The Express.
London, England, 1867-04-20 00:00:00

THE WEEKLY PRESS.

The momentary triumph of last week cannot, nays
the Examener, blind ministers to the insecurity of their
I position. They were saved by a majority of twenty-one ;
but who gave them that majority? Not General Peel and
Mr. Sandford, snatched somehow at the last moment as
brands from the burning : not Lords Grosvenor and El,:ho
with their half-score inmates of the Cave long since
deserted by Messrs. Herman, Laing, and Lowe. Neither
of these contingents, nor both together, would have
sufficed. The principle of personal rating and
payment of rates on which issue was distinctly
joined would not have been re-affirmed by the
House of Commons had not thirteen friends
of household suffrage, sooner than risk the fate
of a bill embodying that principle, voted as under
other circumstances they probably would not have done ;
and bad not an equal number of the soundest and truest
liberals in parliament abstained from voting avowedly for
the same reason. The forty-two members of various
shades of opposition that voted with ministers on Friday
night were neither collectively nor individually identical
with the Forty-Eight Remonstrants of the Monday pre-
ceding ; and it is important that the absence of such
identity should be understood and remembered. For what
does it prove ? Incontestably this—that more than eighty
members of the liber►l party are averse from any course
of policy which, for the sake of changing the ad-
ministration, would defer the settlement of the
reform question until next year or the year following ; but
incontestably this also—that the existence of minister
and of their bill is dependent upon the caprice of no small
section or fragment of the opposition, but upon the calm
judgment and moral courage of a great and importantbody
of liberals, bound together by no hidden tic of clique or
cabal, but borne together in fluctuating force by the outer
wave of public opinion. If officials that are, and officials
that are likely to be, are wise, they will ponder these
things. Duly weighed, they afford as little cause for
exaltation or w►ywardnes on the part of ministers as for
disappointment or despondency on the part of their rivals.
A great necessity, deemed by the nation paramount for the
hour to all personal or party considerations, is upon us,and
every attempt to ignore the fact is certain to prove unfor-
tunate and futile. If ministers, after the generosity shown
them, do not yield frank and full justice to compound
householders and to lodgers, they are doomed ; and the
disinterested forbearance hitherto shown them will be but
as wale of fire upon their heads.
The division of last week, says the Saturday Rerier,
settled two things, and two things only. It settled th►t
a Reform Bill shall be carried, if possible, by the present
government in the present session, and it settled that
household suffrage, in some form or other, shall be the
basis of the borough franchise. Neither decision Is to be
regretted, although full justice ought to be .lone to those
who on both points held a different opinion. Within a
few hours after his defeat, the Saturday Reriew continues,
Mr. Gladstone wrote a letter to some obscure country
association, in which he gave vent to the feelings
which had been awakened in him by finding that his
party would not follow him. A prudent man would
not have written this letter; a cold reserved man
would not have let all the world know what
pangs of bitter mortification he was enduring.
But imprudence sometimes has a success of its
own, and mankind sometimes lean to those who are
not the heroes of psalms of life, and who, when
they suffer, are not so particularly strong. If Mr. Glad-
stone openly mourns that he cannot lead his party, it is
time to say openly the truth about his leadership. He is
not a good party leader ; he does not understand how to
manage men, when to be firm and when to be pliant ; he
is fierce and impulsive, and be is under the mastery of his
own feelings, and is often the slave of his own rhetoric.
But when all this is said, how little, how very little is
said against him in comparison with that which can
be said for him ! If he l not to lead the
liberals, who is to lead them ? Is it seriously meant that
he is to be placed under a worn-oat whig peer, who is to
"coach" him, and show him the secrets of whig art? Let
us hope that at least this state of political decrepitude is
over, and that the Reform Bill, if it does nothing else,
will make such an absurdity impossible. Not only is there
no rival to him in the liberal party, there is not even a '
second to him. And in many respects he is one of the very
chief of liberal leaders. No English statesman since Fox
has had so much of the popular fibre. No living statesman
can, in his best moments, strike out words that breathe
and thoughts that burn so vividly in the heart of the
nation.

The Spectator is of opinion that apart altogether from
the effect of defeat, which is always considerable, the ten-
dency to side with the strong being an instinct with poli-
ticians e@ with the rest of mankind, the division immensely
increases the difficulty of making any alterations whatever
in the Reform Bill. Unless the leader of opposition finds
in his own genius come new and unexpected resource, or
Mr. Disraeli refuses to concede some point on which
liberals dare not break their pledges, or some great per-
sonal incident occurs, such as the death of some very im-
portant personage, it is, the Spectator gravely fears, pos-
sible that the bill may pass without serious alter►tion.
Mr. Disnali's superbly unscrupulous strategy will
succeed, and the House of Commons will pass •
bill to which everyone of the three groat parties
is the state entertain almost vital objections. The
tortes say they dislike extension of the suffrage, and
they will have a bill under which every householder can, if
he pleases, vote ; the liberals say they dislike inequality
of rights, and they will have a bill under which a ten-
ponder can vote without trouble, and a five-pounder only
with it; the thoughtful liberals want the good workmen
put in, and the bad workmen kept out, and they will have
a bill under which, while Birmingham, with its hosts of
skilled artisans, is not enfranchised, Thetford, with its
agricultural labourers, is. The simple truth is that Mr.
Diemen, single-heeded, has thrashed us all, Lord Crain-
' borne, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, and the Spectator, all
together, and the single great doubt is whether he bas not
thrashed the people of England too.

For the fast time for many years, remarks the Chronicle,
the liberal party has sustained a decisive defeat on an issue
of primary and vital importance. Throughout the last
two months the Opposition has trifled with itself, with
its leaden, and with the great question of which it had
virtually the charge. It has shrunk [with childish
timidity from every course which could possibly
involve a determined adherence to principle. It
has preached peace where peace could only mean
surrender, and advocated compromise where compro-
miss could only imply that those who proposed it had not
r the courage to fight. It has now reaped the natural fruit
of its own impolicy. It has found out that for an opposi.
Lion to be strong it must be respected, and that a party
which holds loosely by the articles of its creed will have
little claim on the allegiance of its members. To some
men it may seem that this blow is broken because it comes
in part from nominal friends, and that the enemy is some-
how less formidable because his troops have been reinforced
by deserters. But consolations of this sort spring from a
complete failure to comprehend the real bearings of the case.
The liberal party has flattered itself long enough with
vague assurances of its overwhelming parliamentary
strength. It is time for it to open its eyes to the truth
that, in the House of Commons at all events, it cannot
even hold its own. Its position there is just the reverse
of that which it has been accustomed complacently to as-
sume. It is the position of a minority confronted by
powerful foes, weakened by disaffeced friends, with an
assured hope indeed of ultimata victory, but with the eon-
sciousness of a crushing reverse in the immediate past, and
the certainty of hard fighting in the immediate future.

THE Ngw PALACE OP Wrirrmlworge.. —Two more
fresooes by C. W. Cope, Sao., MA., are now being placed
in the •' Peers' Corridor." The subjects are—" The Setting
out of Train Rands from London to raise the Siege of
Monosater," and " Speaker Lenthal asserting the Privileges
of the Commons against Charles the First when the attempt
was made to seize the Five Members." These two complete
the *aria of frescoes for the Peen' Corridor.