and dreaming away a
rural existence in a state of suspension between the prospects of a
vacant earth and a watery heaven. Or they might, if their circum-
stances had required the venture, have straggled up to town as law
students, have turned over the pages of " Contingent Remainders,"
been shocked by the admissions of their fellow-pupils as to the accom.
paniments of last evening's oysters, and in the hurry of fluttered
virtue have slunk back to their Academe. They were qualified for a
different part by those subtle distinctions which the discipline of
LovoLA instilled into their minds. It was this which prepared them
for public affairs, which made Under Secretaries out of candidates for
Canonization, and converted Galahads into Dugald Dalgetties. Through
the medium of their casuistic scruples, and self-questionings, the
plethora of their graces and virtues became available to the world.
It is difficult to estimate fully the benefits thereby conferred upon
society through the instrumentality of the Jesuit's art. There have
been times when young gentlemen of a similar disposition to the
Peelites have been lost to mankind for the want of such intervention. In a
critical age there is always an abundance of well-disposed youths who
model themselves after the daintiest examples which are going There
were such in the later days of Rome and Greece—men who shut
themselves up in a learned retirement with Atticus, and who chirupped
before Socavrxs--bibbers whom the latter strong-headed philosopher
put quietly under the table before taking his morning's walk and bath
in the Ilyssus. There have been such in England from the time when
the break up of the mediaeval system perplexed men with the antago-
nism of duties and righis. But the misfortune has been that hitherto
these personages have been sequestered from the walks of public life
by their tastes or their principles. Euphuists and Arcadians in the
time of ELlZABETH—Sonnetteers who caressed spaniels in the days of
the Merry Monarch—Collectors of china and keepers of diaries under
Queen ANNE and the house of Brunswick—what a waste of worthy
energies does not history record ! Fifty years back my Peelite friends
would have been lounging about the Cocoa Tree repeating the bon-mots
of SHERlDAN—firing off, for all we know, some fainter ones of their
own. In that case they would have been no great benefit to
society ; but now, with the aspirations of amiable St. Bernards, by
the Jesuit's art they are converted to account in common life. The
world has been premature in condemning Jesuitry before it had wit-
nessed this, its most recent, triumph. For my own part I abjure PASCAL
evermore. By Jesuitry we have converted hommes d'affaires out of
materials which were described as " too good for earth, but not good
" enough for heaven." By Jesuitry we have engaged the services of a
bevy of political Pamelas, and enjoy the present spectacle of their
" virtue rewarded." I may have more to say for them if you treat me
civilly; but for the present I remain, sir, your humble servitor,

JOHN OF THE FUNNELS.

ELECTRIC SHOCKS TO MINISTERIAL
FEELINGS.

THE statement which appeared in some of our contemporaries to the
effect that great confusion and inconvenience had been caused upon
the English and foreign telegraph lines by the recent frosts and snows
has received confirmation. The messages despatched during the in-
tenser weather appear to have run into one another, changed contents or
addresses, and to have arrived in fragments, or huddled in heaps, as
the case might be. Our excellent contemporary the Journal of Science
accounts for this in a way which, though we do not profess to under-
stand it the least in the world, seems to us perfectly satisfactory. The
accomplished writer says :—" The wires got connected either by icicles
or by sheets of frozen snow. Now, though water is a conductor, ice,
which partakes of the nature of glass, is not, and therefore, at first sight,
it would be difficult to say why any disturbance of the electric current
has taken place. But consideration shows that, though ice in an
abnormal state is a non-conductor, ice, subjected to electric action,
and exposed to the air, becomes charged with hyposulphurous acid,
which, reacting upon the wire, generates a precipitated hydriodic, or
even bichloride of insoluble pyrophosphoric acid, by which limited
decomposition is at once set up, and connection established." The
confusion being thus accounted for, we may proceed to mention a few
of its results.
Lord PALMERSTON received the following message from Belgium :
" The Czar is delighted with your long-tried fidelity, and begs you to
persevere. One more tangle of diplomacy and his fleets and armies.
are safe for the winter. Your earldom ought to be made a dukedom."
The noble Viscount could not conceive for whom this gracious
message was intended, but felt it his duty to lay it before the -head of
the Government. who crumpled it up rather hastily, said it WRS
nothing, and changed the conversation. The Home Secretary went
out, humming the Vaudeville air, " Qu'as to done, mon Leopold ?"
The Earl of ABERDEZN received a despatch, to the sender of
which he could obtain no clue ; but it congratulated him on having
irremediably damaged the Cabinet by resigning, and then returning,
in order to place both the Radical and Peelite Coalitionists in a fahio
position; and the despatch also intimated the pleasure with which its
author would look for certain merciless " explanations " which would
smash the Ministry. It ended, " Surge, carnifex."