The Press.
London, England, 1854-12-23 00:00:00

DECEMBER 23, 1854.

Nittraturt.

is Hammes dEtat de 1' Angleterre au XIXe

Sieicle. Par Count de la

Paris :

Dentu.
VOLTAIRE once said of something, "I don't
" know it, but lam sure of it." So we say of
this book, " We do not positively know
" that it has been written at the instiga-
" tion of the Peelites, but we are sure of it."
For is it credible that any foreigner under-
taking to write a series of sketches of the
statesmen of England of the nineteenth cen-
tury would, if left to himself, have set down,
as our author has done, only seven men as
wlrthy of that noble title ; and for those seven
would have taken only one Conservative (Mr.
Disraeli), only two Whigs (Lords J. Russell
and Palmerston), and not fewer than four
Peelites (the late Sir Robert Peel, the " bon
" Aberdeen," Sir J. Graham, and Mr. Glad-
stone)? Could any foreigner not writing under
Peelite dictation have been guilty, as our author
is, of the enormous absurdity of disparaging
the vast ability and the brilliant career of Mr.
Disraeli ? We defy anybody to answer these
questions in the affirmative; and therefore we
say that this book is, and must be, the
result of Peelite inspiration We are sure of it !
The desire of the Peelites to win favour in
France can readily be understood. Now that
England is in close alliance with that country,
they feel that reparation is due to the French
Sovereign and the French people for the out
rageous insults which they, as a party, heaped
on the former for perpetrating, and on the
latter for submitting to, supporting, and ap-
plauding, the coup d'etat of December. Now
that England is engaged in carrying on a
mighty war in conjunction with France, they
feel that it is much to be wished that the
French Emperor, Ministers, and people should
entertain as favourable an opinion as possible
of the men who compose the most influential
part of the English Government. Hence the
determination to bring out a book in which
the principal Peelites should be washed from
their past misdeeds towards France, and be
exalted to the skies—in which the two chiefs
of the party with whom, for their own selfish
purposes, they have temporarily coalesced
(Lord J. Russell and Lord Palmerston) should
be treated with less respect than is due,
in order that their men, by contrast, may
shine the more—and in which the Conserva
tives should be represented as having only
one statesman, and he worthy of no honour at
all. There was cunning in the scheme, but
it has been so clumsily executed that it
will completely fail ; tho engineer is " hoist
with his own petard." The Peelites forgot
that something more was required to rehabili-
tate them in the eyes of our allies, and to
damage the leader of the Conservative party,
than a mere instruction to a servile writer of
" Praise us—abuse Disraeli" ; and they ne-
glected to take the precaution of ascertaining
whether the gentleman they commissioned, the
Count de la Grueronniere, possessed tke capa-
city to make the praise appear merited and the
abuse spicy. Perhaps they mistook him for his
brother, the Vicomte, formerly the clever editor
of one of the Paris papers, and well known as
the author of very excellent pen-and-ink por-
traits of Louis Napoleon and other eminent
Frenchmen. The consequence of their over-
sight is that we have a volume which glaringly
betrays the object for which it is written ;
and, instead of a well-written, readable, in-
teresting book, which was to have been
hoped for from an author who boasted that
" from long residence in England he has
" been able to obtain a profound knowledge
" of English institutions and English states-
" men," we have a work which literary justice
imperatively demands should be branded
with Macaulay's paraphrase of Johnson's
famous condemnation of his leg of mutton—
that " it is as bad as bad can be ; ill-compiled,
ill-arranged, ill-expressed, and ill-printsd."
It would be doing too much honour to this
discreditable Peelite production to enter into
an elaborate examination of the notices of the
seven statesmen who, according to our well-
informed author, are all England possesses—
** Earl of Derby, LordEllenborough, the Mar-