The Express.
London, England, 1865-10-28 00:00:00

OUR CONTEMPORARIES.

(THIS DAY.)

?HZ FUSIRLL OF LORD ealsraterron.
A public funeral in Westminster Abbey, the
Pion remark& is the seal at the nation's gratitude for a
career which has been dosed. In expressing • desire that
Lord Palmerston should be buried there, the Queen spoke as
the woke of the nation. le Dearly 60 years since Lord
merston Pun entered the service of the crown, and the yams
which he aetuslly gave his country fell little short of hell •
century. In the long retrospect of such a rimer many ads
may be forted the expediency of which may sow appose
doebdul, but none which can impeach the singleness of
his
p )IMy or the polity of his motives. His one thought wee
the honour and slag of England, and in his god for his
country he we% careful to remember what wee due to the
prelims legacy of bar put renown. It is oily upon sash
coaaaime sa his freers' thet Westminster Abbey apposes to
hi) devoted to its proper use. Among the statesmen who
skip is Westrohater Abbey there may be come whose in.
tel'ectual power will be estimated by after generation shove
sh)t of Lord Paimuston ; none of whom it can be said
that be was more beloved by his contemporaries.
We may, indeed, apply to Lod Palmerston the
*obis verses, still to be read on • tombstone in
the Abbey, in which Pope I,meeted the death at a
statmman who wee also his hired. A busy romancer, may
not remember numb of the de is of that f.ieod, but re long
as the English language remains the genaror% lines of the
great poet mud stme.ve :
" He broke no promise, ter red no private sod ;
Hs liaised no title, but he lost no friend."
The usselfishnees, fidelity, and generality which appeared
to Pope the special merits of the servant of geese Anne
were the oonspirsors s'-toes of the Prime Minister of
Queen Victoria.
The Poet dwells upon the clew obedient). of Lord Palmer.
doe to the simple law of public duty. The happy eeedition
of the country at the present time is due to the feet that
the various lines of careful policy which he had himself
drown out and dinette 1 were, is their convergence,
coincident with the climax of his long and happy career,
He was preeminently the man of his free, and the
personal development of patriotism has always been, and
always meet be, a br-con to all time. Never, perhaps,
wrs the ideal conception of the Roman post more
thoroughly realised—" A calm devotion to reason and
justice, the sanctum, of the heart undefiled, rod • breed
glewieg with inborn honour,"
In burying Lord Palmerston, the Herald says we seem
to have buried an epoch. We have severed the link which
bound us to the times of Pitt and Ceasing, sod connected
us with the history of the greatest of European wars. For
Dearly 60 years Lord Paimmiton has borne a foremost
part, for a considerable portion of that time he has taken
the chid place, in the politics of Eegland. He tiotered on the
great anon during the thick
is
the mighty struggle be.
Orem England and Beeeprrte. For eight yens this war
hated, sad since it ended in I'mtary the fifty Testa of
history have been fifty years of peen, a half entuiy of un-
exampled prosperity to England. Without attributing
this prosperity to Lord Palmerston, we moat admit
that he had his share in bringing it about sod
maintaining it ; that while the foreign policy al the
country was under his control, and the direction cf
domestic policy influeuced by his counsels, we were pre-
served from any great esror or imprudence which might
have issued in calamity. Political friends and political foes
—of personal friends be had many, and foes none—will
agree in this, that he worked long, washed herd, and
worked well ; that he employed his great 'ntelleet and ex.
trsordinary opportunities without • selfish motive or speck
of %diger ambition ; but with a single eye to the good of
that motherland wham greatness, however, we may differ,
we all have at heart.
The Telorraph thighs one might distingukh in the public
demonatration of yesterday, in the side of the she
and
the conduct of the shopkeepers and crowd a solid nibute of
Japed end regret which reflected the dead man, end was his
fitting, silent elegy. The House al Commons has yet to feel
the shock of his it m. Not to see Lard Paluniston walk to
his seat amli • bunt of chter'-ig, sit down, pull his
hat over ble eyes, stretch his legs out, and hirable
with • fariculus of papas—will to some extent
he • renew' of troday. But there mrst be no fele' senti-
ment now or then about the memory of • man who was
himself the incarnation of common sense. Neither Lord
PPlMentoll, -'or any other lord or e.ramoner, is neeruary
to England; neither for his death, nor for the demise of
any other, most her majestic progress be slopped.
Buried between Chatham and Fox, with Cleaning also to
beer him compeny, PalMelliOn is more honoured in his last
resting place than if he had reposed in the vaults of a long
line of Kings ; but It is desirable, mays
the Stor, that the
language of adulation should not he too nomemered. There
are those who are not content with placing Palmerston by the
side of Pitt, of Canning, and of Peel. They desire to give
him a loftier niche than my with which the gods were
hemmed in the Roman Pantheon ; nay, they seek to cad
around him • halo of sanctity like those with which Roman
Pontiffs after • lapse d ages, encircle the brows of their
priests and martyrs whose good deeds have become em-
balmed in tradition. Lad Palmerston was • great
minister, a powerful statesmen, • sagacity% politician,
• man who was endeared to his personal Meade by the
amiability and kindness of his manner. But to smart for
him a special claim for piety, to describe him as par ex.
esileace • defender of the evangelical school of faith, to
depict him sea man who from his earliest youth had man-
fully stood up for the whim of revelation, is to put forth
pretensions which Lord Palmerston never dreamed of
making for himself, end which word here inspired him
with genuine indigestioc.

as himself.
Few people will deny that any attempt to promote
subordinate in the Commons at the expense of a
Cabinet Minister in the Lords would at the pre-
sent moment come under the latter category. We
have no wish to undervalue a very useful body of
public servants, but it is impossible to feel that,
at any rate when the Duchy of Lancaster has
been filled up, there is any member of the Admi-
nistration whose position is decidedly below his
deserts. Nor is it to be forgotten, in surveying
the disadvantages under which we at present ,
labour, that if the Prime Minister were to resolve
to pass over all claims to promotion, and take the
vas saw tiovzserwarr.
that the but ()Wad tneetiog shall
best man he could find, without regard to his being
To-day it ie intended
already in office, his range of choice indeed would ba held, and her Majesty's Ministers ail have the opportu-
bs but only by a reproduction of , any of oomidering their altered relations to 'soh other and
similar material& Putting aside corlein names to the State, and of sketchier the
.fltst outline of a policy
whose recent political action has postponed 1 for the
sari
log
se".l.l°°. tiTheorif their 14•21 to the
sad
the recognition of their undoubted merits, the tat, e"iii
ellue . n ofY regret that it shouldi be
extension of the search to the ranks of the Liberal
use many to recur to a politician more this 70 yens of
party outside the Administration would be equally age, the representative of the sueweet school
Mesa to ot whinier e
barren of results. The dearth of rising politi- Yet it conceives it to be the
ot every 6;e