The Express.
London, England, 1860-02-15 00:00:00

THE MEETING OF THI CONSERVATIVE

PARTY.

(From the hatly -Vest%)
A. we ventured to prognosticate, there is to he •
grand sham-battle on the Budget. At the review of
his troops which assembled yesterday round Salis-
bury Plain, Lord DeesT declared that he had no
desire to expel his antagonists from office just now,
and no intention of doing so. Adi instrauon was
one thing; • deadly encounter was quite another.
He was all for the tint, and all against the second.
Toe financial scheme of Ministers appeared the most
eligible opportunity for showing how numerous and
how united they were. It ought to be denounced
by every old friend of monopoly and every new
convert to reaction. But it bad much better be de-
nounced vehemently than opposed effectually. It
was precisely the sort of external application,
which, though not pleasant, was likely to have
a salutary effect on inert and contented cooler-
vati.m. The propertied classes, he regretted to
say, were not yet sufficiently awakened to the
necessity of making a common stand against
further popular progress; and until they were, his
resumption ot office would, a. formerly, be withoat
power or the hope of permanency. The party tf
resistance had ooly to bide their time and they were
sure to win. If their patience was great, gnat I
would be their compensation. At the last geoeral
election they had increased their strength, and at
the next general election, it they made as much far-
ther advance, they would be sec ore of a large term
of office. Nothing was more likely to waken men
to the requisite sense of their class interests than such
a measure as a teopenny ioconie-tax. It was to be
pissed for ono year only, and if, as was likely, a
dissolutioe occurred in the interval, it would be their
own fault if they did not give hint a majority with
which he could govern the country upon their own
principles. He had twins already tried to carry on
the benne= of goveraieg with borrowed principles,
and they all knew how sadly the experiment had
failed. It would be a great mistake if, instead of wait-
ing until they could lairlyest up on their own account,
they should force him late that false position again.
An extra income-tax for twelvemonths would rain at -
body, while he abrogation at the end of that period
would he a pearitimil and intelligible motive to every
one who thought and felt as he did to work epee-
get wally is_ the cause. We do not pretend to have
heard Lord Diane's speech or to reestio his words;
bet we believe we are sot mistaken in saying that
these are the ides* be would rain Inculcate by the
studird moderation of hi. tone and manner at the
pros-vet time. He wants the Reform gentlest settled
and dens with before °facial respousibility is a third
time east epos ht. ; he world fain shirk, likewise, the
Ivor. accountability that must attach to those who
citric, our external affairs pending the settle-
ment of the Italia. queetioo. He well knows
that though his Carlton battalion were made
strong enough by eltramontene and other
help to per kheistere into • minority on
some single garcon of moment, it would not be
stn.ng enough to maintain the position thus pre-
maturely gained. Lord Dritif haa had entielb of
edictal humiliations recently to netted richly a re-
menu°, of them. Some tit has entsordiaaree may be
eager to rival at odlor. We believe Lord DIARY
aim oily fur power, and that until nese peeimfese
ne give kiln that, he does not wain sad will we
seek it.

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longevity all round. Lady Barth wu born in 1746
Her eldest son was born in 1782, and William in
1786, and he bag died in a geed old age. One sister
of Lady Sarah was the mother of Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, and another of Charles James Fox.

