The Press.
London, England, 1854-08-19 00:00:00

MP

MI

770

The principal measure of the session—the
Oxford University Bill—owes its success
wholly to the care bestowed on it by Mr.
WALPOLE. Thoroughly master of his subject,
he directed his attention, with admirable
assiduity, to the remodelling of the bill, and
converted it from a compulsory into a permis-
sive measure, such as Lord' DERBY'S Govern-
ment were prepared to introduce. In the
frequent discusgions on the bill, the clear and
statesmanlike views Of Mr: WALPOLE' COM-
manded the respect of the whole House. From
the Opposition bench he spoke with the
authority of a Minister. His conduct of this
measure alone is sufficient to establish his
claim to administrative talents of the highest
order, and to win for him the confidence of the
country.
The Protestant securities of our Constitu-
tion, invaded by Lord J. RussEtt's insidious
Oaths Bill, were nobly vindicated by Sir FRE-
DERICK 'NEMER. Was this faction? If so,
a majority in Parliament, and a much greater
majority in the country, must be implicated in
the charge.
To Sir JOHN PAKINOTON belongs the merit of
exposing the organised corruption of the Duke
of NEWCASTLE and his colleague Mr. GLADSTONE.
No one doubts that the country is deeply in-
debted to Sir JOHN for dragging into day the
particulars of Mr. LAwLEY'S culpability ; and
the artifice is too gross for a moment's accep-
tation to attempt to smother services like
his under a general charge of violence and
faction. It is to perpetrate one of those
foolish calumnies which recoil on the heads
of their authors without once touching the in
tended victim.
Whether the conduct of the Opposition be
viewed in respect to those measures of the
Government which it helped to avert or de-
feat, or those which it took under its protec-
tion and improved, or those, again, which it
tacitly suffered to pass as necessary to the
public service,—its policy appears to equal ad-
vantage. In discharging the duties of opposi-
tion, it has not forgotten its responsibilities to
the Crown and the country, and has risen
in public opinion even faster than the repu-
tation of the Ministry has declined.

SIR BENJAMIN HALL AND RADICAL
PLACE-HUNTERS.
WE ar© not amongst those surprised

an

appointment of Sir BENJAMIN .I:PaiD
official position. The metropolitan members
have always been infected with the place-
hunting epidemic, which nowhere rages more
fiercely than in the wealthy and parvenu
professors of claptrap politics. Tribunes on
the platform and courtiers in the antecham
ber, intriguing for honours and inveighing
against aristocracy, the metropolitan senators
represent only too vividly the spurious charac-
ter of that party which apes independence,
while it always comes to the rescue of any,
" Liberal" Ministry in distress. The patri-
cian demagogue of the last century was bad
enough, but he often redeemed his political
vices by brilliant personal qualities, or by
some gallant feats of generous daring. It is
only the worst features of his character that
are copied by brawling baronets, who sigh for
a peerage, and shout for the ballot. With loud
professions on their lips, their public career is
at once timid and tortuous. Distracted in
their petty ambition, irresolute even in their
Insincerity, they keep vibrating between May
Fair and Marylebone, quailing before the
sneers of Almacks, and shuddering at the
groans of a parish vestry.
Sir BENJAMIN HALL has only gone through
one of the developments of his nature in
taking office under Lord ABERDEEN. He
taunted long enough as a demagogue, and he
now desires to flatter as a Minister. He tells
IN in his speech that "he took office only
" for the good of his country," and he will
keep the same form of words stereotyped for
that joyous time, which he fondly dreams of,
when he is to bid good-bye to the Marylebone
Radicals, and announce to them that he has
become a peer " for the good of his country."

THE PRESS.

It is really somewhat surprising to think of all
the rewards that these Radical metropolitan
members have contrived to engross. Sir WIL-
LIAM MoLEswoRTE, of Southwark, has become
a Cabinet Minister ; wad a quondam member
for the same constituency, Mr. D. W. HARVEY,
by a change similar to what often takes place
in continental capitals, frOm a tribune of the
zpleAsieloped into a commissioner of police.
WILLkAM CLAY, of the Tower Hamlets,
blooms, like Sir BENJAMIN himself, as a full-
blown baronet, still odorous of recent crea-
tion. Mr. BENJAMIN HAWES was advanced
to being an under-secretary of state, and the
consequences thereof we need not mention.
His old colleague, Mr. TENNYSON D'EYNCOURT,
was sworn a " Privy Counciller," without
going through the usual responsibilities of
office. Mr. CHARLES PEARSON, another metro-
politan Radical, and ex-M.P. for Lambeth, is
the City Solicitor. Mr. WARLEY, of Finsbury,
advertised himself by his parliamentary exer-
tions into the most lucrative coronorship in
England. Sir Ds LACY EVANS, of Westminster,
obtains a generalship of division; and the
locality which he represents reminds us how
a Hobhouse became a peer and a subdued
Whig. Admiral DoNeAs, at the head of the
clamorous ten-pounders of Greenwich, suc-
ceeded in storming the Admiralty, and by
vigorous parliamentary bombardments won
his appointment in spite of sharp vollies of
criticism from Whig lords and others. De-
ducting the four members for the city of
London from the eighteen metropolitan seats,
it will be found that during the last twenty
years the fourteen seats we have named have
commanded a greater share of titular and offi-
cial rewards than any similar number of
boroughs in the electoral map of England.
Yet not even one of the parasitical politicians
of Marylebone would affirm that. as a class,
the metropolitan members, with Sir BENJAMIN
at their head, and Sir JOHN FAILURE SHELLEY
at their tail, were up to the average of the
representatives of England. The oratory of
Mr. APBLEY PELLATT and the profound think-
ing of Mr. WILLIAMS faithfully illustrate their
pretensions to distinction.
Sir BENJAMIN, therefore, has only been
" standing by his order" in graduating as a
Minister. Such is metropolitan democracy !
But in more than one instance, Lambeth to wit,
the stool of office has been the stool of repen-
tance ; by the test of personal responsibility
the censorious scold of the platform has often
been convicted of official incapacity. As Sir
BENJAMIN has imitated a Hobhouse in the art
of rising, he may, perhaps, copy a Hawes or a
Chadwick in the art of falling. "He had a
" bad fall up stairs," said a wit, of a newly
ennobled orator of the Commons; and Sir
BENJAMIN may yet find that he has tumbled on
all fours into the Board of Health. Yet he
certainly has some colorable pretensions to
being thought adequate for dealing with the
parochial mind. He has bustled in the
baronetage with the fussy airs of an old
vestryman, and he has strutted amidst ad-
miring beadles with the portentous dignity of
a'• newly-titled Radical. If the cholera will
not abate its virulence before such a mighty
personage, capable of assailing unfortunate
Irish landlords, or insulting English bishops,
the disease must be more dreadful than ever.
We sincerely wish that we could add that it was
likely Sir BENJAMIN could abate the epidemic
with as much ease as certain morbid humours
of Marylebone may be drained off by flushing
the Radical sewage with Pactolean streams
of public money.