Strong as was the family likeness among
the five brothers, sons of Colenel and Lady Sarah
Napier, in all the salient points of intellectual
and moral character, the one quality which
chiefly marked them all, and separated them from
the rest of the world, was their absolute
fearlseenees of nature. In our age of caution this
characteristic could not bat glorify them, sad at the
same time fill their lives with strife, unless they also
possessed that repose of nature which ought to
leesompany footlessness. This, as all the world
knows, they had not. They would have been demi-
god. indeed, if, with all their strength and tender
noes, all their genius and their humanity, their
power and their graces, they bad also manifested
that serenity which is the true sign of the godlike.
Their " sound and fury " went for more than they
ever intended ; their wrath was usually on behalf of
the wronged and helpless ; their clamour when
indignant for one another's sake bore no
relation to any self-regards or low objects
but still they did clamour, and vex the world
sometimes with their " sound and fury." It was a
pity ; but men are not perfect ; and few are the men,'
of any age or race, who, beating about so strong a
eater*, have so little sin of passion toanswer for. The
world saw little of their nobler asters in the pugnacity
which exhibited itself through the press. In pri-
vate life, the gentleness and courtesy of those men,l
the faithful tenderness with which they bore with'
and alleviated one another's infirmities, their claw
lastest friendship to the end of their lives, their
ardent domestic attachments, and the lofty and pure
sentiment which graced and refined their lives,
made the external quarrels appear to observers like
• troubled dream. It was not a dream, however, but
too truly a weakness and a fault. Great excuse may
be pleaded; and there is no difficulty in allowing for
it; but the fact remains that they lived in storm, in-
stead of above the cloud.. Superior as they were
to the world of their day in insight, foresight,
sense, principle--in short, power—it would have
been wiser, and would have marked a yet higher
order of men, if they had quarrelled less bitterly
with the world for its inferiority in each particular
instance. This kind of remark applies to Charles
sad William, as the best known brothers, and t'is
virtual representatives of the family. It is the
Napier genius which we have been speaking of, and
not the weaknesses of every one of the brotherhood.
On the contrary, the piece of controversy by which
Halberd is known—his Relearn of Charles against the
well-known accusations of Ootrare—is distinguished
by calmness of temper and statement. The long
and short of the matter is, as regards the warrio
trio, that they are of the hero stamp, and not the
sage; while yet they have so many of the qualities
of the sage that we find ourselves unreasonably
disappointed when the combative character oomes
uppermost, and wisdom gives place to valour befo
the eyes of the multitude.
In 1819 William retired oa half-pay, and sew set-
tled down into the literary life by which he has ren-
dered his highest service—and an immortal service—
to the British nation. It is not became his " History
of the Peninsular War" is the finest military history
ever produced that his !shears should be so spoken
of, but because the act of writing that narrative was
a political service of incalculable importance. When
he entered on his work Wellington was unwilling
that the melancholy facts of the early part of the
straggle should become known to the world ; and if
he, the conqueror, was unwilling, it may be imagined
what was telt by the obstructive officials who had
done their utmost to crush the commander and his
enterprise. Well as we understand it now, nobody
knew at the close of the war that Wellington's
greatest difficulties lay within the Cabinet and the
War-office at home. Whether we ever should have
learned the truth without Napier'. help there is no
saying; but we know that to him we owe the fall
and clear understanding that we have of the true
scheme and character of the Peninsular war, of the
ability, tamper, and conduct of the ministry of the
time, and of the merits of our great General. That
history has therefore modified our national policy,
and our view., plans, spirit, and conduct as • people.
There are few books on record which; have effected
such a work as this. It is this view of it which ex-
plains the wrath it excited. The raging vindictiveness
of the Tory goverment party is faithfully expressed
in the Quarterly Reviews (en two eneressive num-
bers) of the History. The political and literary distrust
combined found a mouthpiece in Southey, whose own
history of the same war was naturally annihilated
by its military rival. Lord Welleeley's indignant

monstrance* on behalf of his brother in the House of
Lords had been sneered at by ministers and slighted
by everybody else, es explosions of family vanity or
natural partiality ; aid it was not till Napier's
History appeared that Englishmen were at all
generally aware what a war they had passed
through, and how bed a government, and how tran-
scendent a g I, had been transacting their affairs.
Apart from the literary merits of the work, it is, and
ever will be, remarkable as a disclosure of the real
history of England during a period otherwise
shrouded in thick darkness. This we understand
to be the great and distinctive service of Sir William
Napier's life.
Of the literary quality of the book, it is needless to
say more here than that it fired the spirit Of our
army in the Crimea. Passages from it were the
luxury of the nights in the trenches, and the weary
days in hospital. After all the fault that can be
found by critics, military and literary, everybody
loves and admires the book as much as ever. Some
may pick boles in the narrative, sad some impugn
the judgment', and others show that the style bee a
dozen faults ; but it all makes no difference ; we
read jest as eagerly the third time as this first, and
some of us are haunted by whole passages which
purees le like strains of music. Such involuntary
judgments thrust all ordinary criticism aside, at least
while the author is lying dead, and we think of the
book as one of the weapons and the honours which
should lie on his ooEn with his sword and his spurs,
his symbols and decorations.
The most common-place people found it molt difficult
to understand the Napier politics. From their con-
nexions and their towering pride they might be
expected to be particularly aristocratic, yet they
were exactly the reverse. They ware se conservative
sis Wellington in some lights, and am radical as Cob-
bett in others. That they had quarrels with thrift,
whip, and radicals in turn was unhappily not vary
wonderful t but what were their principles? Sir
W. Napier's pamphlets as the Poor-law and on the
repeal of the Corn laws explain a good dealt bat
the beet key to their social principles was easing
the action of their daily live*. The ser-
vants, all made friends of, and living on sad es,
as is a maws! home ; the labouring clam, Isesatdl
with respect and courtesy as hag as they win fist
and bag in their own Walk, bet assembled ai ea

UAR

Stri.
44111 t
nirlPio
poir
among his intimates, such expressions as " the lower
orders," "common soldiers," and the like. He was
pacified by the =planation that "radii" in this
sense did not mean difference of species, se in natural
history, bat the primitive sense of " rows," in which
some must naturally find a higher and some a lower
place; but the other expressios he never would en-
dure. There is no such thing as a common soldier
in England, he declared ; ours ate not " common
soldiers," though they may be "privates." He
had to defend himself, some years ago, in a ohs-
raoteristic cause. An action for assault was
height against him by a man whom he
hirl thrashed for persistent cruelty to a horse.
The trial is deeply impressed on the minds of tapro-
ot= by the peculiarity of the only witnesses for the
deism* being two deaf-and-dumb youths—Sir W.
Napier's only son and a comrade of his. It was a
strange and pretty sight—the pentomime, the clear
aeeount rendered by the finger-speech, and the
father's spirit whicn shone out in the youth debarred
from the father's eloquence. Everywhere tyrants,
small and great, were in one way or another thrashed
by the Napiera after obstinate refusal to desist from
oppression. This was the one clear point about their
politics. As for the rest, Sir W. Napier objected to
the principle of our Poor-law, and protested against
its application. He approved of free trade in corn
but protested against the application of the principle
in so factitious a state of society, and under the
burden of such a debt as ours. Happily he lived
to see how well the true principle worked,
and how needless bad been his forebodings.
He had, as we have said, one son. Nine daugh-
ters were born to him, five of whom survive him.
His life was happy in old age. His utterly fearless
nature saved him from the suffering which most of
us would undergo in provoking and sustaining
hostile controversies. His wife, some unmarried

daughters, many grandchildren, and all whom his
benign domestic temper had attached to him, minis-
tered to his evie and to his intellect as well ; so that
his decline was gentle. Till a lat* stage of his life
his accomplishments as an artist were a precious
resource to him. Others besides his immediate
friends will remember his statue—the Death of

Alcibiades—in virtue of which he was made an
honorary member of the Royal Academy. His
paintings are no commonplace amateur daubs, but
both explain and are explained by the splendid
picture gallery of his great historical work.

He has left those behind who will guard his
memory well, it indeed any other guardianship
is needed than the national feeling towards the
gallant brotherhood of knights, and the historian of
the Peninsular War in particular. They are gone.
We have many gallant men left, as we always have
had, and always shall have; but there never have
been any, and there never tan be any, like the
Napier.. They were a group raised from among the
medimval dead, and set in the midst of tie, clothed in
a temperament which admitted all the ameliorating
influences of our period of civilisation. They were a
great and never-to-be-forgotten sight to our genera-
tion; and our posterity will see them in the mirror
of tradition for ages to come. We are wont to say
that Tradition is old, and has left off work; but it is
not often now that Tradition has such a theme as
the Napier.. It will not willingly be let die till
Tradition itself u dead.

tL E.. ' : EBB, WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUA
.
1/ Tl' 07 IP CL 0 0
.„, OT -1-1 4.4lfenele had been divided enemy trim fogey of oppression ; 'twere
111111„„6,11112gaiLma. . :;-.., 4. .
14....., i rmt of i Lit pomible thoman whom we deuces of the gamine democratic spirit wikib d
_._
mu Isibriakadoulsaditlatin - ` 1-
Alt
sa" d whootwe all sight--imald in thole prod hearts, those sincere iumilist au
have' • his ilt&sr tell of Impoisagewamt to Sir William's friends can bear witness to the
wessieree we i=kteitie Wee et a
3= auseAtiodv:twastrowee=zrimaweezess. George III.? Even so; but that:Was remarkable lanoe of that spirit in him. He never let
meamenem. longevity all round. Lady Sarah wee finrn ;n 1 lAA- avne.s hi. ;1..; ....... ••••• •a• ~.........inn• as ~.6m 1,